Traveling Man Tries It Again : Wagner Hopes His Kicks Stick at 6th Stop of NFL Journey

Football folklore has it that kickers, be they place-kickers or punters, high school, college or pro, are usually one brick shy of a load.

Believe the rumors. Remember Garo Yepremian--Super Bowl champion, superstar flake?

Enough said.

For example: At which other position, or in which other sport, do athletes exist who are such gluttons for punishment?

There are openings for only 28 place-kickers and 28 punters in the NFL each season, yet a few hundred prospects are suckered into training camps each year only to be quickly out-kicked and kicked out. It’s a rite of summer.

Those given the hook who are truly hooked give it more than one try--and with more than one team.

Bryan Wagner, for instance, is trying out for his sixth team in three years. He still hasn’t seen the last day of a training camp but keeps coming back.

Why, is a question that comes to mind.

“Because I know I can kick in the NFL,” he said.

Wagner, 25, is a punter who is trying to catch on with the Denver Broncos after being cut by the Dallas Cowboys before the 1985 season. At Cal State Northridge he also kicked field goals and was an All-American in 1983.

If not for a shanked punt against the Chicago Bears in the last game of the 1985 exhibition season, Wagner could very well be entering his third season with America’s Team.

Instead, he has become America’s traveler. The tryout with the Broncos marks his fourth training camp.

“I just didn’t kick as well as the other guy did,” Wagner said of his experience as a Cowboy.

Actually, he kicked just as well as Mike Saxon, the man who won the job, all summer long--except for a few fateful seconds in the Windy City.

Wagner, talking by telephone from the Bronco camp in Greeley, Colo., remembers the situation well. He and Saxon were even on the depth chart going into the game against the Bears. Saxon punted in the first half and Wagner in the second.

“They brought two extra guys up to rush at the last second,” he recalled. “I just wasn’t ready for it. Maybe I panicked.

“One bad one. That’s all it took.”

The punt went less than 30 yards, but it carried Wagner out of the league.

Ever since, he’s been trying to become something more than the answer to an obscure college football trivia question. Did you know that in 1983 Wagner was the only kicker in college football to be selected as the most valuable player in his conference?

Even Keith Jackson wouldn’t know that.

Wagner, then a junior, was Western Football Conference Player of the Year, which is both a tribute to his ability and an indictment of the talent in the conference that season.

Certainly, he earned points for versatility. Wagner made 10 of 14 field goals, 23 of 24 extra points and punted for a 43.7-yard average.

He finished his collegiate career with Northridge records for just about everything that involved a ball and toe, and no less than 16 professional scouts expressed interest in Wagner before the 1985 NFL draft.

He wasn’t drafted but received offers from four teams to try out as a free agent. He chose the Cowboys because they wanted to relieve quarterback Danny White of the punting chores and because they hadn’t drafted a replacement.

After being dropped in the next-to-last cut, Wagner was given a look by the Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers during the season. He ended up as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Hilltop High in San Diego.

But he never stopped practicing. “I’d come so close,” he said, “that I couldn’t stop trying.”

Last summer, he signed as a free agent with the New York Giants. Again, he was cut. The St. Louis Cardinals took a look. Same result.

“My biggest mistake so far,” he said, “is that I should have tried out for the Broncos last year.”

Denver, which lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, went through three punters last season--the last of whom was Mike Horan. Wagner and Horan are the only punters left in camp this year.

Mike Nolan, the Broncos’ special teams coach, said the competition is even so far.

“Every day we record 15 to 20 punts from each of them,” Nolan said. “We grade them on distance, hang time and the time it takes for them to get rid of the ball. They’ve pretty much been trading off. If one is ahead in one category, the other is usually ahead in another.”

In Denver’s exhibition game against the Rams in London last Sunday, Wagner handled the punting chores because Horan was out with a muscle strain.

He punted five times for a 39.8 average and managed to dribble one out of bounds just inside the 4-yard line.

“My net was 37 yards, so I was pleased,” Wagner said. “I was hanging the ball up pretty well.”

Wagner will share the punting duties with Horan tonight in an exhibition game against Green Bay in Phoenix.

Ultimately, however, it may be Wagner’s ability to kick off that finally separates the two. Rich Karlis, the Broncos’ place-kicker, is not adept at driving the ball into the end zone on kickoffs.

“That Wagner can kick off is an added plus,” Nolan said. “Whenever the competition is close you have to take things like that into consideration. If someone can fill two roles, he’s got an edge.”

Wagner said he hasn’t thought of the possibilities should his NFL bubble burst again.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I had a good shot at making it,” he said. “I haven’t really thought about the overall picture, whether I would try again. Around here, you concentrate on one day at a time.”