Woeful Jets Put Walton in the Line of Fire : Charger Opponent: With team at 3-9, cries of ‘Joe must go’ have gotten louder. His reply: ‘I’m holding up fine.’

The biography of Joe Walton in the New York Jets’ media guide is obsolete.

It begins with the words, “Joe Walton, the only winning coach in Jets’ history with a career record of 49-45-1 . . . “

The 3-9 disaster that has hit the Jets this season has pushed Walton under .500. Not only that, it has subjected him to heavy fire. Or to phrase it more accurately, it has rekindled the fire after a one-season respite.

Two years ago, the Jets, seemingly torn apart by the player strike, lost their last four games and finished 6-9. Toward the end of the season, the fans at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., began shouting, “Joe must go.”

Last year, the chant died down, but now it’s louder than ever. It was even heard last Sunday after a touchdown that boosted the Jets’ lead over the Atlanta Falcons to 17-0 en route to a 27-7 victory.

So many Jet fans are fed up that a staggering total of 36,462 ticket-holders stayed away from the Falcon game. The game was a sellout--the Jets are sold out for the season--yet the crowd of 40,429 was only slightly more than half the ticket sale. It was the second smallest crowd since the Jets moved to Giants Stadium in 1984.

Obviously, Walton has reason to be concerned. But if he is, he is doing a good job of disguising his feelings. Of course, it helps to have a contract that runs through 1991, especially when one of Walton’s biggest boosters is board Chairman Leon Hess.

With this big plus going for him, Walton, who will be 54 on Dec. 15, managed to shrug off rumors of his impending ouster when he talked to the San Diego media by telephone before leading the Jets to town for Sunday’s game against the Chargers at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Asked how he was taking the heat, Walton said, “I’m holding up fine. I just continue to focus on the game each week and to teach our young players. That’s all you can do. You can’t worry about things you can’t control. I just concentrate on my own work ethic.”

According to reports out of New York, the Jets’ key problem is that they don’t have a general manager.

Mike Hickey, the director of player personnel, coordinates the draft. Walton also has input, but club President Steve Gutman makes the final decisions, and he is an accountant by trade. The result has been a series of bad drafts in the ‘80s.

In the current issue of Pro Football Weekly, it was suggested that Walton might be kicked upstairs to the general manager’s office and give up coaching. The rationale behind this speculation was that such a move “would make a potentially unpleasant situation more palatable.”

When Walton was asked about it, he laughed.

“That’s news to me,” he said. “It’s a brand new rumor. I just want to focus on this team and our last four games. That’s taking all my time right now.”

When the rumor was relayed to Paul Needell, who covers the Jets for the New York Daily News, Needell said, “That’s hard to believe. It would be a public relations disaster.”

The inevitable inference to be drawn from this comment is that Walton is so unpopular that to promote him to general manager would only compound the team’s troubles.

Actually, Walton probably wouldn’t be the Jets’ first choice for a general manager anyway. They couldn’t help but be interested in Bobby Beathard, who is now with NBC after leaving the Washington Redskins last summer. Also, they might try to lure Dick Steinberg away from the New England Patriots, with whom he has built a good reputation as director of player development.

If the Jets finally did hire a football man to run their personnel operation, Walton probably would be out despite his good standing with owner Hess. Chances are that Beathard or Steinberg--or whoever--would want to bring in his own man.

Beathard came up with a rumor of his own on NBC’s pregame show last Sunday, saying that Coach Buddy Ryan of the Philadelphia Eagles had called friends in New York to inquire about Walton’s job.

Queried about this, Gutman said, “I have nothing to say. There’s no point speculating.”

Hess had an even shorter answer, saying, “I have no comment on anything.”

This is Walton’s seventh season as the Jets’ coach--he was their offensive coordinator for two seasons before that--and he has taken them to the playoffs only in 1985 and 1986. Each time, they finished second in the AFC East with records of 11-5 and 10-6.

