Last Lines of Defense : Grossman, O’Neal Once Talked (and Played) a Great Game of Football; Now Silence Prevails

Upon his arrival, he was like a stray cat who had been given a bowl of milk--there was no getting rid of Burt Grossman.

He would hang out at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium even on his days off, telling jokes to the secretaries, lounging in the weight room and scrounging for free cans of chewing tobacco from staff assistants.

But no more. Charger practice ends a little after 3, and, while teammates and coaches adjourn to the locker room, Grossman--helmet, shoulder pads and all--gets into his car and goes home.

“I leave early every day that I can. . . . You lose and you lose and it beats you down,” he said. “I take my helmet off driving home, though, because there’s a No. 92 on the back of it and I don’t want anyone to know who I am.

“When I get home, it’s not like anyone is going to notice I’m in my uniform. We got a bunch of old people on my street--all about 80--and I could get out of my car wearing the San Diego Chicken suit and they wouldn’t know the difference.”

The funnyman is not having fun, and it’s all too obvious in his sagging performance.

Upon his arrival, he made like the king of the jungle. Ask him, and he knew it all--there was no controlling Leslie O’Neal. Or his ego.

He announced that he would be great as a rookie and went out and piled up 12 1/2 sacks before falling with a serious knee injury in Game 13. He ignored Chargers, sought care from his own surgeon and returned to establish himself as one of the game’s dominant defenders.

And after racking up 26 sacks in 32 games, Leslie O’Neal was playing as well as anyone in the game.

But no more. In the first seven games this season, a subdued Leslie O’Neal has two sacks. The team’s best player has been missing in action, and as a result, the Chargers’ defense has failed to meet expectations.

Frustrations mount. Early on, Coach Dan Henning tried to elevate O’Neal into a role of leadership; Wednesday he singled him out for rebuke when he felt O’Neal took lightly the call for a team meeting. Henning told O’Neal in front of the team to leave if his heart was no longer in it. Words were exchanged between coach and player.

His effort to disappear into the background this year might have suffered a setback, but the fight’s gone in Leslie O’Neal.

“I don’t have the stats I had at this time last year, but I’m not upset,” O’Neal said. “More than anything I haven’t said anything that’s controversial, so they can’t blame me for it. And that’s one of the big deals around here.

“They don’t want people in the organization that make a lot of waves. They just want guys that play, so that’s what I’m trying to do. Everybody told me last year, hey, your job is to go out and play and keep your mouth closed. So that’s what I do.”

The rebellious rascal has become the company man, and the company continues to falter.

Lee Williams never would have allowed this to happen. He would have whispered to O’Neal that Grossman was getting the best of him, and then he would have turned to Grossman and teased him about the attention O’Neal was garnering. He would have driven the needle deep, and he never would have allowed Burt Grossman and Leslie O’Neal to go quietly into defeat.

The Big Mouth would have taken on The Ego, and the battle would have spilled over onto the football field: First one to the quarterback would have snared the sack and all the glory--unless Williams had gotten there first.

But Williams is gone, and O’Neal has lost the edge that made him so special. Grossman came in popping off, and he had to back up what he said, but he no longer has much to say, and the Chargers no longer have much to talk about.

With Williams in the lineup the past five years, the Chargers had more sacks (234) than any other team in the American Football Conference. After the first seven games last season, the Chargers had 21 sacks.

This year they have 10. Where’s the pass rush?

“Like Atlanta, gone with the wind,” nose tackle Joe Phillips said.

Under the direction of defensive line coach Gunther Cunningham, a ferocious pass rush was demanded. “It’s not stressed as much,” Grossman said. “It used to be, knock out a quarterback and get a TV. You wouldn’t think with all the money we’re making that a TV would mean so much, but maybe it does.”

The team traded Williams to Houston this year and fired Cunningham; now try to persuade fans in San Diego to watch the Chargers on TV. Only winless Cincinnati and Indianapolis have fewer sacks among AFC teams this season than the Chargers.

The Chargers waged a smear campaign against Williams upon his departure, although he averaged 11.6 sacks a season the past five years. The team claimed that Williams was chronically unhappy, but how happy is the team now that it’s ranked No. 21 on defense?

“The pass rush is not as good as we would like it to be,” defensive coordinator Ron Lynn said. “That’s been our personality; that’s what we live on.

“I don’t know if there is something to Williams’ departure. Leslie and Lee had a healthy competitive thing going and each wanted to be the guy, but Lee’s not here and it makes no sense to go into this ‘woe is us’ sort of thing.”

O’Neal, however, competed against Williams. Williams worked to get more sacks than O’Neal. Williams used Grossman to irritate O’Neal. O’Neal went after Grossman knowing that Grossman was Williams’ friend.

Out of respect for his talent and past performances, however, neither Grossman nor O’Neal ever went after Williams. Each worked feverishly, however, to be better than Williams on the field.

“Burt no longer has the great Lee Williams playing next to him, and now it’s not as easy as it was for him; he’s paying his dues,” O’Neal said. “I’ll be honest, it’s affecting me, too. I’m used to having a guy like Lee Williams coming up the middle and putting pressure on the quarterback. That’s not happening this year.

