Hanging On : Injuries Idle Affholter, but Packers Are Impressed, Keep Him on Payroll

When wide receiver Erik Affholter was on the USC football team in the late 1980s, he set school records for single-season and career catches, some in big games against UCLA.

Then he graduated in 1989, signed with the Green Bay Packers as their fourth-round draft choice and dropped from sight.

What happened the last two years?

Affholter has been on one injury list after another since his first week in Green Bay, where the coaches still think so much of him that the Packers signed him to another two-year contract at $275,000 a year.

“It’s been a long, long two years,” Affholter said from the Packers’ training camp at St. Norbert College in West DePere, Wis.

Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Bob McGinn agrees: “Four months ago, the club even protected him in Plan B--although he hasn’t played a down for them yet, even in an exhibition game.”

What does Affholter have on the Packers?

“He has the ability to be a starter,” said wide receiver coach Buddy Geis, who wants to see him in Coach Lindy Infante’s four-receiver formations and possibly at flanker in the two-receiver formations. “Erik is always open, he’s quick and he has the best hands on the club.”

And McGinn pointed out: “This is the club that employs Sterling Sharpe, the best receiver in the league after Jerry Rice.”

The Packers don’t believe Affholter is injury-prone.

“The injuries were of the freak variety, both of them,” Affholter said.

He said his strangest two years began in 1989 during his final semester at USC. After the Packers drafted him that spring, he was practicing football one afternoon in a friend’s back yard in Los Angeles.

“I had a big day until I stepped on a metal sprinkler head and broke an ankle,” he said.

That gave him a splendid opportunity to let the Packers off the hook. No football coaches want damaged goods.

But Affholter took another tack, keeping his troubles to himself and continuing to negotiate with the club. Before training camp, he finally signed a two-year contract.

When he limped into St. Norbert’s in the summer of 1989, the Packers were so impressed with Affholter’s gall--he acknowledges he behaved shamelessly--that instead of cutting him on the spot, they put him on their physically unable-to-perform list and began paying his salary.

“We’ve paid him regularly ever since,” Green Bay spokesman Lee Remmell said.

After his first season, though, the coaches found themselves with so much other good young talent that they decided to expose Affholter to Plan B in the spring of 1990, protecting 37 other players. Who would take a chance on him?

Then the offers began pouring in, and the Packers began to worry.

“He got a really big offer from Kansas City,” McGinn said. “I’m still surprised he didn’t take it.”

Affholter said: “The Packers, to begin with, were loyal to me. I just repaid them.”

That balanced the accounts for his first year in Green Bay, a disappointing one for Affholter and the club. He expected a big second year. And at the Packer mini-camp in the spring of 1990, he showed up early to make circus catches all over the field.

Then he went into the training room and blew another season.

“I tore a hamstring muscle on the stretching machine, of all things,” he said. “The tear was so serious that I couldn’t even practice until last October. The best thing is that I haven’t missed a practice since then.”

Affholter considers it a break to be plying his trade in Green Bay. Others would be disconcerted by the cold weather, but Affholter is on a passing team there, and he’s a great admirer of Infante, whose pass offense is among the most sophisticated in the league.

“Last year was kind of wasted with all the early holdouts and the injury to (quarterback) Don Majkowski,” Affholter said. “We’re in a very competitive division, but I foresee a good season for us, against Chicago and Minnesota both.”

Why?

“Coach Infante forces defensive teams to make more adjustments than they’re used to, or than they want to, by the way he spreads the field out.”

A year ago, Infante frequently used four wide receivers in the lineup at the same time--Sharpe at split end and veteran flanker Perry Kemp on the other side, with two inside slot players, Clarence Weathers and Jeff (White Lightning) Query.

Although nobody has ever called Affholter “White Lightning,” he’s a candidate for every Packer receiving position except Sharpe’s. The only 200-pounder is Sharpe. The others are either short, light or both, and Affholter, who sometimes is thought of as slow and little, could be Green Bay’s second-largest receiver, if not second-fastest. He stands 6 feet and is up to 187 pounds.

And he’s no longer slow, if he ever was.

“That was a bad rap,” Affholter said, thinking of some USC critics.

Said position coach Geis: “I think of him as fast and hungry. That’s a good combination.”

The Packers recently timed the former Trojan receiver in 4.5 seconds for 40 yards.

“A guy can improve his speed, and I did it running a lot of hills,” Affholter said. “Coach (Jim) Bush insists that his hill program increases speed, and I’m here to tell you that it does.”

In addition to his work with the pass offense this year, Affholter is practicing each day with the kickers. He had a 62-yard field goal one time in a high school game but conceded that, so far, his accuracy hasn’t matched his range.

Moreover, as USC Coach Larry Smith said recently, Affholter’s business is catching passes. As a kicker he might be a little erratic, but as a receiver he seems to hold every ball that comes his way.

“You have to be impressed that after he’d lost two years to injury, the Packers still wanted Erik back,” Smith said.

There are people who say they’ve watched Affholter for years and never seen him drop a pass. Well, one drop, maybe. But no more.

A communications major at USC, he plans someday to go into broadcasting or film work.

“Not soon, though,” he said. “Not until the next century, at least.”