Bernstine Is a Nice Problem for His Coaches

Hollywood could do it.

Makeup could come up with all the different faces, and costuming could provide all the different numbers, and production could find all the different camera angles.

Suddenly, Rod Bernstine would be all over the field for the Chargers, a one-man highlight film.

Now, it only seems as if he is all over the field.

In reality, he can only be in one place at a time. Reality is a wet blanket. Reality is a dilemma.

“But,” said Ted Tollner, the Chargers’ assistant head coach, “it’s a dilemma that’s a good one.”

It is a good one because Bernstine is a good one. The idea is to find a way to place the football in his possession, be it by pass, handoff or courier. Going through a Sunday afternoon without the football in Bernstine’s hands is like going through a shopping mall without a credit card. You come up empty.

Did you catch this guy’s act against the Rams?

On one play, on which he ran 67 yards for a touchdown, he looked like RenaldNehemiah going over a pile at the line of scrimmage, and Gale Sayers racing through the secondary. On another, from the Ram one-yard-line, he took flight from about the four, a la the departed Gary Anderson, and soared into the end zone.

You watch this, and you say, “Wait a minute, what’s with this guy? He’s wearing No. 82. Backs don’t wear No. 82.”

No, not normally. But Bernstine came to the Chargers as a tight end drafted in the first round out of Texas A&M.; This was in 1987, nearing the end of the Kellen Winslow era, and Bernstine was touted as the newest in the line of tight ends Winslow made both popular and productive.

What no one realized at the time, though, was that “Winslow-style” was going to become passe in the ever-continuing evolution of NFL tight ends. People playing the true tight end position, which is to say next to one of the tackles, would henceforth be bruising blockers such as the Chargers’ Arthur Cox.

Consequently, something called the H-back was born. This took a big guy with speed and turned him loose from a slot outside the congestion near the middle of the line of scrimmage. In truth, this was the position Winslow played all along. HE was the first H-back, though no one knew it at the time.

Bernstine thus played some traditional tight end and some revolutionary H-back and some wide receiver as well. What’s more, they dabbled with him as a ball carrier, though not in the traditional set. He caught some eyes last year, however, when he carried 15 times for an average of 9.1 yards a carry before a sprained knee cut him off after five games.

When he reported to camp this summer, he was a little bit confused as to what he was.

“It was a little bit different,” he said, “knowing which meetings I should be at.”

You see, running backs meet with Bobby Jackson, and tight ends meet with Ed White, and wide receivers meet with Charlie Joiner. Bernstine was afraid he would show up at one and be fined for missing the other two.

“Running back is our No. 1 priority with him,” Tollner said. “We move him out of the backfield in different personnel groups, but he’s proven he can play all those spots. He gives us a lot of flexibility in our game plans.”

For the moment, then, Bernstine is a running back with a strange number, a flashback to those grainy black-and-white film clips with Otto Graham wearing No. 60.

But let’s not pigeonhole the guy too soon.”I can line up anywhere but quarterback, center, tackle and guard,” he said. “Other than the quarterback, I have to be the smartest guy on the field.”

Think about it. He is a little like a diplomat who has to learn five languages because he doesn’t know where he is going to be posted next.

It would then figure that he has to wheel his playbooks around UCSD’s campus in a shopping cart.

No?

“I only have one playbook,” he said, “but it’s large.”Maybe that was why he showed up for lunch on a motor scooter and his teammates all arrived either on foot or on bicycles. They should probably give him a golf cart, like some of the coaches have. Actually, if he keeps playing like he has, they’ll be sending a limousine.

Meanwhile, opponents must now be concerning themselves with what the Chargers do in relation to where Bernstine is doing it. San Francisco won’t worry so much in tonight’s exhibition exercises, but you can bet regular season foes are taking note.

For his part, given his druthers, Bernstine knows where he would prefer to be aligned.

“I still say tight end,” he said, then paused. “Old style.”

That Kellen Winslow’s style of playing tight end is now “old style” tells you how fast time flies in the NFL. Rod Bernstine will likely have to settle for being the new-style attacker he has become. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a good dilemma.