Chargers’ Joe Phillips Vows He Will ‘Press On’ : Comeback: His rage subsided and injuries healing, the lineman is back at work, hoping to put his September assault behind him.

His eye orbit has been reconstructed with the aid of plastic and a metallic plate. It may be another month or two before his fractured nose and cheekbone have healed.

But Chargers’ nose tackle Joe Phillips is back to work.

“This has taken enough away from me,” he said. “I’m not going to let it take any more. I’m going to press on.”

Phillips was attacked outside a Mission Bay Restaurant in the early hours of Sept. 26, allegedly by three men. After undergoing five hours of surgery to repair his eye orbit, Phillips returned to his parents’ home in Oregon to recuperate.

It’s doubtful he will make it back in uniform in 1990, but he said he will rejoin the Chargers in the weight room and attend team meetings. He said he might be on the sideline Sunday for the game with the Denver Broncos.

“Initially, it was almost impossible to accept,” he said. “I was blind and basically was in a rage. They tried to put me in for a CAT scan, I couldn’t see and got claustrophobic and flipped out. I was so sore over my entire body I didn’t know what was hurting and what wasn’t hurting.

“I see pictures now of what I looked like when I first checked into the hospital emergency room and they are ugly. I mean ugly.”

Scott Stewart, 24, Brett Dost, 21, and David Hanna, 22, have pleaded not guilty to assault charges. Stewart and Hanna are free on $20,000 bail, Dost on $30,000. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Nov. 20.

“I can’t talk about the facts of the case because I’m going to be a witness,” Phillips said, “and I want to make sure the justice system can operate. It’s the best system in the world, and I want to give it every chance to bring these guys to justice.

“I’ve been angry, real angry, but as time went on, it was like to hell with it. I didn’t want to center on the anger, the resentment, the self-pity. I wanted to dwell on the positive, and the positive is I’m still alive, and I still got my eye. Now I just got to get back to football, and school.”

Phillips had been attending law classes at night at USD before the attack but he has been forced to withdraw.

“I couldn’t read for about 3 1/2 weeks,” he said. “It’s out of my hands, I simply couldn’t do it. I was supposed to graduate in May, but it probably has cost me a year.”

Phillips was considered the strongest player on the Chargers’ roster, and is a mountain of a man. When he was admitted to the hospital after the attack, Phillips, who is 6 feet 5, weighed 326 pounds.

He has lost 31 pounds in the weeks since his injury, but said, “I was in great shape when I got hurt. If I wasn’t in that great of shape, I don’t know what would have happened. What would have happened to a 170-pound man? At least I’m alive to talk about it.”

Phillips, who is nicknamed, “Sasquatch,” said he has learned something from the incident.

“Don’t go to Mission Beach at 12:30 at night,” he said. “My perspective on the whole thing is, it happened, and I hope it never happens to anybody else.

“Never let anyone get close enough to hit you. If somebody starts to approach you, run away from them. Never let anybody get close enough to hit you, and watch your backside.”

It will be five to six weeks before doctors re-evaluate Phillips’ physical condition, but he said he believes he will play football again.

“They have to wait for the fractures to heal and the nose to heal,” he said. “I’ve got to make sure it’s as solid as it can be, because if I were to get a direct blow here again, the way they explain it, I’d lose the eye.

“But I should be all right with a helmet on. It would have to be a blow harder than the one I got, and unless I took my helmet off, that wouldn’t happen.

“I still have a little double vision, and there’s swelling in my cheek. There’s numbness all down the side of my face, but hopefully the feeling will come back. The doctors think it will.”

Phillips also said his nose is not straight, “but who gives a damn,” he said, “it works fine.”

Phillips played in the first three games of this season as the Chargers’ starting nose tackle and had nine tackles. He had started 41 of the team’s last 48 games.

“I was looking forward to the season,” he said, “and now the team is making progress and I’m not a part of it. That hurts.”