McDonald Now Playing Safety First : Cardinals: Former USC defensive back warms to the responsibilities of the professional game.

The Phoenix Cardinals play the Rams Sunday in Anaheim, but they won’t arrive in time for Tim McDonald to make it to today’s USC-UCLA game. So the former Trojan safety will watch the game on television and wax nostalgic about the good old college days.

It’s not that McDonald misses the pals-parties-and-pranks stuff that much. What he yearns for is the time when he roamed free in the defensive backfield, slamming his body into ball carriers and receivers whenever and wherever he wanted.

The pro game is just too darned disciplined. A strong safety actually has specific responsibilities that go beyond simple mayhem.

“Sometimes you feel like a robot,” McDonald said. “Everybody has a responsibility on every play. You’re responsible for a certain area and you have to do that job first before you can do anything else.”

Mind-boggling, huh?

Making tackles and batting down passes just aren’t enough, anymore. Consider McDonald’s list of duties:

--First, he has to call out adjustments for the secondary before every snap. That may be a nuisance, but at least it doesn’t keep him out of any action.

--Then, he has to make sure the opponent isn’t going to run a sweep his way. If it does, he has to force the play inside. No fun, unless they run at him.

--In man-to-man pass coverage, he has to stick with one running back or tight end. Heck, there’s a good chance the guy might not even be the primary receiver.

--And a few times a game, the Cardinals let him blitz. Rushing the quarterback, of course, is always fun. For McDonald, that is.

It can be considerably less pleasant for the quarterback. Just ask Ram backup Mark Herrmann, who was out for more than a month with broken ribs after McDonald sacked him in the third game of the exhibition season this year.

To say McDonald lives for Sunday afternoons is to understate this 24-year-old’s love affair with football. The sight of a vulnerable receiver, stretching out for a pass within striking distance is McDonald’s idea of an adrenaline rush.

“I’m pretty quiet off the field, but when I’m out there on the field, I hate the enemy,” he said. “Sometimes, I want to rip a guy’s head off. Sometimes, I get so, uh, energized, that I do things I regret later.

“But, hey, I’m just out there trying to win.”

McDonald admits that problems arise on Sundays because he has trouble dealing with all the specific roles the Cardinal coaches keep calmly explaining to him every week.

“I’ve always felt like I have lots of athletic ability,” he says. “And I wanted to be able to move around and do some things to show it.

“When I was at SC, I pretty much ran around and did what I wanted. I could be here, be there, just make the plays.”

Deep down, McDonald knows that football comes down to just making the plays. So he has managed to rampage within this think-and-react regimen, balancing on the thin line between staying in the system and spinning out of control.

And he leads the National Football League with six interceptions, four in the last two games.

Gene Stallings spent more than a quarter of a century learning football from Bear Bryant and then Tom Landry. He was the Cowboys’ defensive backfield coach during three trips to the Super Bowl.

So you have to understand that this from the coach of the Cardinals is not a simple statement of fact, but the ultimate compliment: “Tim McDonald is a football player, in my opinion. He’s a player.” McDonald broke his left ankle in the third exhibition game of his rookie season in 1987, but it wasn’t long after he returned to full strength that the Cardinals knew they had a “player.”

He showed flashes of brillance after coming off the injured-reserve list for the last three games. Still, McDonald went into the first game of last season with little experience. He was really just a rookie. He also was already a fixture at strong safety.

Shortly thereafter, it became apparent that McDonald was blessed with both the talent and the mental approach to excel in the NFL.

He had always been a marvelous all-around athlete. Football was his third sport at Fresno’s Edison High, where he averaged 14 points a game as a guard and hit .465 as an outfielder his senior year.

He had a pretty good senior season on the football field, too. A quarterback, safety and punter, he completed 57% of his passes for 2,739 yards and 30 touchdowns, rushed for 400 yards and six touchdowns, intercepted five passes, made 123 tackles and averaged more than 41 yards a punt.

Then, he made 325 tackles and intercepted 11 passes as a three-year starter at USC.

So maybe his success in his first full year with the Cardinals shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He finished last season with a team-leading 115 tackles, two sacks, four forced fumbles, one fumble recovery and two interceptions. He added the special-team hat trick, blocking a punt, a field goal try and an extra point kick.

Still, becoming a pro has not been easy for McDonald.

“Getting used to the system was rough for me,” he said. “Especially going to St. Louis (for the Cardinals’ final season there before their move to Phoenix) after having never been out of California for any length of time in my life. Then I broke my ankle. I didn’t know anybody. I was starting to wonder, ‘Why me?’

“Everything went pretty bad for me. You’re around people who don’t know what you can do. You’re a rookie. You’re hurt. And you don’t get a chance.”

The ankle healed, though and McDonald was able to provide a glimpse of things to come during the final three games of 1987.

“I played pretty well,” he said. “They had an idea going into camp that there was a good chance they had to find a place for me to play. That was my objective going into 1988. I came to camp early, determined to prove what I was capable of doing.”

He certainly accomplished that. And he has spent the first 10 weeks of this season proving 1988 was no fluke. He leads the team with 75 tackles and the league in interceptions.

McDonald has become close with Dennis Thurman, another former USC safety who is now the Cardinals’ defensive back coach.

“Dennis and I talk about dreams all the time,” McDonald said. “Before the New York (Giant) game, I told him I had a dream about interceptions and that I got a couple of them and took one back 80 yards for a touchdown.

“He said, ‘When you’re dreaming about them like that, they usually never happen. They usually come when you don’t even think about it.’ ”

But, sure enough, McDonald had two interceptions against the Giants. He intercepted the first one at the Cardinal 28-yard line--he even looked down to see where he was--but was caught 45 yards later.

The second?

“He had a missed assignment,” Stallings said. “He was in the wrong place.”

Last week against Dallas, McDonald returned an interception 53 yards for a touchdown that put Phoenix ahead in the second quarter, 7-6. He intercepted another pass in the fourth quarter, returned it 42 yards and the Cardinals hung on for a 24-20 victory.

“I made one real good play and the other one the guy threw right at me,” he said.

All these interceptions will probably get McDonald the recognition he believes he deserves. He thinks he is one of the best safeties in the league and should to go to the Pro Bowl.

“At the start of the season, I thought that if I played to my full potential, I’d have a pretty good shot at it,” he said. “We’re 5-5 now and I’ve been fortunate enough to stay healthy and make some plays. So I feel pretty good about my chances.”

A trip to the Pro Bowl couldn’t hurt at contract negotiation time, but McDonald is one of those guys who tells you he’d play for free, and you believe him.

McDonald sees an even greater reward for his recent big-play performances. The coaches are starting to slacken his reins a bit.

“I’m fortunate that the coaches have allowed me to do a lot more things,” he said. “They’re allowing me to drop back and run to the ball and that’s responsible for my high productivity.”

Memo to Cardinal coaching staff:

Tim McDonald doesn’t mind checking the secondary on every play to “make sure we’re all on the right page at the right time.”

He promises to try his darndest to “secure my position first before I help someone else.”

After that, though, it’s probably best to just let him run amok.