STAYING SHARP AFTER THE UNKINDEST CUT : Charger Sub Is Rolling Along

Henry Rolling is such a good football player that you can’t help but wonder why the Chargers were lucky enough to find him on the NFL ash heap.

Rolling cost the Chargers nothing, yet he has emerged as a first-class linebacker in the absence of injured Billy Ray Smith. He has played so well that Charger General Manager Bobby Beathard said the other day, “He’s probably at the same level as Billy Ray right now.”

It was a year ago this week that Rolling, 25, who has an electrical engineering degree from Nevada-Reno, found himself out of work after 2 1/2 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He didn’t land another job until April, when he signed a two-year contract with the Chargers, but his play in the five weeks since Smith went on injured reserve has been a revelation.

Now it’s payback time. When the Chargers meet the Buccaneers on Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, Rolling will start at left outside linebacker against the team that released him.

“It will give me a little added incentive,” he said. “But mainly, I want to prove to the NFL that I can play in this league.”

Rolling’s latter statement notwithstanding, he already has made it known that he belongs. His credits include 29 tackles, two sacks and the play of his life, an interception and 67-yard return against the Cleveland Browns.

How did a player of this caliber become available to the Chargers? In fact, to every club in the NFL?

Actually, the Henry Rolling story is similar to countless others around the league. It’s safe to say that every team has at least one gem who was culled from the discard pile.

Rolling was not exactly highly regarded in the first place--he was drafted by the Buccaneers in the fifth round, the 135th player chosen. “Teams shied away from him because he weighed only about 218,” Beathard said.

Then came the injuries. After joining the Bucs, Rolling was plagued by hamstring problems in both legs. He spent the entire 1987 season on injured reserve and was periodically ailing until he was cut after the seventh game last year.

Beathard reasoned that the Buccaneers gave up on Rolling for that reason alone.

“As I understand it, they felt he couldn’t stay healthy,” Beathard said. “When we took him here, since he had a history of hamstring injuries, we wanted him as a precautionary measure to spend time with our trainer (Keoki Kamau) in the off-season.

“Since then, he has had one twinge in the Cleveland game, but otherwise he has been fine. And his play has been terrific. The coaches are really excited about him.”

Tampa Bay Coach Ray Perkins recalled Rolling’s physical troubles: “I always thought Henry had Pro Bowl ability. I still do. It might have been the humidity down here, or something, but he continually had pulled hamstrings. Possibly he wasn’t happy here. Or he might not have liked me. I don’t know.

“Now he’s playing pretty well for (the Chargers), and all he’s going to do is get better and better. He’s an excellent person, and we would have liked to keep him, but every time we turned around he had a pulled hamstring.”

Said Rolling: “When I first got there, I was a little homesick. Well, maybe not homesick, but being so far away from home was hard for me.

“My hamstring injuries were probably a factor. I had never been hurt before, and my instinct told me to stop. But I was trying to make the club, so I kept going and going, and the injury kept recurring. Since then, it’s never been a problem. I don’t know if it was mental or what.”

As for Perkins, Rolling said, “I respected him, and I liked him. We had a good relationship.”

Rolling played on all of the Buccaneers’ special teams, but seldom appeared as a linebacker and never started a game.

“I would be in for one series and then come out,” he said. “I might play three or four series a game. I never got into the flow of the game, and I’m the kind of player who has to get on a roll.

“When they released me, it was a shock. I always wondered how other guys felt when they were cut, and how I’d handle it. As it turned out, I was upset for about five minutes.”

Rolling went home to Las Vegas, kept himself in shape and waited for the telephone to ring. He received plenty of calls, but none led to employment, so he returned to Nevada-Reno to expand his horizons.

Now, Rolling says he is a term paper away from a degree in economics--and close to a new business venture.

“We have a new chess game coming out,” he said. “It’s doubles chess. A lot of people don’t know that chess started out as a four-man game. It’s amazing. The moves you can make are endless.

“My partner, Rich Gillespie of San Jose, invented the game, and it’s ready to go. We tried to sell it to a big company, but they wanted 97%. That was ridiculous, so we’re trying to market it ourselves.”

Once the 1989 season ended, Rolling’s phone got busy again.

“I was contacted by Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, the Rams and San Francisco,” he said. “Then, finally, the Chargers called. They were the last team I talked to.

“Bobby Beathard made the difference. I had known him from playing in the East-West Shrine Game when he was with Washington. He told me then that I was going to be the Redskins’ next pick if Tampa Bay hadn’t taken me. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a real pro.”

Rolling thinks he knows why he wasn’t in great demand after being cut by the Buccaneers.

“Coming from Tampa, you have a sort of stigma on you,” he said. “People say, ‘If he can’t make it with that club, what’s wrong with him?’ If I’d been released by the 49ers, it would have been a different story.”

There was a time shortly after he signed with the Chargers that Rolling was afraid he had opted for the wrong team. On draft day, the Chargers used their first two choices on linebackers, Junior Seau of USC in the first round and Jeff Mills of Nebraska in the third.

“He was a little worried after that,” Beathard said. “But I told him we couldn’t pass up Junior, and besides, Junior was going to play a different position (inside linebacker). As it turned out, we were fortunate to be able to get Henry.”

Being the intense competitor that he is, Rolling braced himself for the additional challenge posed by the two draftees.

“I wasn’t new to competition,” he said. “I was never in doubt about making the club.”

Not only did Rolling make the club, but the 6-foot-2 230-pounder is one of its strongest players. To complement the size and strength that he lacked coming out of college, he has 4.6 speed, which he showed off on his 67-yard run against Cleveland.

“That was exciting,” he said. “I don’t want to sound big-headed or anything, but that’s the kind of thing I’m supposed to do. I should have gone all the way, but I guess I forgot how to cut back like I did when I was a wide receiver in high school.”

As satisfying as that play was, Rolling prefers rushing the passer to dropping into pass coverage.

“The pass rush is my game,” he said. “But we’ve got great pass rushers in Lee (Williams), Leslie (O’Neal) and Burt (Grossman), so I really don’t get that much chance to show what I can do.”

Pass rusher or not, Rolling has impressed everybody in the Charger organization from Beathard on down. Beathard, Coach Dan Henning and defensive coordinator Ron Lynn all foresee plenty of playing time for him even after Smith returns.

Henning said: “He won’t play because he’s better than Billy Ray, but because Billy Ray will need a lot of time to get back into it. Billy Ray will probably spell him for a while.”

Lynn said: “I don’t know where or when, but he’s going to play a bunch.”