SAFETY TEST : Newsome Sticks His Neck Out Again in Rams’ Secondary

You can’t hang a price tag on two lost seasons in Vince Newsome’s football life, seasons stolen by troublesome twists of fate and neck. Time past is nonrefundable.

Just a few days before the Rams’ opener, in August 1987, Newsome’s father, Thomas, was killed in a freak carpentry accident. Vince mourned, and played on, though his heart wasn’t quite in it.

Last October, his mind cleared somewhat, Newsome strode head-on into tight end Jay Novacek of the Phoenix Cardinals at Anaheim Stadium. Newsome thought he’d pinched a nerve in his neck, an occupational hazard known to National Football League strong safeties as a “stinger” or “buzzer.”

Newsome rested a game but played four scorching quarters two weeks later against San Francisco, after which doctors discovered he had actually herniated a disk in his neck.

Newsome won’t soon forget the test, called magnetic resonance imaging, that ultimately determined the extent of his injury.

“They laid me on my stomach and shot dye up into my spine, which gives you an excruciating headache,” he said. “I said, ‘Can people die from doing this?’ and they said, ‘Yeah, there was a case.’ You have to sign a waiver.”

Afterward, a CAT-scan was administered.

“You’re laying in that CAT for a couple of hours,” he said. “They strap you down and you’re going around and around (in circles), and you’re going, ‘What’s going on here?’ ”

Newsome didn’t know whether he was being tested or skewered.

The news could have been worse, though--wheelchair worse. But he would only miss the rest of the season, 11 games in all, and doctors assured Newsome he would return at full strength for the 1989 season.

Yet, considering that it was his neck on the line, Newsome wasn’t so trusting. He requested another MRI last May, painful as it would be. Doctors told him another test wasn’t advisable.

Newsome was examined by Dr. Robert Watkins in the spring, however, and his neck was pronounced healed. Newsome actually was cleared at the end of the 1988 season, but the Rams decided against activating him for precautionary reasons.

“It wasn’t fair to him to put him back in a game,” trainer Jim Anderson said.

For one thing, Newsome had not been allowed any rehabilitative work during the layoff. No weightlifting, no running. Nothing. Rest was the only cure.

Newsome was restless to the point of embarrassment. It was difficult explaining an injury for which there was no scar or crutch to hide behind.

“After a month, it was like, if you looked at me, you’d say there was nothing wrong with the guy,” he said.

Now, Newsome’s recovery is more psychological than physical. Doctors say he’s OK. Newsome won’t know for sure until his helmet cracks another. He has long been one of the team’s hardest hitters.

“In football, it’s a danger zone,” Newsome said. “You can mess with a knee, rebuild a knee and come back. But when you mess up a neck, you can suffer paralysis.”

Newsome spent an entire month of the off-season pushing himself through a battery of tests, including full-contact drills against a body bag.

“I told myself in May that if I felt anything, if there was anything, I would just stop playing,” he said. “I would stop playing, no matter what point in my career it is, because it really isn’t worth it. . . . But (now) I don’t think about it at all. If I think about it, then it’s going to take away from my game.”

His game was rounding into fine shape three years ago, before misfortune stripped Newsome of perhaps the best seasons of his career.

“It essentially feels like I’ve had two years off,” Newsome said.

In 1986, he led the Rams in tackles with 113, linebacker numbers from a strong safety. Though he’s just 28, Newsome finds himself fighting again for his niche in the secondary, a battle he had already fought and won against veterans Nolan Cromwell and Johnnie Johnson.

Now the tables have turned. Cromwell and Johnson are gone, and Newsome stands alone, a veteran surrounded by eager young guns.

“It was like I was caught in the middle of the waves,” Newsome said. “The young waves and the old waves.”

An NFL secondary stands still for no man. Newsome must earn his place beside Michael Stewart, who filled Newsome’s spot last season, and second-year safeties Anthony Newman and James Washington.

“We just want to see him play,” Coach John Robinson said of Newsome. “He’s not had a good couple of years. Vince, at his best, we think is very good. We want to see him come back. All four will play. I don’t see that he has a position that no one will take away.”

Despite the competition, Newsome said he owes younger players the benefit of his experience. It’s a rite of passage in the Rams’ secondary. Cromwell once handed the torch to Newsome.

“Nolan used to do that,” Newsome said. “He used to teach me all the time, even though he knew I could possibly play his position. Nolan did it, and I respected Nolan for that. That’s why I knew I could do it.”

Or course, there are limits.

“I don’t think you tell everything,” he said, laughing. “I don’t think anybody tells everything.”

Ram Notes

The shortage of offensive linemen has become serious enough for the Rams to sign center-guard Navy Tuiasosopo, who played with the team during the players’ strike of 1987. These are desperate times for desperate coaches. The four holdout linemen--tackles Robert Cox and Irv Pankey and guards Duval Love and Tony Slaton--are threatening to disrupt preparations for the exhibition game against the San Francisco 49ers Aug. 6 in Tokyo. The plane leaves Monday. “If things don’t change, we have to begin to find solutions,” Coach John Robinson said.

The breakdown of linebacker Frank Stams’ contract: He will receive a $250,000 signing bonus with base salaries of $160,000, $185,000, $210,000 and $240,000 the next four seasons. His package average is $261,000 a year, less than the two Ram second-rounders drafted below him. Linebacker Brian Smith got $270,000 and cornerback Darryl Henley $275,000. Henley came out the big winner, taking up the Rams’ promise to pay the highest salary to the second-rounder who signed first, not predicated on draft order.