NO COMPLAINTS : Chargers Aren’t Saying Much, But Neither Is Marion Butts

After two games, nobody in the American Football Conference has scored more points than Charger rookie Marion Butts. Nobody in the NFL has scored more touchdowns. None of Butts’ teammates have rushed for more yards.

And nobody has heard Butts, a seventh-round draft pick from Florida State, complain about why he played less last week than he did in the season opener.

Nor has anybody heard him complain about why, in the absence of unsigned Gary Anderson, Coach Dan Henning hasn’t identified Butts as the Chargers’ No. 1 running back.

Nobody will.

“Complaining,” Butts says, “is just the easy way out. You’re not going to accomplish anything in life by complaining. If you complain, you’re not going to go as far.”

It’s a philosophy that flies in the face of the squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease theory. And it’s a philosophy that would have left our colonies in the hands of the British more than 200 years ago.

But in this dark sporting age of holdouts, renegotiations, lockouts, strikes, collusion and lawsuits, Marion Butts is a beacon.

“And he’s a hard worker,” says Charger running back Victor Floyd, also a rookie and also a college teammate of Butts’. “Always has been.”

Butts still doesn’t understand why he didn’t play more in college. But he refused to dwell on it. “When they told me to do something I did it,” he says. “It was like, ‘Yes sir, no sir.’ I wasn’t walking around like ‘Yeah, man.’ I was doing what the coaches said.”

He was the same way this summer with the Chargers. And it was fun to watch.

“He’s a load,” says Jim Collins, the Chargers’ starting right inside linebacker. “When he gets those big thighs pumping, he’s tough to bring down. Even when you slow him down, he keeps grinding them legs and keeps pumping away.”

Butts, 6-feet-1 and 248 pounds, is still learning the mental and physical complexities of the NFL. In Week 1 against the Raiders, he rushed for 64 yards on nine carries and two touchdowns. On the first score, Butts burst quickly through a small hole and outran the Raider secondary for 50 yards. He added a one-yard touchdown in the third period.

Last Sunday, he scored twice more from a yard out against the Oilers. But he only carried the ball five times for 10 yards. And Houston cashed in on a Butts fumble with a 35-yard touchdown drive.

“Through the preseason and through the first two games of the regular season, we don’t feel like there’s been anybody who has brought themselves to the fore so that you could say, ‘This guy should be in there all the time,’ ” Henning says.

That’s debatable. But it’s difficult to debate anything these days with Henning. He says a less and less about his players in public each week.

A recent example:

Reporter: Why did Marion play less in the first half of the second game than he did in the first half of the first game?

Henning: Well, why did Victor Floyd play less in the first half of the first game than he did in the first half of the second game?

Reporter: I asked you first.

Henning: I gave you the answer. I just told you that we don’t have anybody that’s come to the fore where we think that he ought to be the established guy.

Reporter: So you’re telling me you were just trying to experiment with somebody else (Floyd) and see what he could do?

Henning: No, I didn’t say that. You said that.

Reporter: I’m trying to figure out what you are telling me.

Henning: I’m not telling you anything.

Henning effectively closed the line of questioning by chastising the reporter for making an unrelated error in a story two weeks earlier.

Mistakes. Everybody makes them. Reporters do. Even Henning did that same day in a passing reference to league injury-report policy. And you get the sense that right now Butts is committing enough of them to keep him from getting the ball more.

But unfortunately for him, the net effect of Henning’s evasiveness only serves to raise doubts about Butts--certainly the most productive seventh-round rookie so far this year, if not the most productive rookie, period.

Is Butts a chronic fumbler? Is he a poor pass receiver? Is, as Henning later suggested, he too valuable on special teams to risk giving him the ball 20 times a game?

Thankfully, Butts is above all this talk. He was that way in college, too. It’s not that he lacks confidence. It’s just that he’s young enough and confident enough to believe his continued improvement as a football player will eventually be impossible to ignore.

“If he’s used in the right situation, I think he can be real effective,” Collins says. “Obviously he’s not a breakaway-type runner. But he’s got the speed when he does get in the open field that he can run away from some people.”

“This is a business,” Butts says. “You get credit for what you do. So regardless of what you do, even if they put you at nose guard, if that’s the credit you get, you shouldn’t even worry. You shouldn’t complain. You say, ‘OK, hey, I’ll play nose guard even though I never even played there. I’ll try. Because it’s a business.’ ”

At Florida State, Butts made a name for himself on special teams. Wayne McDuffie, the Seminoles’ offensive coordinator, called Butts “John Dillinger in head gear.” Butts wasn’t sure who Dillinger was. But he knew it was a compliment, and he liked the notoriety.

