He Rambled as a Ram, but Stumbles as a Colt

He could have owned this town. That’s all you could think of, watching this magnificent young athlete toweling himself off and holding postgame court in front of his locker at the Coliseum Sunday.

When he came to L.A., he was a high-stepping, quick-changing, 225-pound halfback. What’s more, he did it with the grace and style of the greats. Eric Dickerson with a football was Gene Kelly with an umbrella, Cagney with a machine gun, Gauguin with a brush. He was a worker of art. There was no wasted motion. He could do everything with a football Red Grange, O.J. Simpson or Walter Payton ever could.

He needed blocking--but not much. All he really needed was the football. He was as hard to catch as a straight flush.

He should have won the Heisman in college. But, then, so should have John Elway or Dan Marino that year. Dickerson finished third, behind Herschel Walker and Elway.

He was perfect for the Rams and vice versa. Under John Robinson, they were a team that showcased the run and Eric got the ball 400 times a season. Dickerson took care of the rest. He gained more yards and scored more touchdowns than any rookie in history. He gained more yards in a single season than anyone ever had.

The Rams had moved to Anaheim by the time he came here, which was a little bit too bad. His exploits had a somewhat off-Broadway cast to them, particularly since the Raiders had come south.

The Rams didn’t have a quarterback in the Dickerson years, but they had pretty much everything else. They were definitely Super Bowl contenders.

Then, it all began to go sour. What should have been a marriage made in heaven became a divorce mired in misunderstanding.

Dickerson felt underpaid (he was) and under-appreciated (he wasn’t). His first demands were met. His second set disillusioned management.

The blowup came, fittingly, on Halloween. It was a nightmare on Orangewood Avenue. Before you could say John Robinson, Eric was gone, traded to Indianapolis for a passel of draft choices, Greg Bell and a lot of acrimonious debate.

Bucking a national trend, Dickerson took his act from California to Indiana while his agents, press and business, held their heads. to them, it was like Schwarzenegger playing a butler.

It wasn’t that Indianapolis, the city, was wrong. After all, Green Bay, which was considerably smaller, had been the cynosure of pro football when Lombardi was there, a glamour capital of the game for cameras and magazine covers for years. And South Bend has no trouble attracting media attention.

No, it was the Colts that were ill-advised as a backdrop. This was hardly the Bart Starr-Paul Hornung Packers he was joining. First of all, they lacked a quarterback. Second, they lacked a team. Third, they now lacked the draft choices to build one.

It was like seeing a sable coat in a pile of overalls. Dickerson’s first year, the Colts made the playoffs. But the situation since has steadily deteriorated.

On Sunday, Eric Dickerson played in a place that probably should have been his stage all along--the L.A. Coliseum. Caruso played the Met, Ruth, Yankee Stadium, and Joe Louis, the Garden. And Dickerson should have run in the Coliseum.

Usually when a mass of camcorders, microphones, tape recorders and print journalists gather around a locker after a game, the individual they seek has just run for 250 yards, passed for three touchdowns, made the saving tackle or otherwise had an all-star day.

But the biggest crowd Sunday gathered to await the appearance of a back who had compiled only 77 yards in 20 carries, caught five passes for a total of 38 yards and had fumbled away his team’s last remaining chance to get back in a ballgame in which they ended up being shut out.

Eric Dickerson had no reason to relish it, but he stood manfully for more than an hour and answered questions.

The great unspoken theme of the interrogation was, “Aren’t you sorry now you didn’t stay in L.A.?”

But Dickerson wasn’t having any.

“I like L.A. I have a home here,” he said. “But my roots are really in Texas. That’s where I spend most of my (off-season) time. I’d like to win. Where doesn’t matter.”

Wouldn’t he like to have gone, say, to the Raiders when he got disenchanted with the Rams, though?

“There was no way the Rams were going to let me go to the Raiders,” Dickerson said quickly. “Just as there was no way they’d trade me to the 49ers or a contending team in their conference.”

He faced up to his dismal performance.

“I played terrible,” he said. “It’s embarrassing not to score. I screwed up one audible. I lost the ball twice. But this is still a team sport. This is not track. And I played hard. God gave me this talent, and I’ll take my talent. You give me an opening, and I’ll hit it.”

Did the Raiders “key” on him?

Dickerson laughed and said: “If I start left, their whole team and the officials and part of the stands go left. Let’s say they’re aware of me.”

Over in the Raiders’ dressing room, defensive tackle Bob Golic agreed.

“Has he lost a step? No, he’s still a nightmare with a football,” Golic said. “Make one wrong move and he’s gone through there. You hold your breath every time he gets the ball.”

Dickerson has always insisted that what he wants most out of his career is not rushing records, Hall of Fame statistics, individual game glory, but a Super Bowl ring.

“I still want that more than anything,” he assented.

Isn’t it becoming an impossible dream?

“We entered the season with high hopes,” he said. “We had encouraging practices. We’ve gotten off poorly. But a horse race is not always won in the early parts. There’s still time.”

And the man who took the act out of town, opened on Broadway, so to speak, and then went to New Haven, smiled and packed his duffel and went out into the Hollywood night, where he had to hope nobody would spot him and say, “Eric! What’ve you been doing with yourself lately? Still playing football, are you? Let’s do lunch and catch up.”