Gary’s Pro Career Has the Look of a Split Personality : Rams: He seems perfect for the one-back offense, but fumbles and injuries have held him back.

Three years and a week into Cleveland Gary’s NFL career, he remains a running back stuck in suspended animation, still waiting for the breakthrough he has always believed lies one game away.

He is the Rams’ could-be running back, kept around for all the things he is capable of doing but held back by the time he has spent injured or fumbling or both.

So now, at a stage in his career when most other running backs have long since fizzled or sizzled, Gary is stalled somewhere in between, watching contemporaries crowd the Pro Bowl rosters and wondering if he will ever join them.

“It bothers me because time is slipping away, you know what I mean?” Gary, 26, said Wednesday. “It’s just time. I think about the years.

“I know I had the fumbling year (in 1990), the year that Emmitt Smith and I were head to head in rushing yardage and touchdowns. And I envisioned a bigger season the next year.

“And the next year he led the NFL in rushing. (Gary did not even lead his team.) So it’s time. The talent and the ability is there. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m among those backs.”

Three years ago he was a rookie, and he was slowed by a long holdout and an uncertain transition from college ball, where he was a star one-back with the University of Miami, to John Robinson’s power style.

Two years ago, it was 12 fumbles in 15 games (with seven of them recovered by the opponent), a total that overshadowed his 808 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns that season. Last year, it was injuries, plus a a coaching staff that had gradually lost faith in him. Gary was given the ball only 68 times.

This year, his team is crying for somebody to run the ball with power and catch it with grace, and the 226-pound Gary, who has at times in his career done both, is waiting to be told he is the best and only man for this job.

Gary currently is splitting time with Robert Delpino in the Rams’ one-back set.

Coach Chuck Knox has moved the team into a one-back offensive set, in large part because it best suits the abilities and versatility of both Gary and Delpino.

But Gary struggled through another injury-riddled training camp, was unimpressive when he did play, and watched Marcus Dupree, who was later cut, steal the spotlight in the exhibition season. In the regular-season opener, a 40-7 loss to the Buffalo Bills, Gary had only nine carries for 24 yards and three catches for 28 yards.

Still, Gary remains the Rams’ only power-running back hope.

“We’re hoping in the very near future to see what kind of talents Cleveland has as an inside runner, as an outside runner, and how productive he can be in getting yards after the first contact and also being able to be creative to make some things on his own,” running backs coach Chick Harris said.

“Sometimes you have to get it on your own. And that’s exactly what I’ve talked to Cleveland about and he understands that.”

The Rams want their one back to be a threat every down either as a pass-catcher or a runner, and on Sunday it was Delpino, with a touchdown reception and 30 yards rushing, who was the more effective.

“I don’t think my abilities have been tapped yet,” Gary said. “I have not, since I’ve been in the pros . . . gotten into the flow of things. When a back carries the ball 20 times a game and everybody’s adhering to their responsibilities, it’s pretty difficult to stop. You’re at his mercy, really. It’s just a matter of time before a big run is broken.

“I feel the same way catching the football. If you’re catching the ball 15-20 times a game, I don’t care who (the defender is) in the flat, I think a guy with my quickness and size, it’s pretty hard to cover in the flats.”

Gary, in a burst of self-confidence that is hardly out of character, if possibly out of the realm of logic, said a look at Thurman Thomas’ four-touchdown destruction of the Rams on Sunday is a good starting point for his own potential.

“Thurman has proven himself as the all-purpose back,” Gary said. “I’m bigger, I feel I’m quicker, faster. It’s just the opportunity.

“Whatever the situation’s calling for, I want the ball. We’re going to throw it, I want to catch it. If we want to run it, I want it a lot. You know what I mean?”

He says that his troubles with fumbling, which knocked him out of the starting lineup last season when he fumbled in his second carry, have been solved and no longer preoccupy him. And he says he can run with the same twirling, spinning abandon he had in 1990 but without the fumbling.

“I can’t tell you I won’t fumble again carrying the football,” Gary said. “But it was a young thing, pretty much.

“Now mostly when guys try to come in and get it, I carry the ball in the position now to make you pay for it. I don’t feel limited it all.”

Even during the Rams’ summer-long search for a back, including trade talk with the Kansas City Chiefs for Christian Okoye or Barry Word, Gary said he knew then and knows now he will be the one the Rams eventually turn to.

“I never think twice about other backs coming here and getting a 1,000-yard runner,” Gary said. “I like to think I have more to offer than that, than just 1,000 yards.”