RAIDER, RAM OPPONENTS : Saints’ Eric Martin Is Tired of Having to Wait at the Pass

Eric Martin has had it with keeping his mouth shut, mainly because he runs pass patterns that leave him wide open. If he bites his tongue once more, there are going to be teeth marks in it.

In short, he’s hoping that the squeaky wide receiver gets the passes, or something like that.

Being tactful isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be, Martin has decided. And although he makes no threats, nor issues ultimatums, the wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints would like it known that his employers ought to aim more passes his way. The more the better.

“In the key situations of the ballgame, I want to be the guy with the ball,” Martin said.

Those words come to you from the league’s fourth-leading receiver in 1988, who, surprisingly enough, had more receptions than the celebrated Jerry Rice, Ricky Sanders, Anthony Carter, J. T. Smith or Eddie Brown, among others. Yet, a season later, Martin said he can’t seem to catch a break, to say nothing of enough passes.

You explain it, Martin can’t.

One day a Pro Bowl selection, the next a Pro Bowl decoy. At least that’s the way Martin sees it. And he should know, especially since he recently conducted a review of each of the Saints’ six game films. His findings?

“After looking at the film, I’m pretty much wide open,” Martin said.

Before last week’s game against the New York Jets, Martin hadn’t caught a touchdown pass. His receptions were down from a year ago, too, enough that he found himself battling both defensive backs and exasperation.

According to Martin, he has been running his patterns, getting open, watching somebody else get the ball, running back to the huddle and repeating the process. It has been maddening.

At one point, Martin became a wee bit paranoid. He started counting the number of passes thrown to, say, the running back, as opposed to him. Even without prompting, he can recite the totals.

“I expect to get the ball as much as a running back ,” he said.

On occasion, Martin would speak up. It usually happened on the sidelines, when Saint quarterback Bobby Hebert would mosey over and ask if Martin had been open on a previous pattern.

“Man, I was wide open,” he would say.

Wide receivers always say they’re open. It’s part of the job description. But in Martin’s case, he said he really was roaming free and unfettered through opposing secondaries, almost embarrassingly so.

“I see the double (coverages) coming,” he said. “I see the brackets (a cornerback and a safety combining to cover him on short and long patterns). I work on that all the time. It’s nothing new. I’ve been getting open against brackets and all of that. I look at the games. I look at the films. I see where I’m doing some good things.”

Especially satisfying was his effort against the Jets at the Superdome. He turned a short little hitch pattern into a long touchdown run. Later, he angled his way past a defender for a short touchdown catch. In all, he caught five passes for 131 yards. And to think, he said, it could happen all the time if the Saints simply found a way to get him the ball.

“Things are starting to pick up,” he said. “But the first five ballgames, I really didn’t think, personally, I was contributing to the team. I didn’t think I was getting the ball in the clutch situations. I was out there playing, but I wasn’t getting the ball. I didn’t have anything to do with the game. That part was frustrating. It’s like knowing deep down inside that if the ball came your way in that situation, you could do something with it.”

One reason for Martin’s decreasing receptions is the emergence of Lonzell Hill as the Saints’ other wide receiver. Hill has a team-leading 30 receptions, as well as four touchdowns. He had only seven TDs in 1988.

“Last year, (Hebert) was looking for me,” Martin said. “This year, I’m pretty much the secondary receiver.”

That could change, of course, but for the moment, Hill has managed three more catches than Martin and those two additional scoring receptions.

Making matters harder to accept is the plight of the Saints, who arrive in Anaheim today with a 2-4 record, a number that easily could be reversed had they not blown a 17-point halftime lead to the Green Bay Packers, lost Hebert in the opening drive against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, committed four turnovers and witnessed a rare miss by kicker Morten Andersen against the Washington Redskins and, most recently, squandered a 17-3 lead against the San Francisco 49ers in a game that replay officials botched by not overturning a supposed touchdown catch by Rice.

“We haven’t put a total game together,” Martin said. “The Tampa Bay and Green Bay games, we had those games. But ever since the Green Bay game, we really haven’t had any breaks go our way. We have to play the whole ballgame, not just the first half.”

Now come the Rams, a team against which Martin had 10 receptions for 175 yards last year. This season, who knows, given the fluctuating fortunes of the Ram secondary thus far?

“I’ve played against these guys the last four or five years,” said Martin, who then spent the next few moments complimenting cornerbacks Jerry Gray and LeRoy Irvin. “And (the Rams) probably have the second-best safeties in the league, other than (the 49ers’ Ronnie) Lott and (Jeff) Fuller.”

Martin would like nothing better than to reintroduce himself to Gray & Co. Sunday. He has just one simple request: the ball.