LIGHT END : Christensen Tries to Regain Weight, His Raider Position

OXNARD —  In the heat of the noonday sun, Todd Christensen, all alone on the field, straps weights to his ankles and high-steps toward an uncertain future

Uncertain?

Todd Christensen?

Curly-haired, erudite, omnipresent, photogenic, unsinkable Todd Christensen, the man to see on third and eight, or when you’ve forgotten the author of “The Fountainhead,” or how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in 1928, could be in trouble?

That’s with a capital T and that rhymes with D, and that stands for Dyal. Mike Dyal is an unknown player from Texas A&I; who spent last season on injured reserve but is suddenly being projected as a possible starter at tight end.

Dyal, a 240-pounder, is described as a blocker.

Mike Shanahan seems to prefer large, blocking tight ends to smaller pass-catchers of the Christensen-Trey Junkin mold. Shanahan was hurt by the loss of bulky Andy Parker to free agency and may be looking for another hulk.

Christensen is 33 and coming off an injury-truncated 1988 season during which he caught 15 passes.

His off-season was even worse: Two major operations, the last of them 10 weeks ago for removal of his gall bladder. He isn’t scheduled to begin contact work until early August.

He earns $750,000 a year.

The last two Raider seasons, as another great Raider might have put it, have been distinctly unprofitable.

Can or will Al Davis pay that much to a backup?

Todd Christensen, backup?

“No one ever beat me out,” Christensen says. “I got injured. So I’d like to think, if I came back whole, I’d be the guy. But I suppose that remains to be seen.”

Does he sense the danger?

“Sure, always.”

This season more than ever before?

“Oh, 1981 was pretty bad--but you have to go back a long time.”

In 1981, he was three years into his pro career and still known chiefly as a bomb squad hero. The Dallas Cowboys, who drafted him No. 2 out of BYU in 1978, asked him to switch from fullback to tight end, but he refused. The Cowboys and the New York Giants released him in 1979.

For the Raiders, he made the switch. He also made the Pro Bowl five straight times, caught at least 80 passes a season in 1983-87 and went over 1,000 yards three times, missing a fourth by 13 yards.

Even in the wreckage of the ’87 season, with the strike and Rusty Hilger at quarterback, he dropped to 47 receptions but made it back to the Pro Bowl.

Last season, Christensen partially tore a knee ligament, then developed a cyst behind the knee. He missed nine games before returning on what he figures was “60% of a leg” for the finale against the Seattle Seahawks at the Coliseum, the game that determined the AFC West title.

If that is to go down as his last Raider game, he went out in style. In a dramatic late-game drive, Jay Schroeder found Christensen for four straight completions. Some people told him that he was what had been missing all season. Since the Raiders completed an awful 44% of their passes without him, you might wonder.

But the hard times weren’t over. One day in the off-season, he “woke up yellow.”

How yellow?

“Fluorescent,” says Matt Millen, who visited him.

It was first treated as hepatitis, then by removing his gall bladder. Christensen’s weight, which he had just built up to 229, dropped to 209.

He started over. He’s back to 222 and working as diligently as always. One of the last three Oakland Raiders--with Millen and Howie Long--and having seen the champions turned upside down, Christensen hates the thought of leaving.

“For me, I don’t see a depreciation of skill,” Christensen says. “I see it as the fact that I was unfortunate enough to have an injury and I had a difficult off-season. If I’m being objective and looking at myself, I say I’m a risk. But I know myself. I know I’m not a risk.”

He remembers that ecstatic dressing room in San Diego in 1980, after the Raiders shocked the Chargers in the AFC championship game to send them on to the Super Bowl, and wonders where else he could ever find exhilaration like that.

He keeps on high-stepping. On the golf course that overlooks the practice field, players stop to watch the solitary figure doing the curious drill. Maybe they recognize the head of curls.

Christensen keeps going. A day of reckoning is coming, and he aims to be ready.