Fortunately Carney Isn’t a Quitter

There isn’t much room in front of kicker John Carney’s locker. He and punter John Kidd share a space about the size of a telephone booth. You see, kickers and punters have a way of getting stuck into out of the way corners.

“You have to get ‘em out of the way,” said quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver, “so they can talk about the weird things kickers talk about.”

Billy Joe was right about weird things.

Carney was talking about retirement . He was making the point that he was too young to retire.

This was an interesting notion, because Carney didn’t really seem to have anything from which to retire. It had been three years since he finished his career at Notre Dame as the 1990 NFL season began. In those three years, he had attempted a total of seven field goals--two good, two blocked and two nullified by penalties.

And he was talking about retirement?

Wrong, John.

He was talking about not being ready to retire when he should have been talking about not being ready to give up.

Perseverance was the word.

He had been waived by Cincinnati and Tampa Bay and picked up by the Chargers in April and waived after training camp and picked up by the Rams and waived without even attempting a field goal.

You only get waived so many times before maybe you wave good-by, grab a pencil and get behind a desk.

“I wasn’t tempted,” he said late Sunday afternoon, “but a lot of people around me were. My wife was my biggest supporter. She wanted me to stick with it.”

Give Karie Carney an assist, then, because her hubby was one of Sunday afternoon’s heroes. He kicked four field goals, tying a Charger team record, in a 19-7 victory over the Denver Broncos, who are turning into yesterday’s heroes.

This was a guy who has spent most of his NFL years in a state of involuntary retirement. You’d think a guy with a degree from Notre Dame would have been smart enough to read the writing on the wall. Instead, Carney was bold enough to ignore it.

He had a good training camp with the Chargers, but not good enough to push him ahead of Fuad Reveiz in his latest battle for survival. Kick came to shove, and Reveiz had the job.

“We vacillated day to day in training camp,” said Larry Pasquale, special teams coach. “No one was clearly better, so we went with Fuad because he had more experience. I explained it to John and he understood. He’s a high-quality person.”

As it turns out, he is also a determined person.

As it also turns out, he is a high-quality kicker.

This was the seventh time a Charger kicked four field goals in a game, but only Rolf Benirschke (twice) and Mike Wood had four-for-four games before Sunday. Carney could have made it five for five if the offense had not finally figured out how to get the ball into the end zone--and that was by handing it to a linebacker on third down at the one-yard line.

In the six games he has played since coming out of his latest “retirement,” Carney is 13 for 14 on field goals and perfect on 15 extra points. He might have found himself a home.

So how has he endured all this down time waiting for someone to realize it wasn’t a fluke that he was the No. 2 all-time career scorer at Notre Dame?

“Plugging away,” he said. “Preparing and training.”

Preparing and training? What did he do, go out to school yards with his wife as a holder and kick imaginary field goals over the swing sets?

“I enjoy lifting weights,” he said, “and I enjoy practicing kicking. I’d go out and kick 50 balls every other day.”

And it wasn’t that there was not anything else he could do with his life. He knew that.

“I have a marketing degree from Notre Dame,” he said. “If I was really serious about putting a resume together, I think I could get a fairly decent job. But you can work a desk job any time in your life. There’s only a certain window age-wise for doing what I’m doing.”

What he is doing is bailing out an offense that is somewhat of an unfinished symphony. All the chords seem to be in place until it gets down to the last verse and then it cannot seem to figure how to come out of it. So the conductor looks around and finds this little guy with a violin.

John Carney.

The Charger offense reached as far as the Denver two, one, 25 and 14 on their first four scoring drives Sunday. In each case, the result was a field goal by Carney.

There’s always a groan when the kicker comes onto the field, because the field goal represents failure, at worst, and disappointment, at best.

But . . .

“They count,” said Pasquale, “ and they add up.”

Three, six, nine, and the Chargers had the lead.

Twelve, and the lead was a little more comfortable.

Indeed, John Carney’s field goals provided the Chargers with all the points they needed. They added up to a victory. And they also add up to the fact that the man has finally established a career from which he might someday retire . . . but not soon.