Invisible Man, Intrepid Plan : WLAF Behind Him, Graham Hopes to Win Over Chargers

SAN DIEGO —  Perceptions. Quarterback Jeff Graham understands how he’s viewed: He’s that nobody from nowhere with no chance to make it big in the National Football League.

Perceptions. Quarterback John Friesz has a 4-13 record as a starting quarterback in the NFL, and Charger fans already have pronounced him a can’t-miss winner.

“Friesz has got everything going for him right now,” Graham said. “Me? I’ve taken another road.

“If the Redskins had kept me, things would have been different. I would have been just one of the guys. I would have learned the system. I would have been ready to start for somebody. I would have been perceived as one of the next great young quarterbacks.”

Reality. General Manager Bobby Beathard likes Friesz and he also likes Graham, and if his expectations are met, Friesz and Graham will begin the regular season Nos. 1 and 2 on the Chargers’ depth chart.

“My feeling is that somebody missed on Graham,” said Beathard, who was responsible for drafting Graham in Washington. “He was coached really well at Long Beach State, and he came out with a good knowledge of the passing game. He had great size (6-5, 215), he could run and he had a terrific arm. He had all the qualities a good quarterback has to have, and I haven’t seen anything yet to make me think differently.

“I might be proven wrong, but I think this kid’s got something.”

One year ago at this time, Friesz was waiting patiently behind Billy Joe Tolliver, and Graham was playing for the New York/New Jersey Knights in the World League of American Football.

Friesz remains full of promise; Graham is scrambling to recover from the stigma of playing in a league nobody cares about.

“Quite an expeience,” Graham said. “We’re in Spain and everybody is supposed to have the same color shoes, and we’re just glad to have shoes. The refs won’t let us play, so we have somebody go and buy a can of black spray paint.

“So before the game you’ve got everybody lined up on the sideline waiting to get their shoes sprayed. Half of your legs were black, too, from the overspray. That’s how it started, and it was a clue of what was to come.

“I’m wearing a radio helmet in Giants Stadium and I’m getting this static, and then I’m picking up the airport as I’m walking to the line of scrimmage: ‘Two-Seven you’re cleared for takeoff.’ Just crazy. It was just crazy.”

Graham ran the run-and-shoot for Knights Coach Mouse Davis for $25,000, and despite joining the team late, he took it into the playoffs. He completed 57.7% of his passes with eight touchdowns and eight interceptions, but more importantly, he survived.

“He was sacked 70 times and had the living hell beat out of him,” Beathard said. “His life was in jeopardy, but he came through it. He’s a tough sucker.

“I advised him to play; he needed to get his confidence back. I think his play in the World League made me a believer in him again.”

When the WLAF season ended, Graham underwent double elbow surgery. “I kept landing on my elbows when I got hit,” Graham said, “and I had gotten hit a lot.”

Graham’s toughness, persistence and insistence to play on, however, continued to impress Beathard. Like Friesz, Beathard took a fancy to Graham in college. While still working with the Redskins in 1989, he took notice of Graham’s record-breaking work at Long Beach State.

“I remember looking up into the stands and counting the four people that were there,” Graham said, “but I don’t remember seeing Beathard.”

Beathard, however, has a knack for finding talent in obscure places. He traded with Dallas to acquire a sixth-round pick to select Friesz, who had been in hiding at the University of Idaho. He traded with Green Bay to secure a fourth-round pick to nab Graham.

After picking Graham, Beathard left Washington to become a television commentator. Had Beathard stayed in Washington, he might have used his influence to keep Graham and allow him the time to develop.

But after Beathard’s departure, Graham got the message. “When they stopped talking to me and didn’t bother helping me out anymore, I knew I was gone,” Graham said. “The quarterback coach called one day and said, ‘We let you go. Turn in your playbook tomorrow and take it easy.’ ”

He made a comeback at $1,000 a week for 16 weeks as a practice player for Cleveland. His assignment was to mimic the opposition’s quarterback each week.

“It would be nice someday if somebody else has to make like Jeff Graham,” he said. “You prepare the defense for the game and come Saturday, you go home while they go somewhere to play. At home games they wanted us to sit in the stands, but one game I’m standing in the aisle and this big drunk guy comes up with a ticket and thinks I’m an usher. He wants to know where his seats are and he gets mad because I don’t know where they are.

“After that I demanded to go on the field, and so they gave me a clipboard and I stood on the sidelines.”

The Browns left him unprotected in Plan B, but assured him that he figured prominently in their future plans. “But I guess I didn’t,” he said. “I got a message on my answering machine my second year and I knew I was cut again.

“Maybe I’m dense for not listening to people, but I’m not going to quit and nobody is going to tell me to quit,” he said. “I’m not going to let other people tell me I can’t play.

“I wasn’t recruited by any school other than Long Beach State coming out of Estancia High in Costa Mesa, and nobody seemed to know we were playing football at Long Beach State. That’s the way it has gone; I’m used to it.”

Graham worked out for the Atlanta Falcons last season, but the Falcons consummated the trade for Tolliver, and so Graham signed with the Chargers as a practice squad player.

“We’re not in the regular locker room with the other guys, but I appreciate the fact I’m here,” he said. “I appreciate the fact I can walk to the equipment room and get a pair of socks without going through a 20-minute argument. In the World League, you got like only one or two pairs of socks and that was it for the year.

“I hear guys here who think they have it made, and I tell them, I know. One day you got it made and the next you can be unemployed.”

Graham was promoted to the Chargers’ 47-man roster for the final four games last season, but three years after being drafted, he still waits for his first chance to play in a regular-season game.

“I didn’t want to play in the World League because I didn’t want to get that reputation of being a guy who can’t make it,” he said. “After I went, I wondered at times, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ Then I kept thinking, I got to get back, I got to get back to the NFL. That’s what kept me going.

“But it was like playing at Long Beach State. Who cares? Nobody knows you’re playing football in the World League. Everybody was ripping us, and we’re winning and we’re playing, and no one is taking us seriously. People think because you’re playing in the World League, you must not be good enough to make it in the NFL.”

Graham will join Friesz, Bob Gagliano and more than 30 teammates Tuesday for workouts in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The Chargers will practice on a voluntary basis three times a week through mid-June.

“They may be voluntary, but they are all mandatory for me,” Graham said. “If they bring in another quarterback, people will automatically put him ahead of me. I’m just a practice player and people haven’t seen me play. They don’t know.

“I’m fighting that perception. I’m fighting for a job. I’m fighting for the opportunity to keep wearing a uniform.”

The Chargers will add a fourth quarterback to their roster before the opening of training camp. They have talked with Tampa Bay Plan B free agent Pat O’Hara, a former quarterback at USC, but if unable to reach an understanding, they probably will expend a mid-round draft choice on a quarterback.

“I think that Graham’s development is very important to us,” Coach Bobby Ross said. “He’s going to have to get some exposure, and he’s somebody I want to watch very closely.”

Graham has been here before. He was judged no good in Washington and Cleveland, and now he gets another opportunity, because of Beathard’s influence, as understudy to a privileged Friesz.

“I don’t know what John thinks of me,” he said. “I don’t know what anyone thinks of me. No one around here has really seen me play, unless they were watching World League games on TV last year.”

Not likely.

“I guess I’m like the ultimate underdog,” Graham said. “I just want to play the game. I want to be the guy that young kids sit around talking about on Sunday mornings.”