Ex-Estancia Standout Throws Himself Into World League : Football: An unexpected call from the New York/New Jersey Knights and Jeff Graham winds up in Europe.

Only two weeks ago, Jeff Graham was puttering around his home in Costa Mesa and working his throwing arm back into shape in preparation for tryouts with a couple of NFL teams. He didn’t need Fodor’s Europe for his traveling plans then.

But one unexpected phone call and a little jet lag later, Graham finds himself hopping around the Old Continent courtesy of the New York/New Jersey Knights of the enterprising World League of American Football.

Graham, a 6-foot-2, 213-pound quarterback from Estancia High School and Cal State Long Beach, signed with the Knights in mid-March and already has been named by Coach Darrel (Mouse) Davis to open Sunday against the London Monarchs at Wembley Stadium in the second game of the season for both teams.

In the opener last Sunday, Graham came off the bench to complete 14 of 20 passes for a game-high 178 yards and scored on a one-yard run with 25 seconds remaining in a 19-7 loss to the Dragons in a downpour in Barcelona, Spain.

For Graham, who had barely eyeballed the Knight playbook, the game served to confirm that, yes, there is baptism of fire and, no, the rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly in the plain.

“As far as the weather is concerned, it was pretty miserable,” Graham said from his hotel in London. “It was cold and wet and the wind was howling.”

With the turf at Montjuic Stadium more suitable for hydroplaning, Graham still tried to slip-slide the Knights back in the game despite the field conditions and his lack of familiarity with the team’s offensive scheme. He went at it almost purely on physical ability and football sense.

“That was kind of an on-the-field learning experience,” Graham said. “We have a pretty intricate offense. . . . I wanted to go to a two-minute drill (on the scoring drive) but I didn’t know it because I hadn’t covered it in practice, so I just started calling audibles. I called a quarterback draw (on the touchdown). I wanted to call a quarterback wedge but I didn’t know what the call was. At times I was just trying to remember everybody’s names.”

Davis, who coached the Houston Gamblers of the defunct United States Football League and who was an assistant the past couple of years with the Detroit Lions, liked what he saw of Graham.

“He spent a lot of effort trying to get as much he could for us,” Davis said. “I’m looking forward to having very good production from him.”

Getting things done has never been a problem for Graham in most of his previous football stops. As a senior at Estancia, he passed for 1,675 yards and 11 touchdowns, and was an all-Sea View League selection. At Cal State Long Beach, he set 49er career records in passing yardage (8,080), pass completions (664), pass attempts (1,175) and touchdown passes (42). He also set a school record for most yards in a game when he completed 33 of 59 passes for 518 yards in a 34-31 loss to Hawaii in 1988.

The following year, an NFL career seemed possible when the Washington Redskins acquired him on draft day in 1989 from the Green Bay Packers--who had drafted him in the fourth round--but the Redskins released him before the season began. The Cleveland Browns then signed him to their developmental squad and, after placing him on the injured reserve list with a shoulder injury, waived him before the start of the 1990 season.

Graham, 25, returned home and began practicing under the watchful eye of Randy Whitsett, the Cal State Long Beach quarterbacks coach. He had tryouts lined up this summer with the Seattle Seahawks and the San Diego Chargers when the Knights called, but Graham said he decided to give the new league a shot since the arm was sound again. Whitsett agreed.

“The week he got called he was throwing with the receivers real good,” Whitsett said. “I thought he was pretty close to 100%. He had a lot of velocity on the ball and the (arm) motion looked good.”

Davis and the Knights did some checking and apparently were satisfied with the reports they got on Graham.

“I had talked with NFL scouts from that area (Southern California) and with the people from (Cal State) Long Beach,” Davis said. “We were excited about getting a quarterback with the arm level he has. . . . It’s too bad we didn’t get it done earlier.”

Graham would have preferred it that way, too. He spent only three days in New York before leaving with the team for Barcelona. His in-flight reading material included a lot of X’s and O’s and he would have gladly exchanged the movie shown on the plane for a frame or two on the Dragon defense, but Graham was too ecstatic to complain.

And though he has spent hours in the past few days learning the Knights’ system, Graham said he still was able to squeeze in some sightseeing.

“I thought the Spanish countryside was beautiful. The people were fantastic,” Graham said. “One of the biggest things there was that they take a couple of hours to eat (dinner). The first day we ate there they served us bread, and 15 minutes later they gave us the salad, and 20 minutes later they gave us pasta. Some of the guys thought that was the whole meal and left. We hadn’t even hit the main course yet.”

When the team hit the field Sunday, Graham found that people from Barcelona aren’t interested only in marathon meals, hosting next year’s Summer Olympics or the Spanish League soccer standings. Whether out of curiosity or genuine interest, 19,223 of them showed up to see the town’s new sports franchise, even at the prospect of being drenched.

“The fans were great,” Graham said. “It rained for two days straight and they still came. They did their traditional soccer chants for their team. They were real loud. Once the people (in Europe) get an understanding of the game, I think the league will take off.”