Biggest Day of the Year for Beathard
It was draft-day business as usual for Bobby Beathard, so strap on the seat belt.
More in a moment, however, on the defensive tackle who requires blood pressure medication, some guy named Yancey Thigpen and the trading of the Chargers’ first-round pick in 1992 to Washington for the right to select the 20th player in second round Sunday.
Beathard corraled “The Sheriff.”
He rejected San Francisco’s offer of a first, second and third-round pick for the ninth choice in the first round and took Texas safety Stanley Richard.
“Outside of the Rocket (Notre Dame’s Raghib Ismail), we thought Stanley was one of the top two players in the draft,” Beathard said. “He’s a great football player, and I don’t like to say great, but he’s a great football player.”
After being thwarted in his bid to trade for another first-round pick to select Colorado wide receiver Mike Pritchard, Beathard went on a bizarre shopping spree in the second round.
He selected 300-pound Alabama defensive tackle George Thornton, who has battled a weight problem and a blood pressure disorder, with the 36th selection, and then confounded draft observers by picking 5-foot-7 Colorado running back Eric Bieniemy on the 39th pick.
The selection of Bieniemy for a one-back attack already rich in talent became all the more confusing with the announcement that the Chargers had traded their 1992 No. 1 choice to Washington for the 20th pick in the second round and a fifth-round pick in 1992.
Beathard took Michigan State guard Eric Moten with the additional second-round pick and then announced that he was one of the top 15 players ranked on the Chargers’ draft board.
But if Moten was ranked so high, why did Beathard pick Thornton and then Bieniemy, forcing the trade of next year’s No. 1 pick?
“I do a lot of things in drafts that don’t make sense,” Beathard said. “But I go with what I feel.”
Amen.
Now that Beathard is in San Diego, the Redskins were in the position Sunday to make their first selection in Round 1 since 1983. And now that Beathard has given his old team the Chargers’ first-round pick in next year’s draft, the Redskins will have two picks in the first round for the first time since 1961.
“There was no one on the board that stood out, so it was a deal we couldn’t turn down,” said Charley Casserley, Redskin general manager. “It was just an investment in the future.”
The future is now for Coach Dan Henning, coming off consecutive 6-10 campaigns, and he was the first to congratulate Beathard on the bold move to get Moten.
“Draft choices that are in your pocket instead of players on the field aren’t worth a damn,” Henning said. “(Offensive line coach) Alex Gibbs feels he can be a starting guard for us.”
Beathard said the Chargers had Moten rated the No. 1 guard in the draft and appeared surprised at the suggestion he may have paid too much for the extra second-round pick.
“It’s not a big deal to me because we did it all the time back there (in Washington),” he said. “We’ll see what happens next year.
“We want to win. We want to get better this year. It’s not all that ‘future is now’ deal because we wouldn’t mortgage the future. And I don’t think we did that. But we look at it as if we got a first-rounder in the second round.”
As for Bieniemy, Beathard had to admit: “It was a peculiar pick because we didn’t really take him to fill a need. He’s more of a luxury pick. He is just an exciting player that we didn’t expect to be there. I think he’s a game-breaker.”
The Chargers swooped up Thornton in an effort to shore up their defense against the run.
“The thing that caught our eye on him is that we saw the Tennessee film where Antone Davis -- the seventh player taken in the draft -- couldn’t block this guy.”
The Chargers rated Thornton ahead of Louisville defensive tackle Ted Washington, who went in the first round to the 49ers, and ahead of Kelvin Pritchett, who went in the first round to Detroit.
“We couldn’t let Thornton get away from us,” Beathard said. “There was only one big defensive lineman left in the draft that we liked.”
While Beathard worked the phones to find an extra pick in the second round to get Moten, the defection of Raghib Ismail to Canada and a run on defensive backs early in the first round left Beathard & Co to wonder if Richard would escape their reach.
Phoenix’s pick of semi-pro defensive end Eric Swann, however, saved the day for the Chargers. The Cardinals were projected to take an offensive tackle with the sixth pick, but when they introduced Swann as their choice that left Tennessee tackles’ Charles McRae and Antone Davis on the board for Tampa Bay and Green Bay.
Tampa nabbed McRae, and the Chargers knew they would get either Davis or Richard.
“We came into the draft with the idea of taking either Davis or Richard,” Henning said. “Once Tampa took McRae, it was easy.”
The Packers were parked in front of the Chargers with the eighth pick and in Green Bay the Press-Gazette already had reported that Richard was going to be the Packers’ first-round selection.
There were only seconds remaining in the 15 minutes allotted to Green Bay to make its selection, and in the Chargers’ draft room the countdown had begun.
“We were yelling, ‘five, four, three, two, one, turn in the card, turn in the card,” said Jim Mora, Charger secondary coach. “Then we heard there was a trade, so we felt pretty confident that he (Richard) wasn’t involved. There was a big sigh of relief in that room.”
The Packers traded the eighth pick in the first round for the Eagles’ 20th pick in the first round and Philadelphia’s No. 1 pick in the 1992 draft. The Eagles then took Davis, and before ESPN’s Chris Berman could clear his throat, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced the Chargers’ choice of Richard.
“It ended up like we had hoped it would, but we weren’t certain until the last minute that we’d get the player we wanted,” Beathard said. “Richard was our first pick all along.
“The funny thing was he called and said he had been on the phone with Green Bay. They were going to take him and it scared him I guess. Whatever happened, there was trade made instead and he was there for us.”
Within an hour, Richard was on his way from his home in Hawkins, Texas to the airport. He was packing his sheriff’s badge and an overload of confidence.
“I’m ready to make things happen in San Diego,” Richard said. “I’m excited. I think I can help the Chargers and I’m ready to learn and get going.”
Richard, 23, became the Chargers’ consensus first-round pick after dazzling Beathard, secondary coach Jim Mora and defensive coordinator Ron Lynn in an Austin workout recently.
“The thing that struck me was that when Junior Seau worked out last year for us it was immediately apparent he was a big-time great athlete,” Mora said. “You could see it from the minute he started to move. It was the same with Stanley.
“You watched him warm up at the other end of the field and it was like, hey, why even bother to work this guy out? It was just evident he was a supreme athlete. We put him through a couple of drills and that was all I needed to see. The great ones jump out at you and he jumped out at us. Quick.”
The Chargers will keep Gill Byrd at cornerback and move Richard into the vacancy left by starting free safety Vencie Glenn, who was left unprotected in Plan B free agency.
“He’s going to be an impact player around here,” Mora said. “He has a little bit of an athletic arrogance about him, but that’s good. I think he feels when he steps on the field there’s nothing he can’t do.”
Richard arrived in San Diego last night and was handed jersey No. 24.
“He can be the sheriff around here for a long time,” Mora said, “and patrol the middle of the field for us.”
Richard will have a chance to match his skills against Yancey Thigpen, the Chargers’ fourth- round pick, come training camp in July. Thigpen, a 6 1/2, 208-pound receiver from Winston-Salem State, impressed the Chargers in a private workout recently.
“Yancey Thigpen,” Henning said. “Great name.
“The time that some of the scouts had on him is not as good as the one we got on him. He’s probably in the 4.5 category and he’s a big receiver.”
The draft continues today, and if you haven’t already guessed, Beathard said he’s working on a trade to acquire two more picks in the fifth round.