They Are Willing to Be Patient : Barry Word: He had 200 yards in one game, but is No. 2 in a one-back offense.

Nicknamed “the Last Word” at the University of Virginia, where he was voted the Atlantic Coast Conference football player of the year in 1985 after rushing for 1,224 yards, it seemed that the NFL had heard the last of troubled running back Barry Word when he walked away from the New Orleans Saints two games into the 1988 season.

Word, who had spent 4 1/2 months in prison in 1986, after pleading guilty to cocaine distribution while at Virginia, said he needed time to rebuild his life before he could concentrate on football.

By last fall, he was ready again for football. But football wasn’t ready for him. He was waived by the Saints and sat out the season after failing in tryouts with the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers.

But the Kansas City Chiefs have given the Last Word one last chance.

“Kansas City is probably the only team that would have given me a fresh start,” Word said. “Other teams had an opportunity to bite, but most of them passed for fear that I’d get back involved with drugs or I wasn’t in the shape I needed to be in.”

Word was working as a salesman for a long-distance telephone company in Reston, Va., when the Chiefs sent him a plane ticket for a tryout last spring.

“We did quite a bit of research on him,” Coach Marty Schottenheimer said. “We flew him out and I visited with him for a couple of hours and my feeling was that we weren’t taking a great risk because he’s a very bright young man. I was not uncomfortable with the situation.”

Signed as a free agent in May, Word set a Chiefs’ single-game rushing record by gaining 200 yards--most of it in the last quarter--in 18 carries in a 43-24 victory over the Detroit Lions on Oct. 14. Word gained only 26 yards in the first half but was up to 73 after three quarters, then ran wild. In his big plays, he broke free for 53 yards and a touchdown, then added a 34-yard sweep.

Has Word surpassed the Chiefs’ expectations?

“A little bit,” quarterback Steve DeBerg said. “He hasn’t played football in a couple of years, so he just continues to improve.”

Despite his record-setting game, Word remains the second back in the Chiefs’ one-back offense, behind Christian Okoye, the 1989 NFL rushing leader.

“Christian Okoye is a great football player, and I’m willing to accept the role I have,” Word said.

Raider nose guard Bob Golic dreads having to face the two big backs, Okoye at 6 feet 1 and 260 pounds, Word at 6-2 and 240, in Sunday’s game at Arrowhead Stadium.

How will Golic try to stop Okoye and Word?

“I’m going to bring friends with me,” Golic said. “I’m not going to stop them by myself.”

This season’s good fortune is hardly what Word might have expected a few years ago. Expelled from Virginia after he was charged with cocaine distribution, Word pleaded guilty and shortly exchanged his football uniform for a prison uniform of steel-toed shoes, denim jeans and a work shirt.

A small-town boy from Halifax, Va., Word says he got involved in drugs because of peer pressure.

“I have to blame it on immaturity,” he said. “In college I was a child. Now I’m a man. I’m 26.”

After serving 4 1/2 months of a sixth-month sentence at a minimum-security facility in Morgantown, W.Va., Word joined the Saints in 1987. They had selected Word in the third round of the 1986 draft. He played 12 non-strike games for the Saints in 1987, starting two of them and rushing for 133 yards and two touchdowns. He played two more games in 1988 before walking away from the NFL.

Why did he leave?

“I’d been through a lot without a chance to sit back and understand everything that had happened,” Word said. “I didn’t perform the way I was capable of performing and I wasn’t making myself happy. I thought I had to get away and not come back until I was able to give 100%.

“I did it knowing that maybe no one would let me come back and play, but it was a chance I had to take. . . . I had to decide what was important to me.”

Word was nervous when he joined the Chiefs at a mini-camp last spring, dropping passes, but he settled down and later was impressive during training camp and the exhibition season, gaining a team-leading 90 yards during the exhibition season.

He says the Chiefs have been supportive: “They treat me just like anyone else. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be because I am like anyone else. Coach Schottenheimer reminds me of what has happened in the past sometimes just to keep it on my mind. But he says it to me in a way where I know he’s behind me. It’s not like he’s riding me all the time.”