Dickerson Hasn’t Learned His Lesson

All right, Miss K, take an open letter to Eric Dickerson, Mr. Wonderful, the football player. Slug it non-confidential, impersonal, may be duplicated and to be continued. Just address it to Malibu. They’ll know where he is.

“Dear Eric,

“You run nice with a football, Eric. Nice cuts, high-stepping action, acceleration, power. Only a few guys in history could knife through a defense the way you can. It’s an art form. I particularly like the fact you do it wearing eyeglasses. Us myopia types have to stick together, if you’ll pardon the grammar. I wish you’d come along 40 years earlier, because in the old neighborhood if you wore glasses they’d never let you get your hands on the football.

“But, Eric, running nice with the football, artistic as it is, what good does it do? Does it win games?

“More important, does it get you in the Super Bowl? Let me put it to you as delicately as I can: The object of the game is to get in the Super Bowl, right? And, how do you get to the Super Bowl? With Galloping Ghosts? With Mr. Outsides and Mr. Insides? With guys whose nickname is Choo Choo? Or even the Gipper?

“Nah! That’s the college game, Eric. In the pros, you win games with guys named Broadway Joe, Slingin’ Sammy, Frantic Francis, Automatic Otto. Runners don’t make a difference in the pros. Passers do.

“How else do you explain the L.A. Raiders, with not one but two Heisman Trophy winners in the same backfield? Did they make the Super Bowl? No way. No quarterback.

“Quarterbacks get you in the Super Bowl, Eric, not running backs. John Elway gets you in Super Bowls. Joe Montana. Jim Plunkett. Jim McMahon. Roger Staubach. Terry Bradshaw.

“They had a Super Bowl in San Francisco a few years ago between San Francisco and Miami. The quarterbacks were Dan Marino and Joe Montana. Care to try to tell me who the running backs were? Well, Roger Craig was just coming up. He was OK but the Gipper he was not. Miami had someone named Tony Nathan. No one ever called him the Galloping Ghost.

“Two years ago, Washington played Denver in the Super Bowl. Want to recall who the running backs were for either team? How much time do you want? The quarterbacks were John Elway and Doug Williams.

“It’s been a long time since a flashy runner put his team in a Super Bowl. I’m not sure one ever did. O.J. Simpson never got in one. Neither did Earl Campbell. If those guys couldn’t do it, I’m not sure anyone could.

“You get in Super Bowls with Joe Namath, John Unitas, Ken Stabler, Fran Tarkenton, Bart Starr, Staubach and Bradshaw. If you don’t have one of those, all the swivel hips in the world can’t get you to Super Sunday.

“You’re window-dressing, Eric. Face it. You sell tickets, make copy, tickle the imagination. You just don’t win championships. You keep the defenses honest--so the quarterback can figure some way to really beat them and win the title.

“My views on this are well known. They stem from a day in the Rams’ locker room as I was talking to the one-and-only Deacon Jones, the premier pass rusher of all time. I was asking Deacon about the wisdom of recklessly charging the passer and leaving potential lanes open for a broken-field runner. Peeling his jersey off, Deacon stopped, stared. ‘We’ll never get beat by the run!’ he said scornfully. ‘We can stop the run any time we want to. It’s the pass that beats you in this game.’

“Eric, I see by the public prints where you are playing the old bargaining game again, beginning to try to negotiate your way out of Indianapolis.

“I think this is where I came in. I mean, I’ve seen this act before. That’s how you negotiated your way into Indianapolis in the first place.

“Now, you’re trying to pick your way through a broken field to Washington or New York.

“Well, lots of luck, Eric. It worked once. As I recall the sequence of events, we had lunch one day with Ken Norton acting as your agent when you were trying to renegotiate your contract with the Rams. You felt you were grossly underpaid, and I agreed with you and said so in a column. The Rams even agreed and upped your take by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“That didn’t content you long and, as I recall it, you began to be quoted as doubting you could do your best unless the Rams upped the agreement again, the most un-Merriwellian quotes you will ever want to hear. OK, so it was just good old American horse trading.

“But, the Rams threw in. You bad-mouthed them pretty good. So, they made a deal. They ended up with Aaron Cox, Fred Strickland, Greg Bell, Cleveland Gary, Gaston Green, Frank Stams, Darryl Henley and Bill Hawkins. And a bad press. Buffalo got Cornelius Bennett (linebackers get you in a Super Bowl, too). You didn’t come cheap.

“The L.A. press panned the Rams unmercifully for letting you go. But, if you couldn’t put them in a Super Bowl when you were happy, how were you going to do it in a pout?

“Now, you say your line at Indianapolis is not up to your standards. They’re going to get you killed or maimed. You want out or you quit.

“Ah, Eric! The reality is, if a team has the quarterback, almost any journeyman runner will do. If you’ve got Joe Montana, a Tom Rathman is good enough. If you don’t have Joe Montana, or Joe Namath, not even an Eric Dickerson is good enough.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Eric, is, you’re running out of places to go and people to blame. If you keep traveling from team to team, you’re only going to prove my point: Super runners are like brains in a chorus girl. They’re nice. But they’re not necessary.”