Bayless Refuses to Believe He’s at End of Line : Pro football: Management believes Charger defender is too slow for the secondary, but he continues to outperform his younger teammates.
A happy 29th birthday today to Martin Bayless. Now, make a wish: Where would you like to play football next season?
Won’t be here. Although statistics indicate the Charger defense can’t do without Bayless, a strong safety, the team already has decided that he is too slow and too far gone in his eight-year career to hang around San Diego.
The plan was to dump him this year, and it was proceeding quite nicely until Bayless’ replacements consistently demonstrated an inability to play football.
General Manager Bobby Beathard selected safety Floyd Fields in the fifth round of the draft but, after it became apparent that Fields might hurt himself, he was placed on injured reserve.
The Chargers also liked free agent Anthony Shelton; they promoted him to starting safety in training camp and demoted Bayless to backup. The Chargers liked Shelton so much that they went ahead and released Bayless on the cut to 47 players, although Bayless had been the team’s starting strong safety since 1987.
“You go from being the starter to not being on the team two weeks later,” Bayless said. “That has to make you wonder.”
No wonder about it. The Chargers were looking ahead to a day when they would man the safety positions with faster athletes. They had already fired starting free safety Vencie Glenn and replaced him with Stanley Richard, their No. 1 pick.
The plan was to start Shelton next to Richard and back him up with Fields. Fields’ flop, however, forced the Chargers to rehire Bayless.
“It was tough, because your ego is involved,” Bayless said. “It’s like going back to grade school days when you’re the last guy picked. Whatever the reason, if you’re the last guy they want, it’s not a very nice feeling.”
There were no tantrums and no controversial quotes. Bayless pulled on his gear, became a special teams performer and swallowed his pride.
“They (management) want their own type of people,” Bayless said. “I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has nothing to do with talent.”
For the past two seasons, he has run a free football camp for San Diego youth and he has remained the guiding force behind an annual Thanksgiving food drive. He has relied on his teammates’ support and, as an indication of their respect for him, they have turned out en masse.
The organization might have been ready to move on without Bayless, but his teammates were in no such hurry. And the Chargers should have known better. They finished the 1990 season with Bayless in the starting lineup and ranked fifth in the National Football League in defense.
“Experience,” said cornerback Gill Byrd. “Martin knows where he’s supposed to be.”
The Chargers opened the 1991 season with Bayless lined up as a spectator and, after three games and a long list of botched assignments in the secondary, the Chargers’ defense ranked No. 28.
“We knew Anthony and Stanley were going to make errors,” said Jim Mora, the Charger secondary coach. “But we were hoping they wouldn’t be glaring. As it turned out, they were, and we had to do something. The players on this team needed to see something.”
A number of veteran defenders were upset at their own defense. Fans and media criticized the lack of leadership. The players believed some of the newcomers lacked the study habits of the players they had replaced.
To appease the disgruntled troops and silence the critics, the coaching staff announced a change in the lineup.
“Shelton took the fall,” said Mora. “It wasn’t Shelton’s fault that the defense was floundering. He was one of the 11 not playing up to par, but he became the sacrificial lamb, and Martin was the knight in shining armor coming to the rescue.”
The defense was in distress, all right, and call it a coincidence, but since Bayless has returned to the starting lineup, the Chargers’ performance has dramatically improved.
In the past three games, the defense has allowed an average of 273 yards a game, a mark that would make them the seventh-ranked defense in the league. However, it is statistically recovering from the 388 average yards allowed in the first three disastrous weeks.
The opposition piled up 805 yards in the air and threw six touchdown passes with Shelton at safety. In the past three weeks, the Chargers have allowed 480 passing yards and two touchdown passes.
Take a bow, Bayless.
“The people who replaced me weren’t capable of doing the job right now,” Bayless said. “In the future, maybe they will be. But at the time they were asked to do the job, they were not able to fill the shoes.”
In last week’s 21-13 victory over the Raiders, linebacker Henry Rolling returned a fumble 53 yards and intercepted a pass, but the coaching staff selected Bayless as defensive player of the game.
