Player to Watch: Jamie Holland? : He Could Be Most Improved--or a Motivational Message

SAN DIEGO — Maybe it is a measure of just how desperate the Chargers are that they are offering wide receiver Jamie Holland as the “player to watch” in the early portion of training camp.

Consider: Holland was a seventh-round draft choice in 1987. He caught six passes last year. He was not a full-time starter his senior year at Ohio State.

Maybe it is a measure of the psychological lengths to which Charger Coach Al Saunders will go in order to convince his two top rookies that the jobs they hope to earn won’t come without a price.

Wes Chandler and Lionel James, both starters at wide receiver last year, won’t be this year. Chandler will line up for the San Francisco 49ers this summer, and James will line up in the Charger backfield.

What better motivational message could Saunders send to his most expensive rookies--wide receivers Anthony Miller and Quinn Early--than this one:

“Jamie Holland is the most improved player on this football team,” Saunders says to whomever will listen.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that simple.

Maybe the guy has just gotten better. At the very least, he has gotten bigger by 10 pounds and has become more confident. He is now 6-feet 1-inch tall and weighs 195 pounds.

“It’s time to compete,” he said.

Maybe the three balls he caught during a blizzard at Denver in the final week of last season were more precedent than accident. Maybe he really is even faster than he was in 1987, thanks to a weight-lifting program that stressed leg muscle development.

When asked what the Chargers saw in Holland at Ohio State, director of football operations Steve Ortmayer said: “Blazing speed. He was a guy who the scouts weren’t certain was sure-handed. But there was no reason to believe he wasn’t sure-handed. What we saw in Jamie Holland was a big, fast receiver.”

What Dan Fouts saw in Holland was a rookie who ran poor routes, didn’t catch the ball well coming back to the quarterback and couldn’t always remember where he was supposed to be. So Fouts didn’t bother with Holland for a while. There were plenty of other guys Fouts knew would read defenses the same way he did.

“I was intimidated by Dan Fouts,” Holland says. “That’s no secret. Dan is a perfectionist, and everything had to be right.”

Fouts’ arm wasn’t what it had once been. He liked to throw on rhythm and catch receivers coming out of their breaks. Holland liked to run deep and catch the ball running away. His speed was real, but he had trouble harnessing it when coming out of his cuts.

It was a long, lonely year.

“Jamie was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Saunders.

But by the end of the season, even the demanding Fouts began to come around on Holland.

“He was critiquing me without criticizing me,” Holland said.

Then Fouts retired. The Chargers had already hired Jerry Rhome as offensive coordinator and pledged to “stretch” defenses with a long-passing game that had been ineffective since the departure of wide receiver Bobby Duckworth in 1984.

“Jerry Rhome is a receiver’s dream,” Holland said.

The selections of Miller in the first round and Early in the third were wake-up calls.

“I knew we were gonna get one wide receiver,” Holland said. “But I didn’t know the next one was going to go so high.”

Holland was puzzled.

“The first feeling in my mind was that they had lost it,” Holland recalls. “What was the problem?”

According to one Charger coach, the problem was Holland’s hands.

“If I had been Fouts,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thrown him the ball, either.”

The problem, according to Ortmayer: “Not Holland’s hands. Catching the ball can be an acquired skill. Maturity and concentration were what Jamie needed to work on.”

So Holland canceled his plane reservation back to Columbus and stayed in San Diego during the off-season to work on football. Holland had run track at Ohio State, where he studied the running form of a teammate, quarter-miler Butch Reynolds. In 1987, Reynolds ran the three fastest sea-level 400-meter times ever recorded.

Reynolds taught Holland all about “turnover.” And it had nothing to do with fumbles or interceptions. In track, turnover is the extra-gear ability that enables top runners to run the second half of their races faster than the first half.

Holland says he has translated that ability to football. Especially on what the Chargers call “9” or “streak” routes.

“When that ball is thrown long, it looks like I am going full speed,” he said. “But I can put it in turnover and go get it.”

Holland is not shy about showing his speed or talking about it.

“Yes,” he said, “I can run with Miller and Early (both of whom also ran track in college). “Anytime. And I ain’t afraid to say it.”

Nor is he hung up on the psychology Saunders may or may not be using on him.

“I’m not the kind of guy who will start relaxing when the coaches start hyping me,” he said. “I take it as a challenge that Coach Saunders says I’m the most improved.”

Maybe that’s as it should be.

Charger Notes

The Chargers added another quarterback to their roster Saturday, but he will not make the final cut. His name is Mike Van Allen, and he used to play quarterback at La Verne (Calif.) College. “He’s not here to compete for a job, and he knows that,” said Charger Coach Al Saunders. The Chargers will use Van Allen to work on cadence with the offensive linemen. La Verne is the same college for which Steve Ortmayer played center for three years. . . . Notre Dame rookie linebacker Cedric Figaro missed the morning practice with recurring back problems. He returned in the afternoon. . . . Newly acquired center Fred Quillan received the day off to attend a reunion of the 1981 Super Bowl champion 49ers.