RAMS ’90 : Warner Facing New Challenge : Rams Hope Ex-Seahawk Will Show Glimpses of His Glory Days

Curt Warner knows what it is to see a hole close in front of him. He knows what it is to see his options diminish, and then to make a slashing cut toward daylight.

“Football has a lot of that, where you have to react,” the 29-year-old running back said after a day of workouts at Rams Park, his legs soothed by a post-practice soaking. “You’re always playing a guessing game: What if this happens? What it that happens? This game is not an exact game.”

This inexact game has issued its challenge to Warner, and this time the opposition is not a lineman nor a linebacker bent on dragging him down.

This time the challenge is to prove he can still excel, after the pounding of seven pro seasons, two knee surgeries and three ankle operations.

Warner rushed for 6,705 yards and 55 touchdowns in seven years with the Seattle Seahawks, running for 1,000 yards four times and starting three Pro Bowls.

But when he finished with only 631 yards last season, his average per carry dipping to 3.3 yards, the fans in the Kingdome who once had cheered him wildly began to boo almost as soon as he touched the ball.

Until last year, Warner expected to retire in Seattle with a fanfare.

“I think we all dream of a Steve Largent-type farewell, President Bush sending a telegram or something like that,” Warner said. “I think that every kid’s dream is to go out at the top of his level, and when you finish to have everyone say goodby and thank you. That’s like a fairy tale, I think, to a degree. Some guys get it, but the majority of guys, they don’t go out that way.”

Warner is another who didn’t. After the season ended, the Seahawks left him unprotected, allowing the Rams to sign him to a $700,000 contract March 30 as a Plan B free agent.

Warner had seen the hole close up in front of him. He planted his foot, and he jumped to the Rams. He has made his move, but the play is still unfolding.

“You get prepared, you run up there, run the route or throw the ball to the best of your ability,” Warner said. “You make the right read and then you react, and go from there.”

The Rams made it clear that Warner was meant to play a prominent role, trading Greg Bell to the Raiders, even though Bell led the league in scoring in 1988 and ran for more than 1,000 yards in each of the past two seasons.

Warner has spent the preseason listed as the starter, and Cleveland Gary has been out with a sore lower back. But it is Gaston Green who has gotten the bulk of the carries and the yardage, with Warner in a carefully designed role that protects him from the scrutiny of a curious public.

Warner carried five times for 12 yards against Kansas City, nine times for 20 against San Diego, eight times for 24 against Phoenix and four times for nine yards against Washington. Green ran for 115 yards in the opener, 71 yards and three touchdowns the second week, 21 yards in the third week and 10 yards in the fourth.

“The other night, it didn’t go too well,” Warner said after the second of the Rams’ exhibition games. “I really don’t know. I think it’s too early to call, too early to make any kind of assesment. I couldn’t (make an assessment) now. I wouldn’t want to try it.”

To onlookers, it has been an uncertain debut, but Ram Coach John Robinson say he feels “very good” about Warner, and that Warner is ready to play.

“I don’t think a veteran back, a proven one, has to show anything,” Robinson said. “You have to decide if you think he’s a proven back, or a guy trying to make the team. To us, he’s a proven veteran. We’re bringing him along slowly, not exposing him to injury.”

The state of Warner’s legs and ability remains unclear, although the grass of Anaheim Stadium should be easier on his knees than the Kingdome’s artificial turf. Still, there is little about his few carries, which went for an average of 2.5 yards the four exhibitions, to indicate that he is certain to become another in the Rams’ line of 1,000-yard rushers.

“If you’re a singing coach, you judge someone not by how the audience responds but by how they sound,” Robinson said. “I think he’s singing good.”

Warner says he is progressing, but he does not think bullheadedly that he is certain to succeed.

“You can’t just think positive things all the time,” he said. “There are negative things that go on, bad breaks too. It has crossed my mind whether or not (the Seahawks) were right. There have been days when I say, ‘Maybe they were right,’ and there have been good days when I say, ‘Maybe they were not right,’ ”

Warner knows what it is to come back. So far, he always has.

He did not start with the greatest of advantages, born in a coal-mining town in West Virginia, and raised by his grandparents because his parents were not close. But Warner grew into a strong and punishing back for Penn State, leaving Wyoming, W.Va., and his mountain accent behind to become an All-American and a cum laude graduate.

A first-round draft pick from Penn State in 1983, he was chosen by the Seahawks behind only John Elway and Eric Dickerson. In his first season, he ran for 1,449 yards and was named the NFL Rookie of the Year.

A brilliant career was begun, only to be interrupted. In the first game of his second season, Warner took a pitch on a sweep. As he planted his right foot to turn upfield, his knee buckled. He crumpled to the field, untouched and in pain, having suffered an injury that would require reconstructive surgery and a year of rehabilitation--”the one awful year of my life,” Warner has called it.

His knee repaired with a ligament from his hamstring, Warner came back in 1985 and ran for 1,094 yards. The next year, he ran for 1,481, a Seahawk record.

He seemed as good as he ever was.

