PRO FOOTBALL REPORT WEEKDAY UPDATE : AROUND THE LEAGUE : Saints Get Walsh for Draft Choices

Steve Walsh will get a new start--probably as starting quarterback for the New Orleans Saints.

The Saints, with only four touchdowns this season, Tuesday traded three high draft picks to Dallas for Walsh, who was destined to serve as Troy Aikman’s backup with the Cowboys.

“The ties are broken now,” Walsh said. “Things just didn’t work out for me at Dallas.”

Things seem brighter for him in New Orleans, where John Fourcade has faltered, Bobby Hebert is holding out and Tommy Kramer was cut to make room for Walsh.

The Saints gave Dallas their Nos. 1 and 3 choices in 1991 and a No. 2 pick in 1992. Cowboy owner Jerry Jones said the No. 2 pick could be upgraded to a No. 1, depending on how well Walsh plays.

“I think he’s a winner, but time will tell,” said Jim Finks, the Saints’ president and general manager.

Said Saint Coach Jim Mora: “He’s a good young player. He proved it in college. He was one of the top players in the country coming out of college.

“We haven’t gotten the play at quarterback we’d like, and yet it’s been getting better. We saw an opportunity to go out and get a good young quarterback and we did it.”

Walsh doesn’t come to New Orleans without experience. He started nearly one-third of last season’s games for the Cowboys when Aikman was injured, and led the Cowboys to their only victory at Washington.

Ahead of Walsh, at least for now, is Fourcade, the lowest-rated quarterback in the NFL. The third-string quarterback is rookie Mike Buck from Maine.

“I hope he doesn’t think he’s just going to come in and get the job, because I have something to say about that,” Fourcade said.

Walsh completed 110 of 219 passes for 1,371 yards last season. He threw five touchdown passes and nine interceptions. This season, Walsh was four of nine for 40 yards.

“Basically, Steve Walsh is coming in here with just his college statistics,” Fourcade said. “Sure, he won a national championship, but this isn’t college and these aren’t the Miami Hurricanes.”

The Cowboys and Saints play in New Orleans on Dec. 3.

“That should be fun,” Walsh said.

Redskins Lose Rypien 6-8 Weeks

Washington Redskin quarterback Mark Rypien will be out six to eight weeks after doctors found extensive damage to the three main ligaments in his left knee during surgery Tuesday.

The surgery revealed greater damage than the team thought Rypien sustained when a Dallas Cowboy defender rolled into him on Sunday as Rypien planted his feet to deliver a pass, said Dr. Charles Jackson, the team physician.

Third-year player Stan Humphries, who has never started an NFL game, will start this Sunday against the Phoenix Cardinals. Journeyman Gary Hogeboom, released during the exhibition season by Phoenix, was signed as a backup.

The earliest Rypien could return would be mid-November, after the Redskins complete a stretch in which they play the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles--the top NFC East competitors--four times in five weeks.

Victor Kiam, owner of the New England Patriots, denied making a derogatory remark about a female reporter who had accused several team members of sexual harassment.

Several newspapers reported that Kiam made the remark about Lisa Olson of the Boston Herald while both were in the Patriots’ locker room after Cincinnati’s 41-7 victory Sunday.

“I did indicate that the young lady was aggressive,” Kiam told reporters covering a meeting of NFL owners, “but . . . I was standing next to the president of a religious institution and I certainly wouldn’t use those words in front of a religious man like that.”

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue declined comment.

In one of the first labor agreements since the 1987 strike, a new “practice squad” of from three to five players was approved by by NFL owners as a replacement for last year’s reserve squad.

The agreement, the result of the resolution of a suit filed by eight players, allows each team to keep from three to five inactive players at a salary of $3,000 a week. Teams can spend a maximum of $325,000 a year on practice squads.

The reserve squads were abolished earlier this year after the suit, which noted that players on the reserve squads received only $1,000 a week, compared to the $50,000 minimum for an active player, and had no freedom of movement.

Under the new plan, any team will be able to sign a practice player from another squad at full salary.

The agreement got 23 votes, two more than needed under NFL by-laws, with Tampa Bay and Cincinnati voting against it. Three teams abstained.

Tagliabue said the major objections were that in some way, some teams would benefit more than others.

“Once that was resolved, just about everyone felt it should be done,” Tagliabue said.

Tagliabue stressed that the agreement was “just the resolution of a suit” and not necessarily a breakthrough in collective bargaining. The NFL has been without a labor contract since the end of the 24-day strike three years ago.