Dr. Davis Creates a Tight End : Raiders: Owner takes running back Horton, adds weight, stirs with coaching and, presto, has somebody to take pressure off wide receivers.

Four years after being cut loose in Kansas City, a first-round bust if ever there was one, Ethan Horton is back, bigger than ever.

You wouldn’t recognize him. On the long return route from Missouri to the Los Angeles Raiders, Horton took quite a few road-side hits. He also underwent a total physical transformation, the result of some fancy football surgery performed by Al Davis, the always-tinkering Raiders’ owner and noted Dr. Frankenstein.

Horton entered the league as the 15th pick of the 1985 draft, a star running back from the University of North Carolina. He left the Kansas City Chiefs a year later, branded a colossal mistake. When Horton was released in training camp, 1986, no other NFL team would sign him.

In 1989, Horton showed up on the Raider doorstep as nothing more than an interesting science project. Today, he’s the team’s starting tight end.

In between, Horton has endured enough rejection to wonder how he ever made it this far. He was out of football for the entire 1986 and 1988 seasons. The Raiders gave up on him twice before he stuck.

The Raiders first tried him as a running back in 1987, but released him after eight games. They called him back for a tryout as a slotback the following summer, but cut him again.

After each rejection, Horton returned to the University of North Carolina to counsel student-athletes on the importance of staying in school. There are no sure things in sports, he preached. He was living proof.

“The experience that I had (to offer) was myself,” he said.

After his second release from the Raiders in 1988, Horton did a quick reality check. He figured it was time to move on.

“I was going back and forth, back and forth,” Horton remembered. “I knew I was starting to get older, and I couldn’t keep chasing something that wasn’t really there. It was about time for me to start looking in other directions.”

Then he got the phone call that changed his life. It was Davis, with a great idea. Horton, who was a tall running back to begin with at 6-feet-4, would check into a weight room for a few months, load up on pasta and emerge a tight end. Davis told him to think it over.

Horton couldn’t stand another rejection, but said he also couldn’t reject another challenge.

“I was not a quitter,” Horton said. “I never had been and never want to be.”

That Davis called personally was enough to persuade Horton to give it one more chance.

Before the ’89 season, he worked out with noted strength coach Marv Marinovich and added about 15 pounds. A 225-pound running back coming out of college, Horton bulked up to a solid 240.

Davis then handed Horton over to Terry Robiskie, who coaches the tight ends.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Robiskie said. “(Davis) just made up in his mind that the kid could play tight end. He looked me in the eye one day and said ‘He can play tight end. Let’s do it.’ ”

Robiskie found Horton to be likable and resilient.

“He loves the game and loves to work,” Robiskie said. “He’s been cut, knocked down, picked up. The guy refuses to stay down. He’s had a lot of reasons to quit, but he continues to fight and come back.”

Last year, in a backup role to Mike Dyal, Horton played in 16 games and caught four passes. When Dyal was put on injured reserve earlier this season with a hamstring pull, Horton took over.

Through seven games, he is the team’s third-leading receiver with nine catches for 120 yards. With opponents concentrating more on the Raider wide receivers, Mervyn Fernandez and Willie Gault, the Raiders have tried to take more advantage of Horton in recent weeks.

Horton is trying to take advantage of an opportunity he believed he would never get again.

“The guy was a No. 1 draft choice in this league,” Coach Art Shell said. “You’ve got to feel like he’s got the ability to play somewhere.”

That’s what Horton figured. He was recruited to North Carolina as a quarterback before being switched to tailback. Change was nothing new to him. Horton said he doesn’t miss any of the glamour that came his way in college, when he was a second-team All-American.

“I get just as much satisfaction firing off the ball and taking a guy and driving him off the ball 15 yards as taking a ball from a quarterback and scoring a 50-yard touchdown,” he said. “To me, the block is just as important, because it’s you against the guy in front of you. It’s the individual battle.”

Every comeback has its rewards. On Nov. 4, Horton returns to Kansas City as a Raider for a key divisional showdown with the Chiefs. There will be emotions.

“I just feel like they gave up on me,” he said of the Chiefs.

“I still know a lot of the guys on the team. I want to play well in front of them and in front of the people in Kansas City because they didn’t give me a fair deal there, and I want to show those guys that I can play. It gives me a little more incentive.”

Ethan Horton is back.