No Pain, No Gain . . . -- After Glory Fades, Trite Attitude Haunts Retired Players

MIAMI - It never occurred to former Miami Dolphins defensive tackle Manny Fernandez that he shouldn't play after separating his shoulder before a playoff game against the Oakland Raiders in 1970.

"With a little Xylocaine and a good leather-and-chain harness, we just strapped the shoulder to my side and I went out and played with one arm," he says.

Before the mid-1980s, one sideline treatment for a similar injury - a dislocated shoulder - was to hand the injured player a cinder block and then let it go, allowing gravity and the man's bravado to wrench the shoulder into place.

"The general public cannot conceive of what a good football player goes through," Fernandez says. "Absolutely not."

Fernandez was a good football player for eight seasons, 1968-75, playing through concussions, broken jaws, and knee, back, toe and shoulder injuries. Now, after total reconstruction of both shoulders, he can't so much as toss a football. He has had surgery on both knees. Jogging? "That's not even a consideration," he said.

He is far from unique in his infirmity. A generation of former football players is trying to lead normal lives and sleep soundly at night despite wake-up calls from their backs, necks, ankles, shoulders and knees. They commemorate their years of playing traditional super-macho football by popping aspirin and visiting doctors.

Fernandez says he probably will need an artificial knee.

Today's players - on the Dolphins and around the league - have it better. On-field collisions still echo with violence, and players still haul their aching bodies onto the field, but they are less likely to give in to pressure - from themselves and their coaches - to play with serious injuries.

Big contracts encourage players today to preserve their careers - the average NFL salary in 1991 was $425,000, more than 18 times what it was in 1970. Players also find support in medical advances, more freedom to get more than one doctor's opinion, and aggressive allies in their agents.

And besides: "There is less of this ridiculous attitude that you have to be battered, beaten and torn to shreds," says former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Lynn Swann, who played the 1976 Super Bowl in the Orange Bowl despite a concussion. "If a guy's hurt, he doesn't help himself or the team by being out there."

Dolphins Coach Don Shula - according to interviews with former players - traditionally expected players to take extraordinary measures, if necessary, to get out on the field. And the players, eager to please, usually acquiesced.

"Shula wants to field the best athletes - if they're injured and still the best athletes, he'll want them out there," says Newman, a Miami lawyer who played guard in 1973-84. "The joke is that he's got a great tolerance for other people's pain."

Players say it is different now.

Shula says he has always tried to deal compassionately with injured players. "Occasionally, you'll talk to the player and try to find out how he feels about his injury," Shula says. "That's going to be the bottom line - whether the player on game day feels he can go."

That has always been the bottom line on the Dolphins. Despite the pressure some felt, no player was ever forced to play.

Sore shoulders prevent former linebacker/defensive end A.J. Duhe (1977-84) from rough-housing with his kids - Adam, 8; John, 5; and Elizabeth, 1 - and carrying them around. Getting a good night's sleep can be a problem, too.

"A 36-year-old man should be able to sleep on his side without a problem, rest on the floor leaning on his elbow without a problem, and carry his kids around in his back yard," Duhe says. "Those things can be a problem for me."

Five years of painful banging and pounding - masked by painkillers - have left tight end Dan Johnson 30 percent disabled. After he retired, he had a spinal fusion for back problems.

"Any bending is very restricted," says Johnson (1983-87). "I play golf, but I go a few holes and I start hurting. I take aspirin every day. I can't sleep - every time I roll on my stomach at night, it really bothers me."

What motivated Fernandez and friends to wreck their bodies?

Pressure. It was overwhelming, it was accepted as part of the game, and it came from many interweaving sources:

Pressure from within: This has always been the greatest pressure.

"The player wants to play," Fernandez says. "The guys knew what they were doing. It's not something you can lay off on the coaching staff or anyone else. You made a conscious decision that the team came first."

All their lives, that's what football players had been taught: one for all, and all for the team.

