Lawrence Develops a Winning Attitude : UCLA: Defensive back realizes playing at the top collegiate level is more than fun and games.

Teddy Lawrence had an attitude.

So how does that make him different from a lot of defensive backs? A little cockiness helps. Arrogance can be good. Anger, if channeled, is useful.

But Lawrence was belligerent. He wasn’t playing and no one told him why--and they were all wrong. He was behind Carlton Gray, an All-American cornerback at UCLA. So what? Carlton Gray made mistakes. Teddy Lawrence had always played.

Played .

“It’s all part of realizing how serious something is,” Lawrence says. “I didn’t realize how serious football was until I got here. In high school, I just played football. If you do well, you get a scholarship, but I didn’t think about that. It was just fun. Here, it’s my job. Football is a part of my life here.”

He was a quarterback and cornerback at San Diego Morse High and was good at both positions. He rushed for 1,434 yards and 23 touchdowns and passed for 1,025 yards and 13 touchdowns as a senior for a team that set the California scoring record with 649 points.

He returned an interception 108 yards as a sophomore.

He won championships in track and field, baseball and basketball at various levels, and he would spend time at UCLA getting ready for the NFL and eventual enshrinement at Canton, Ohio.

He would spend two seasons on the bench.

“He was like a lot of good athletes,” says A.J. Christoff, who coaches UCLA’s defensive backs. “When they start playing college football, they’re so used to things coming naturally to them that they have trouble accepting things like discipline in the coverage and a demand that they do things exactly right--not just OK, but exactly as you are supposed to do them.”

An athlete can do athletic things to cover up an assignment mistake because he always has. But when a defensive back makes a mistake and the receiver is both an athlete and mistake-free, embarrassing things happen, such as California’s Mike Caldwell catching a touchdown pass from Dave Barr after getting wide open to put UCLA behind, 7-0, in the season’s first game.

“It was my fault,” Lawrence says.

It was his first start. He had wondered if he was going to get one. Would he get another?

*

Lawrence had chosen UCLA over USC, Washington, Notre Dame and Stanford. He was a fun kid who got serious only when his life was involved. Outgrowing the Brook Posse, which is part of the feeder system for the Skyline Piru Bloods in Southeast San Diego, was part of life.

“We did mischievous things, like stealing and throwing rocks at cars and windows,” he says. “Then I went to high school and played football, and the realization of what I was doing took over. Even though I ran with those guys, I didn’t get in trouble. I knew when to stop. They waited to do the real bad stuff when they were older.”

By then, he had moved on to sports.

“A lot of the guys I grew up with, they’re not doing too well--gangs, drugs,” Lawrence says. “During Thanksgiving, I went back to the corner of Skyline and Meadowbrook, where the G’s used to hang out. They had cleaned up that corner, and now it was infested with gangsters again. I saw them shooting craps, and they didn’t care about the police.

“I was never part of a gang, but I ran with people who ran with the gang. I guess it stuck in my mind that I could be somebody, and I never let myself get to the point where I was lost.”

He found himself in football. It was easy, and so was high school. He could run and jump. Grades were no problem, and there was NFL money down the road for a defensive back who had gone through the UCLA system. Ask Kenny Easley. Ask Eric Turner.

Of course, they had played at UCLA.

*

“Prior to coming here, I didn’t even know Carlton was here,” Lawrence says. “I didn’t watch UCLA football that much and I didn’t know how good he was until I saw him play. He was formidable, but I still thought I was going to play because I always had.”

He didn’t, for two seasons.

“I was down in the dumps, because I wasn’t used to not playing,” Lawrence says. “I thought a lot about getting out of here, but my mom told me to gut it out. I got real belligerent, and the coaches noticed that. They thought I couldn’t play because of my attitude.”

He couldn’t play because of Gray. He also couldn’t play because he didn’t know how. In high school, he simply covered opponents. In college, he had to cover better players in conjunction with other defensive backs.