Walton’s slide began after the strike of 1987, when he made an unfortunate remark about the players who had walked out. He called them “pea-brains who won’t amount to anything after football.”

At that point, several players said they would no longer play for Walton. Since then, he has softened his approach and has become more of a player’s coach, but he still isn’t overly popular with his troops.

“He isn’t a Mr. Personality like Mike Ditka (Chicago Bears coach) or Buddy Ryan,” Needell said. “Some of the younger players fear him, and some of the older ones probably don’t respect him.”

Backup safety Lester Lyles, the only member of the Chargers who played under Walton, was the Jets’ second-round draft choice in 1985 and started for them in 1986 but then fell out of favor. He was cut after three seasons. He spent last season with the Phoenix Cardinals and signed with the Chargers last spring as a Plan B free agent.

Asked about his impression of Walton, Lyles said, “I don’t have no impression of him. I’m silent on that.”

Asked about the Jets in general, he said, “They’ve got a good squad, but they just haven’t put it together. There may be internal things involved.”

Lyles remembered the “Joe must go” campaign, but said, “That didn’t affect us. What did affect us was the strike. It pulled us apart. A lot of high-paid guys went across the (picket) line, and that created resentment. When there’s tension between players as far as money is concerned, something is bound to happen.”

Of his own descent from starting status to the waiver wire, Lyles said, “I got hurt my third year, which was the strike year, and I played in only four games that year. Mostly, though, it was the attitude at the time of the strike that hurt me.”

Walton took a roasting from another of his former players, defensive tackle Joe Klecko, in a book, “Nose to Nose,” co-authored by Klecko and former Jet center Joe Fields. Klecko accused Walton of having a double standard for Mark Gastineau, the Jets’ controversial former defensive end.

“Joe (Walton) told the team to accept Gastineau and his ways because we needed him to win,” Klecko wrote. “But he also told us to accept Gastineau when he wasn’t producing and the team still won. Mark had a lot of people buffaloed.”

Klecko recalled the time Walton threatened to suspend Gastineau for missing a meeting, but backed down.

“Joe got me and Fields and Marty Lyons together,” Klecko wrote. “We were the team leaders, and he told us, ‘I really think Mark would have committed suicide if I left him home. He broke down and cried like a baby in front of me.’

“Mark was such a good liar. He always had Joe baffled. He lied like that all along.”

Asked if he had read the book by Klecko and Fields, Walton said, “No, I haven’t read it, and I don’t plan on reading it.”

Through it all, Walton has maintained a sense of humor that is often obscured by the Jets’ lack of success.

Shortly after the stock market’s worst day since the crash of 1929, a reporter from the Financial News Network turned up at one of Walton’s press conferences. When he asked a question, Walton said, “Don’t you have enough trouble on Wall Street?”

Walton owns the distinction of being part of the first father-son combination in the NFL’s 70-year history. He played tight end for the Redskins from 1957 through 1960 and for the New York Giants from 1961 through 1963, catching 178 passes. His late father, Frank, played guard for Redskins (then in Boston) in 1934 and, after taking time out to coach, in 1944 and 1945. Both graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I’m very proud of that,” Walton said this week. “All the things I have and all the things my family has are due to the NFL. Without the NFL and without football, I don’t know where I’d be.”

There might even be a third-generation Walton in the NFL some day. Joe’s son, Joe Jr., is an outstanding quarterback prospect at East Islip (N.Y.) High School.

Looking ahead to Sunday’s game, Walton didn’t let the Chargers’ 4-8 record deter him from handing out the customary praise to a team’s next opponent.

“They’re playing well,” Walton said of the Chargers. “They’ve got one hell of a defense, and one of the biggest offensive lines I’ve seen in a long time. They’re just a hair away from being a hell of a football team.”

And the Jets, who are just one game worse than the Chargers?

“We’ve got a hell of a long way to go,” Walton said. “There’s a lot of work to do here.”