"Back then, you didn't want to cost the team a timeout for an injury," says Maxie Baughan, linebackers coach with the Buccaneers who played in the 1960s and '70s for the Eagles, Rams and Redskins. "You would go out and play with a broken leg. That was the mentality."

Fear of losing your job: This remains a strong fear. But a few years ago, a perceived inability to play with an injury - even a significant one - would have stamped an NFL player as unreliable. Agents were not yet a source of support. There was simply the injured player and a beckoning spot on the bench - or the waiver wire.

Pressure from coaches: "You'd get asked daily, `How are you doing?' " Fernandez says. "A lot of times, it was just a blunt: `When are you going to be ready to play?'

"You can write that, but not with the inflection in the voice. I don't know if anyone can get the thrust behind it."

Former players say Shula had the inflection just right.

"He'd say, `Big game coming up - we need you,' " says running back Lorenzo Hampton (1985-89). "You don't want to say, `Hey, man, my knee's killing me.' "

Most Dolphins wouldn't dream of saying anything like that. And Shula, like most of his peers, wouldn't have thought twice about setting the proper tone.

"At the time," says running back Mercury Morris (1969-75), "Shula told us: `What we need to realize on this ball club is that sooner or later, everyone is going to have to play hurt in order to contribute.' Nobody took that as having any detrimental effect then."

Safety Dick Anderson (1968-77): "There's pressure on a guy to play hurt, but that's what he's getting paid for. The coach is going to say, `Get up and go do it; hell, there's nothing wrong with you.' I've seen guys knocked out cold and Shula yelling at them to get out there. But that's part of the game."

Shula says it's up to the doctor and the player to decide if the player is ready to play.

"Once you get into the season," Shula says, "there aren't many players out there who are 100 percent healthy, that don't have some type of ailment. Then you get into the degree of ailment - what can you play with, and what's going to keep you from playing."

The NFL took its first shaky steps toward a greater tolerance of injuries in the 1980s, for a couple of reasons - one having to do with medicine, the other with dollars.

NFL salaries, a reflection of players' worth, were increasing substantially. In 1985, the average salary was $194,000, more than double what it was in 1980 ($78,700) and nearly five times that in 1975 ($39,600).

"It's better today than it was even five years ago because of the value of the property, the value of the athlete," says former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, whose career ended in 1985 because of a broken leg. "If the athlete is hurt, the coach is more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt."

The relationship between coaches and team doctors "is better than when we started," says James McElhinney, Denver Broncos team physician for the past 15 years. "Everybody is getting more educated. The way we treat players is better than when we started because of the medical advances."

The 1982 collective bargaining agreement (which expired in 1987) formally gave players the right to seek second medical opinions. The team doctor no longer was responsible for almost all medical care.

`If you fought with the medical system or disagreed with the coach and went outside for medical care," says safety Jake Scott (1970-75), `"t was like you committed treason or something."

During the 1976 exhibition season, an outside doctor - Fred Allman of Atlanta - told Scott he shouldn't play in an exhibition game because of a shoulder and wrist injury. Herbert Virgin, then the Dolphins team physician, had told Scott he could play.

When Scott refused to play, Shula suspended him. Scott was traded to the Redskins a week later.

"We never told anybody he was physically incapable of playing," Allman says. "We didn't think he should play in an exhibition game when it would only increase the likelihood it would get injured."

Says Scott: "Shula was trying to trade me at the time. That's why he tried to shoot me up and make me play."

Today, the Dolphins encourage players to get second opinions. Specialists routinely are brought in. The transition from macho to relative moderation, however, was not an easy one. Even after the right to a second opinion was formalized in '82, many Dolphins were reluctant to approach Shula.

Jon Giesler says Shula at first vehemently opposed his seeing an outside doctor.

` "What are you doing that for?' " Giesler remembers Shula asking him.

"He said to me, `Are you a doctor?' "