“You had Lee Williams at 280 with speed, and now you have Junior Seau at 230 with more speed. You give up size, and in this game with so many 300-pound linemen it makes a difference. We miss Lee Williams.”

The Chargers’ defensive linemen have three sacks this season. Grossman has 1 1/2, Phillips has one and defensive end George Hinkle has one-half.

“Everybody looks at me and says, ‘What’s he doing?’ ” Grossman said. “What’s everybody else doing? When everything was going great the last couple of years, nobody was looking at me and giving me all the accolades. Instead, they said I had a great sense of humor.

“If they’re going to blame me for no pass rush, then they got to give me the credit for a great pass rush the last two years.”

A year ago this week, Burt Grossman, the “Big Mouth,” was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

What a difference a year makes: Recently he had to ask the team’s public relations department to invite him on “Chargers Report.” Despite lining up offsides twice against the Rams, he earned a “mercy appearance” Monday on the show as one of the players of the game.

“I didn’t feel stupid being on; I needed a new wet suit and they were giving away gift certificates and I could care less who watches the Chargers Report,” Grossman said. “Who else were they going to have on? It wasn’t like there was a big pile of players to pick from. We gave up four long drives and 30 points, so who else were they going to pick?

“Does everyone want to blame the demise of the team on my offsides? I’ve been offsides six times in three years. That’s 30 yards. We’ve won 13 games and lost 30 in that time; if 30 yards did it, then fine, blame me.”

Grossman’s mouth has made him an easy target in defeat, and he said for the first time since he’s been here, he’s heard fans shouting “put up or shut up” when he walks off the field.

Fans, however, have not always paid attention. Although afforded attention for his sassy commentary the past two years, Grossman quietly became one of the conference’s leaders in sacks. He had 20 in his first 31 games.

He was doing fine until the departure of Williams, when O’Neal leveled a volley of criticism his way.

“I take what Leslie has to say on any subject about as seriously as that dirty onion lying on the ground,” Grossman said. “You got guys smiling to your face and saying you suck behind your back; at least with Leslie you don’t have to worry about that--he says it right to your face.

“Over the last two years Leslie has had 26 sacks and I’ve had 20. He made six plays more than me out of the 2,000 plays we’ve had. What does that mean? Does that mean he’s one of the more dominant players in the league and I’m just a big mouth?”

Although quick with the biting tongue, Grossman remains sensitive when fire has been returned. And most of the stinging retorts have come from O’Neal.

“Leslie and I don’t respect each other, and it’s been like that since the day I walked in,” Grossman said. “I don’t think too highly of him and he doesn’t think too highly of me. I don’t know who does think highly of Leslie, come to think about it. His parents probably don’t even think highly of him. He’s a different person.”

Burt Grossman calling Leslie O’Neal different. Or, Leslie O’Neal calling Burt Grossman different. Imagine that.

Leslie O’Neal has his eye on February, and the possibility for expanded free agency in the NFL. He has grown weary of being labeled the player most likely to disrupt team harmony. He does not want to become known around the league as the one player who could not get along with General Manager Bobby Beathard.

O’Neal has refrained from throwing barbs at Grossman, and while he’s aware of teammates who have expressed a lack of admiration for him behind his back, he will not criticize them.

“I used to be the guy that went out there and tried to get everybody fired up on the field, and every time I said something, everybody jumped down my throat,” O’Neal said. “All these Mr. Anonymouses would appear in the papers. So this is not what they want from me. OK, fine, you get tired of it.

“I felt with Gunther Cunningham here I had somebody who thought like me. It was easier knowing you had at least one person who thought like you. Now I don’t. I’ve always been a loner, but more so now than anything. I accept it, I will play my best and hope other teams around the league see that I have talent.”

But his surrender and attempt to temper his independence might have muffled his talent. He’s not been the same big-play maker this season. Fact is, Junior Seau has stolen his thunder to date.

“I’m doing what I’m asked to do,” he said. “I’m doing my job, getting pressure on the quarterback when I have the opportunity and playing consistently and solid football.”

What game has he been watching?

“I guess we’re all bums,” he said. “I guess I should sell my home and prepare to go somewhere else. Come on, what’s different about the defense? What’s different about personnel?

“If you’re good already, and they add people to that good group to make it great, and then as a group they don’t play great, then something should tell you that you screwed up. Either by putting new people in there, or overestimating how good those new people were. It’s chemistry, and we don’t have it.”

The Chargers have lacked that chemistry since the departure of Williams. They are not playing as well as they did on defense. They are not getting to the quarterback.

And yet they have added a talented Seau, a first-round pick in Stanley Richard and a second-round choice in George Thornton. They are supposed to be better than ever. Somewhere, they lost the pizazz that allowed Grossman and O’Neal to be so different, yet so effective.

“I want to make as much money as I can doing this job,” O’Neal said. “The only way I can is by being the best player and/or this team wins. I’ve been the best player around here, so what? What has that got me? Nothing. Now I’ll try and be a team player and hope like hell the team wins.”

“Hey, there are people in the locker room now playing dominoes,” Grossman said. “Listen to them, it’s like we didn’t lose a game. I don’t take it that way; if some people do, that’s fine. Some people don’t like to talk at times and I do. So to each his own.

“But I don’t like hanging around here and thinking everything is great when everything isn’t great. That’s the way it is. I’d just rather leave.”