“For two years, I didn’t pay any attention at all,” he says. “Maybe if the coaches had given me any flak, it would have helped. In practice, I would go in and not know the coverages, and when I messed up, they would tell me to get out. That happened several times, but they didn’t pull me aside and show me the coverages. That was one of the things that made me think I wouldn’t play. I thought they didn’t care about me.”

While others ran wind sprints one afternoon after practice last season, he left. Why be in shape if you weren’t going to play?

That got him an audience with Coach Terry Donahue and an opportunity to air his grievances. It didn’t get him playing time. Gray was still there.

Christoff cared, but first Lawrence had to care about himself.

“Responsibility for your actions and accountability are probably the hardest things for any young man to accept,” Christoff says. “In high school, they just went out and played and had fun and never really had to be accountable for their actions on the football field. I think that’s where the biggest teaching area for Teddy on my part has come: Just make him accountable.”

At last season’s end, the coaches were at wit’s end. Squandered talent tends to do that. They talked to Lawrence about becoming a wide receiver. I’m a defensive back, he said.

And Gray was gone.

“I sat him down and said, ‘If you’re going to be a DB here, this is what you’re going to have to do,’ ” Christoff said. “ ‘And if you don’t do it, you’ll never play here. We have traditions and expectations at UCLA, and we’re not going to accept less.’ ”

A light went on.

Lawrence has a love-hate relationship with Christoff. “I think he’s afraid to give me any compliments,” Lawrence says. “He always talks about the bad things I do. When he teaches us something in practice and I do it perfectly the first time, he’ll give me a high-five, but that’s rare. He’s always yelling at me.”

And if he didn’t? “Well, I would probably get lazy,” Lawrence says, smiling. “My mind tends to wander. I guess no matter how he treats me, he’s a good coach. There’s probably nowhere else I could have gone and had a coach equal to him.”

Maybe it’s a case of selective hearing. “They all think I get on them,” Christoff says. “When you get on any player, they hear you, but they don’t hear you when you get on someone else. Their focus is, ‘Coach A.J. is really after me today.’ ”

Maybe all Lawrence needed was attention.

“I lifted weights and ran and never missed a workout after he talked to me,” Lawrence says. “I knew I had to compete with Bobby Gamble, but I knew I could win a job.”

He won one. The problem was keeping it.

Lawrence took a makeup course in pass coverage, but when he and Marvin Goodwin both went after the same receiver in UCLA’s first game, and when another receiver, Caldwell, caught the touchdown pass, Cal had a 7-0 lead.

When Lawrence missed two tackles, he earned a lecture from Christoff. Tackling? This was a defensive back, not a linebacker. “I thought the tackles were supposed to be in front of me,” Lawrence says. “When I missed them, the guys got 20 more yards. I think they were madder about that than they were about the miscommunication in coverages.”

They were. He didn’t know how to tackle, but that wasn’t the real problem. “Tackling is 90% desire and 10% technique,” Christoff says. “Teddy had to come up with both.”

Gamble started against Nebraska, a running team. Lawrence started against Stanford and has been the cornerback ever since.

He intercepted three passes, returning one 36 yards for a touchdown to seal a victory over Washington, and had 42 tackles. He knocked down eight passes. Some would say that’s because he was a target, the secondary’s weak link.

Lawrence wouldn’t. Neither would Christoff. “Lots of time in zone coverage, he’s supposed to be getting help, but the coverage is blown and he doesn’t get it,” Christoff says. “You may perceive him as getting beat, but a lot of the time it isn’t his fault.”

He has learned.

“I perceive him in the last seven games as being very responsible,” Christoff says. “He has done a great job from a coverage standpoint. . . . If he improves as much next year as he did this year, he’s got a pro football future.”

For now, his future is Saturday in the Rose Bowl against Wisconsin. Two years of inactivity are history. Teddy Lawrence is playing. That’s all he ever wanted.