Bayless was on the field for 38 defense plays and was credited with making 14 tackles. His hit on wide receiver Mervyn Fernandez sent Fernandez to the sideline for medical treatment and his face mask-to-face mask pop on Roger Craig was in keeping with his well-earned nickname, “Bam-Bam.”
“He hit Craig head up, wrapped him up and put him down,” Mora said. “Craig didn’t get another inch after Martin made contact with him.”
Bayless’ knack for knocking opponents senseless has restored enthusiasm to a defense that lacked fire early on. In Sunday’s clash with the Raiders, he got into a chest bumping contest with rookie running back Nick Bell and then demanded more aggression from his own teammates.
“At one point he told Stanley Richard, ‘I’m not going to let them run through our secondary,’ ” Mora said. “He told Stanley, ‘We have to go get them.’ That’s what he does for us. He gives us such competitiveness.
“His experience is irreplaceable. He has seen everything. He’s faced every team in the NFL and you’re not going to fool him. If you show him something different, he’s going to figure it out quickly. He has a film library in his house of every team, every coach. I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes home tonight and puts on old Ernie Zampese films when he was coaching the Chargers to see what he might have the Rams doing.
“He knows what every player on the defense does on every single play. He knows their adjustments. And he gives us great leadership. He was voted team captain by the players last year and there’s a reason for that. Obviously everybody in that locker room looks up to the guy. I don’t care what anyone says, that’s a fact.
“He also gives us great toughness. People forget that he played most of last year with an ankle that needed surgery, and didn’t gripe at all. He just played.”
And when this season is over, he probably will be left unprotected in Plan B free agency with the suggestion he find work elsewhere. Bayless, it seems, just doesn’t fit in.
“I don’t know what it is, but certain guys get a rap on them,” Mora said. “People are always trying to replace them. It’s the same thing with (linebacker) Gary Plummer.”
The St. Louis Cardinals got rid of Bayless after a three-game look in 1984 and Buffalo traded him to San Diego in 1987 for Wayne Davis, a cornerback who had been beaten for four touchdowns . . . in the same game.
“If I went into the tank every time someone said they didn’t want me, I’d have been out of the league eight years ago in St. Louis,” Bayless said. “When bad things happen to me, maybe I just let them pass on by, and move on.
“I know how to play football, and it doesn’t matter if I have to go someplace else at the end of this season. I know I got four or five more good years left in me. I know, and that’s what matters.”
The Chargers, however, were ready to give up on Bayless in 1989. They left him unprotected under Plan B free agency and were prepared to begin the season with Pat Miller at strong safety. Miller, like Wayne Davis, is no longer playing football for a living, and Martin Bayless simply won’t go away.
“The knock on me is I don’t cover well,” said Bayless, who set an NCAA record at Bowling Green with 27 career interceptions. “But look around the league at the top safeties and none of them are asked to cover. You don’t ask David Fulcher to cover, you don’t ask Joey Browner to cover, and they’re the elite strong safeties in this league.
“They are the guys who run around and make hits, and intimidate people. That’s what a strong safety is in the NFL. It’s not a guy who goes out there and covers a fourth wide receiver every down.”
The Chargers were trampled by teams employing four wide receivers last year, and the movement is under way to find better, faster athletes.
But is faster always better?
“Martin’s slow. Ronnie Lott’s slow, and Ronnie Lott’s going to the Hall of Fame,” Mora said. “You can go through the league and find guys on every team just like Martin Bayless. It’s our job as coaches to put players like that in the right spot where he’s not going to get exposed because of his lack of speed. It’s his job to make the plays he should make.”
It’s a job well done.
“Whether it’s real or imagined,” Mora said, “the impact has been there on defense when Martin Bayless is playing.”
And when he’s not there next year . . .
The Bayless Difference
Without With Bayless Bayless Yards Allowed 1,165 819 Passing Yards 805 480 Touchdown Passes 6 2