“You’re never sure,” Warner said. “You’re never going to be the same. Joe Paterno used to tell us that: You never stay the same. You always get better or get worse. Even if I hadn’t gotten hurt, I don’t think I’d be the same. I think I’d be different in some way.”

Now, he is once again engaged in a struggle to come back.

“Being down, and coming back with everybody looking at you, to a degree it’s sort of that way,” Warner said. “There are some similarities. The knee was a little tougher. At least I’m running now, out there practicing.”

His fall from favor came rapidly last year in Seattle. After several operations to remove bone chips in his ankle in years before, Warner had an arthroscopic surgery performed on his right knee before last season.

“It looks bad on paper, doesn’t it?” Warner said laughing at all his operations. “If I give you a list, you might say, ‘Oh, this guy can’t play.’ ”

The Seahawks stumbled to a 7-9 record.

“I think there are a lot of variables,” he said. “Football’s a team game. You can’t put it on one individual. . . . I don’t want to say I was a scapegoat. Let’s wait and see how the others do. What happened to me can happen to anybody if you don’t have a great offensive line and a great scheme. I don’t care who you are, if you don’t have the blocking . . . “

Blocking is something Warner figures to have with the Rams.

“They’re quick, they’re agile. They take pride in what they’re doing. I’m glad to have the opportunity to run behind these guys, I really am.”

He expects it to be a less painful season, if not a better one, than last.

Asked to rate his 1989 season, Warner laughed.

“Probably a ‘D’,” he said. “It wasn’t a good year.”

Every athlete knows, at least in theory, that the cheering will stop. They do not always realize it can change to antagonism.

“It already has turned to boos,” Warner said. “It was different. All we want to hear are cheers, but it doesn’t always go that way. What can you do? You can’t turn around and say, ‘What are you doing?’ You can’t do that.”

The fans abandoned him, and the front office lost its faith in him.

“They both hurt,” Warner said.

The break with a team, even after seven seasons, can be sharp and clean.

“It’s thank you for being here and see you later,” Warner said. “For the most part, you probably don’t even hear from those guys again.

“I have some friends--players, ex-players. I don’t call the front office to see how things are going, no.

“There’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Sure, you’re disappointed. But you can’t sit here and dwell on it. You have to move on from there. I think things have a way of working out. I’m a believer in that. The good Lord always has a purpose. Sometimes you may not like it, sometimes you may not agree with it, but He has a purpose.”

A player has to find some way of accepting the boos and criticism, or ignoring them.

“When everybody is saying you’re lousy, you can’t say, ‘I’m that bad,’ then get into a depression,” Warner said. “Then you don’t want to play anymore, and you’re not doing anything anymore because of what everybody else is saying. You’ve got to get a balance and go from there.

“You have to come to the realization that you’re not as good as you think you are, and you’re not as bad as everyone makes you out to be. I know I’m not. People say, ‘He’s good, and has all this ability.’ I don’t think so. I think you’re always striving to get better. I go out and try to make progress. I think I am making progress, but I’m still a long ways from being good. That’s the attitude you have to take. You’re never good.”

If he is good again, if he carries a big share of the Rams’ running game this season, will he have proved something?

“There could be a vengeance factor, there could be a lot things,” Warner said. “What I want to do is get back out and play, and play well and be comfortable. That’s one thing I want to try to accomplish, is to know that I feel as good as I’ve felt in a long time. That I’m making the right decisions--the right run decisions, making the right moves I should be, that my speed is there and I’m doing the things I want to do, that I think are the right things. I think I’m getting there. I think I’m a long way from getting to the point where I can say, You’re playing OK,’ ”

There is the possibility that OK will not be enough, and that he will find himself playing a support role for Gary or Green, or sharing time with both.

Warner says he would accept a back-up role.

“Second? Yeah, if that is the way they saw it, I’d watch. What am I going to do? I can’t do anything about it. It would bother me, my competitive side would bother me. At the same time, there’s a certain role you have to adjust to. I would want to play, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to sit over there watching.

“At the same time, I’d have to just go on. People don’t like to think about it, but it’s there, it’s very evident. There is some good competition here. Gaston is having a great preseason. I’m not going to get into a shouting-match situation here and gripe about it. . . . You should tell the truth, and the truth is I’d like to play. I’m here to play, but there’s a chance I might not play. I have to be realistic and honest enough with myself to accept that.

“The only thing I try to do is try to relax so I can play the way I’m capable of playing. If that’s good enough, I’ll be playing. If it isn’t, I won’t be playing. I don’t have any regrets. I’ve had a good career. I played some good football and had a chance to do something only a few people get to do, play in the National Football League. I came from a small coal-mining town in West Virginia and grew up in a lower-middle class home--no, it was lower class, it wasn’t even lower-middle class. To get as far as I’ve gotten today, I shouldn’t have any complaints at all. I should be very happy to have had a chance to play and have success and go from there.

“Then there is the competitive side of you that always wants to go out there and meet the challenge, go out and be as good as he can possibly be. You’re always striving to take it one step further.”

One step further. Another yard, or another thousand of them.