Mandarich Is Packers’ Green Giant Whose Time Will Eventually Come

Attention local supermarkets: Tony Mandarich is coming back to town and he’s hungry. He’s only a reserve right tackle for the Green Bay Packers at the moment, but understand that he’s just warming up.

Mandarich, the mammoth, leg-squatting human grocery disposal from Michigan State, is finding it easier to talk about the National Football League than actually play in it.

The second overall pick in last April’s draft will be activated for Sunday’s game against the Rams at Anaheim, but he’s not expected to play much. Apparently even the greatest offensive line prospect since Anthony Munoz needs a few days to get his cleats wet.

“It’s going to take time,” Mandarich said Wednesday. “The biggest thing for me is not to get frustrated, because there’s so many high expectations, and high expectations on my part.”

Expectations? This from the man who was demanding $2 million a year during a publicized summer holdout while making veiled threats to take on heavyweight champion Mike Tyson?

This week, Mandarich let the world in on his little secret.

“The $2-million dollar thing was hype,” he said. “I never seriously thought that I would get $2 million a year, but I knew it would turn peoples’ heads and get a lot of headlines. And I knew it would get me a lot of exposure, and that’s what I wanted.”

Mandarich said that the proposed fight with Tyson was only half hype. He swears boxing promoters Lou Duva and Shelly Finkle flew to California last May and “laid a $5-million contract on my kitchen table and said, ‘You’ll fight him in December if you sign it.’ ”

Mandarich balked.

“I’m a football player, that’s my cup a tea,” he told the promoters. “If I’m going to fight Tyson, I’m going against a guy that’s a bad . . . , so I want at least 10 million. Because I’ve got to have money for plastic surgery.”

Mandarich has turned out to be quite a talent. He hasn’t played a down in the league, but has managed to make several enemies. Buffalo Bills All-Pro defensive end Bruce Smith said recently he is tired of Mandarich shooting off his mouth.

Mandarich says he will knock out Smith’s teeth should they ever meet.

“Smith had nothing better to do at that time than to rag on me because he had an injured knee and wasn’t playing and he wasn’t getting any publicity, so he had to leach off of me,” Mandarich said.

So is Mandarich a marked man?

“I think there will be a few players out there,” he said. “But that’s OK, because what goes around comes around.”

Against the Rams, Mandarich matches up against outside linebacker Kevin Greene, the noted quarterback sacker. It might make a great pro wrestling matchup someday.

And if there’s one thing Mandarich isn’t at the moment, it’s a competent pass blocker, those skills not having been honed at Michigan State where, as Mandarich says, “You run the ball 80 times and pass three.”

Mandarich will no doubt be brought along gently, if such a phrase applies for one who measures 6-feet-5 and 315 pounds and consumes 15,000 calories a day. He received a two-game roster exemption after signing a four-year, $4.3-million deal Sept. 5.

Despite the publicity, Mandarich says he’s just another Green Bay Packer, no better or worse than any other 300-pound millionaire in the small Wisconsin hamlet he described once as something less than cosmopolitan.

“I did say some harsh things, like calling Green Bay a village,” Mandarich said. “And let’s face it, it is no metropolis, you know. I’m not going to live here year round.”

Apparently, however, all is forgiven. Mandarich said he has been treatly kindly by teammates and villagers alike.

“It’s funny, because some people think twice about walking up to me in a shopping mall and asking for an autograph,” he said. “After they do, they say, ‘We were shy about asking you because we didn’t know if you’d tells us to bleep or not.’ ”

And Mandarich said if his teammates are envious of his contract and publicity, they haven’t shown it.

“Not one guy gave me a hard time,” he said. “We have these huge bins you throw towels in after you’re done showering and stuff. When I signed, somebody put it by my locker and put a sign on it: ‘Mandarich’s wallet.’ But there hasn’t been one person that’s shown animosity. . . . These players are intelligent. They know with all the hype and stuff that I’m not going to come in and kick butt the first day I get here.”

Maybe Mandarich has been misunderstood.

“The media portrays me as a bad guy, the Boz II, stuff like that,” he said. “But that’s OK, because I know what I’m really like and the people who know me know what I’m really like.

“Sports Illustrated put a knife in my back because they wrote the story before they even interviewed me, and portrayed me to be a big steroids freak; a guy who listens to Guns and Roses. Yeah, I do listen to Guns and Roses, and I love their music. But they made it sound like I would die for Guns and Roses, like I would take a Harley and drive it off a cliff. But that’s OK, because it turned people’s heads and it got people going.”

You think maybe Mandarich will open up once he gets a game under his belt?