COLLINS’ INSIDE TRACK : Hurting or Not, He Looks Like Starter to Chargers

These days, Jim Collins eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at the Charger team dining hall on a terrace in tony La Jolla, overlooking the sun-splashed Pacific Ocean. The temperature on the practice field at the Chargers’ UC San Diego practice field rarely rises above 80. And at night, he needs a sweat shirt when he goes outside. It gets cool.

This is football heaven. And Collins, a survivor of too many dog days in too many Fullerton summers, appreciates his station more than most people will ever know. Better yet, he is a starter again.

Four years ago, he was a 27-year-old Pro Bowl linebacker for the Rams and played the run about as well as anybody in the league. His future looked brighter than Georgia Frontiere’s teeth.

Then he banged his left shoulder off Marcus Allen while chasing down a sweep from the backside at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii after the 1985 season. The shoulder went numb.

Collins stayed in the game. But when the numbness didn’t go away after the next series, he took himself out.

“At the time,” he says now, “nobody thought it was real serious.”

Collins figured it was just a pinched nerve. He would have the entire off-season to recover. “I just kicked back,” he said.

Weeks passed. Then months. The numbness remained. Doctors finally decided he had damaged the axillary nerve to the point where the nerve wasn’t sending the muscle any signals that make it fire and actuate. Atrophy set in. Big time.

Doctors assured Collins the nerve damage would heal. But he wasn’t so sure when he had to miss the entire 1986 season. He started every game for the Rams in 1987, but surgery to remove a bone spur from his knee during training camp last summer forced him to miss the first 12 games in ’88.

Suddenly, Collins was a 30-year-old veteran with a medical history on a team loaded with young, talented players. Moreover, the Rams had switched to what they call the “Eagle” defense, which puts a premium on speed and players who like to fly around the field.

Then the NFL owners decided to implement something called “Free Agency Plan B.” That meant each team had to protect 37 players. Everybody else was an unrestricted free agent. It meant Collins could bargain with any team in the league.

He chose the Chargers because he wanted to remain on the west coast and he wanted to have a chance to prove he could still play. He didn’t come cheap.

“I don’t know what we paid him,” Charger Coach Dan Henning says. “But we didn’t steal him. Stealing is something you take and don’t give anything back. I think we gave him something.”

Sources say Collins made between $400,000 and $500,000 with the Rams last year. His 1989 contract with the Chargers is approximately $450,000, more than half of which is guaranteed.

They wanted him that badly, and the Chargers almost immediately inserted Collins on their first unit as the weak inside linebacker.

During the Chargers’ dreary, 20-3 loss to Dallas Sunday, Collins stood out on a defensive unit that allowed just one offensive touchdown.

“He probably played about as well anybody in the whole game,” Henning said.

The official statisticians credited him with a team-high seven tackles. Linebackers Coach Mike Haluchak said the number was more like 10. “And,” Haluchak said, “we only had him in there for 30 plays.”

The reason is the knee. It still prevents him from taking part in most of the afternoon drills during two-a-day practices. But since the Chargers spend most of their afternoons working on the passing game, and since they use Collins primarily in running situations, the limited work hasn’t really hampered him.

He is still adjusting to the multitude of coverages and fronts employed by Ron Lynn, the Charger defensive coordinator who has the brains of Philadelphia defensive genius Buddy Ryan but without Ryan’s gruff exterior.

But Collins says he enjoys the variety of Lynn’s approach. The Ram teams he played for, he says, were plain vanilla. Maybe too vanilla.

“Ron Lynn’s defense gives players a chance to do a lot of things,” Collins says. “And it’s complicated enough where the offense is going to be sitting there thinking a little bit instead of just knowing where you’re going to be which was the case with the Rams quite a bit.”

Don’t get him wrong. Collins misses the Rams and the friends he made in his eight seasons there. And he has no problem with the experts who have already identified the 1989 Rams as early-line favorites to win the Super Bowl.

“I think they have a legitimate chance to go all the way,” he says. “Guys like Fred Strickland and Vince Newsome are going to be great players. It’s just a matter of whether they can step up and do it right away. The Rams have all the pieces to be a great team.”

Including quarterback Jim Everett?

“He showed last year what he’s capable of, and he’s going to do nothing but get better.”

Part of Collins’ problem with the Rams was Coach John Robinson’s reluctance to use players who weren’t able to practice full-tilt during the week. But Collins’ bad knee deteriorated to the point where he had bone rubbing against bone. He had to have rest between games.

So far, the Chargers appear to understand that. “We told him that if he was going to get any big-time hitting during the preseason, it would be during the games,” Henning said. “Sunday, he went in there and did it.”

The sense in camp is that the Chargers will be happy to get 16 full games out of Collins. After that?

“As long as he keeps his quickness, he’ll be able to play,” Haluchak says. “He’s got a real punch to him. Speed is not a necessary requirement as long as he knows where he’s going.”