Still, he spent two years hoping to be a more integral part of the regular offense. Alas, Florida State was loaded with backs. Their stable included Floyd and Sammie Smith, Miami’s first-round selection last spring.

At Florida State, Butts carried the ball only 35 times his junior year and 29 last year. His average per carry over that span was 5.2 yards. But when he got in on offense, it was mostly as a blocking back.

“It was really hard to accept second best when you were so used to being first in everything and when you had great talent on you,” he says. “I’d seen that I had talent in that area (running back). But they (FSU coaches) weren’t really responding to my talent. That’s going to hurt anyone. It would hurt the average individual. And it hurt me.

“I didn’t complain about it. Deep down inside I did. But it was too late. So I just said I’ll stick it out, do the best I can and see how things work out.”

After his senior year, the scouts started coming around to look at Floyd and Smith and the passel of other players Florida State seems to produce each year. Butts grabbed their attention immediately when he ran a 4.4-second 40-yard dash.

“They just said, ‘Like, wow!’ ” Butts says. “There really wasn’t too much they could say. I turn heads.”

So does his name. ‘Marion’ puts him in the company of every American male named Dale or Lee or Dana--the Boy-Named-Sue syndrome. And it doesn’t take much imagination to understand the inherent difficulties in growing up with the surname “Butts.”

Marion Butts, though, was bigger than almost everybody else his own age. When he graduated from Worth County High School in Sylvester, Ga., he weighed 230 pounds.

“Sometimes there would be a little thing about my name from somebody,” he says. “But a name is a name. What if your name was ‘Frog’? You’d have to live with that. I never had no problem. In high school, you’re a star, You’re standing out. People aren’t going to confront you and mess up your ego for something as silly as that.”

During his junior year at Worth County, Butts broke his leg. The bone actually snapped in half. He came back, attending Northeast Oklahoma A&M; Junior College before enrolling at Florida State, where he agonized over his lack of playing time.

“I couldn’t really understand why I couldn’t get in the limelight because there was nothing bad I was doing,” he says. “I had a nice personality. I was carrying myself in a nice fashion. I wasn’t moping around or talking trash.”

If anything, the problem was the Florida State coaches stereotyped him as a “big” back. But Butts is faster than the archetypal big back. And he has better balance.

When he wanted to know why he wasn’t playing more, he went through the channels. He talked to his position coach. When his position coach told him he would have to make a name for himself on special teams first, Butts did so. He was looking for direction, not comforting words.

“It’s like work,” Butts says. “If you’re a computer analyst and they say, ‘We want you to start typing,’ you say, ‘OK.’ ” It’s not that you’re trained to be a typist, it’s they want you to do it. If you want to leave there and find another job, you’ll be unemployed. So it’s just better to drop down a level to typing and build yourself back up.”

If Gary Anderson shows up one day soon, Butts won’t bat an eye. “I turn heads,” he says. And he is convinced the day is coming when they will all turn toward him.

Charger Notes

Charger running back Marion Butts, listed as “questionable” on the Chargers’ injury report Wednesday with a knee injury, says the problem is just a bruise below the knee. It occurred on his second touchdown, a one-yard run, against the Oilers last Sunday. “I’m ready (for Kansas City) Sunday,” he said. “It’s just a little thing. Football is a painful thing. To play football you’ve got to be able to play with pain.” . . . Still no progress on the stalled Gary Anderson contract front. Just more bafflement from Anderson’s agent, Ralph Cindrich. “It’s almost like the Chargers have a death wish,” Cindrich said. . . . Brett Miller has a screw loose. In his knee. And it may keep the starting Charger right tackle from playing against the Chiefs Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The screw was implanted during surgery in 1986, and has begun working its way loose. “It feels like somebody is hitting me (on the knee) with a ball peen hammer,” Miller said Thursday. “It doesn’t feel real good.” Minor surgery can fix the problem. The Chargers have decided to go ahead with the operation before Sunday. If Miller can’t play, Coach Dan Henning said he would start James FitzPatrick in his place. FitzPatrick hasn’t started a game since 1987 and hasn’t played a down in the Chargers’ two losses this year.