Once Healed, He's a Steal : Broncos: Humphrey's foot injuries scared some teams in the supplemental draft, but Denver is happy to have him.

By MARK HEISLER

Jan. 10, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DENVER — He’s young, he’s hot, he’s today. He has a diamond in his left ear and an avant-garde ‘do, with the sides shaved and the hair upright on top. The effect is of a bowling ball with a brush cut, or a younger Don King.

He’s Bobby Humphrey, long-sought answer to the Broncos’ prayers, as they were to his.

With 1,150 yards in his rookie season, despite not having started until Week 5, he has just posted the third-best Bronco rushing total of all time. He is already their No. 11 career rusher.

How did they get him?

All they had to do was summon their courage and step up after 16 teams had passed Humphrey over in last July’s supplemental draft.

The Dallas Cowboys and the Phoenix Cardinals took quarterbacks Steve Walsh and Timm Rosenbach. Fourteen teams preferred no one at all to the one-time Alabama Heisman Trophy candidate . . . with the twice stress-fractured bone in his right foot . . . who had spent eight of the preceding 12 months in a cast . . . who, upon recovery, ran 4.7-second 40-yard dashes for pro scouts where he had once run 4.5s.

How did the Broncos feel about their coup?

Before the draft, they hadn’t dared hope Humphrey would last until their pick.

Once it was over, they wondered what everyone knew that they didn’t.

“You start saying, ‘Whoa, man,’ ” Coach Dan Reeves says. “You know a lot of teams passed this guy up. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

Meanwhile, in Tuscaloosa . . .

Humphrey figured he’d go in the first five picks. One of those selections was owned by Tampa Bay, whose coach, Ray Perkins, had recruited him, coached him for two seasons and was said to regard him like a son. The Buccaneers needed a running back and had arranged the workout at Tuscaloosa, where Humphrey ran those slow 40s.

The Buccaneers then decided that their traditionally high pick was too much to gamble; they hoped to steal Humphrey on the second round, for which they’d have to give up only a No. 2 choice in the next draft.

Of course, they were trying to fool everyone, and never told Humphrey.

“I really wasn’t upset,” Humphrey says. “I was kinda disappointed. I didn’t know a small bone could cause so much problem, but it did.”

Remember Keith Byars? Once he was rated a hair behind Bo Jackson. Stress fractures slowed Byars down, and now he’s an ordinary back with a career average of 3.4 yards a carry.

Bronco doctors had assured Reeves that Humphrey’s fracture had healed. In minicamp, Reeves saw Humphrey run and stopped worrying.

“I don’t know if desperate is the right word,” Reeves says. “I don’t think you have many chances, when you pick where we pick, to get that type of running back. I can remember being excited about Neal Anderson (when he left Florida in 1986), for example, and we didn’t have a first-round choice. And I couldn’t believe the Chicago Bears ended up getting him with the last pick in the first round. Those types of running backs don’t usually hang around very long.”

Reeves may have been anxious. All he ever had at Denver in the 1980s were slow backs like Sammy Winder. Or pass-catchers like Steve Sewell. Or little ones like Gerald Willhite. Or little, old ones like Tony Dorsett, who was 34 and two years past his last 1,000-yard season when the Broncos got him.

Of course, the Broncos still hadn’t signed Humphrey, nor would they until the 25th day of camp. Humphrey and teammate-to-be Melvin Bratton cooled themselves out in Birmingham, Ala., lifting weights and waiting for news.

“He was, like, nervous and ‘bout to go crazy,” Bratton says. “I’m, like, ‘Look, just be quiet and shut up ‘cause I’m a veteran at this game (Bratton tore up a knee as a Miami senior, was a No. 6 pick of the Dolphins but didn’t sign, preferring to go back into the draft).’ So I knew how to ignore the newspapers. ‘Cause if you read ‘em, you just go crazy.”

Finally, Humphrey signed . . . and big things happened.

“I never expected these things, not at all,” he says. “A lot of it is shocking because everything happened to me so late.

“I was only in camp three or four days before the last (exhibition) game, and I didn’t do so well in that. Then I bruised a thigh and I couldn’t maneuver the way I wanted. I knew all along it could be done, but I didn’t think it could be done this year. I had no idea I would come right in and be a starter.”

In his first start, he ran for 102 yards against the Chiefs.

In his most recent, he gained 85 yards--for a 4.6 average--during Sunday’s 24-23 playoff victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I had a good idea it was going to be a high-intensity ballgame, but I didn’t have any idea it was going to be like that, the way everybody was flying around, getting to the football, making the big hit,” Humphrey says.

“It’s just a lot of excitement. It’s different. I tried to compare it to an Alabama-Auburn game, but the intensity might be a little higher.

“I’ve been told the Browns really get up, so we’re going to have to strap it on. We’re going to have to put on two helmets, two pairs of shoulder pads. We’re going to have to put on everything ‘cause they’re really going to come out there (Sunday, when Cleveland plays Denver at Mile High Stadium for the AFC championship).”

He and Bratton remain inseparable. “They’re both characters,” Reeves says. “They’re both good people to have around you because they’re loose. They don’t let the people around them get uptight.”

What’s not to laugh about? You know what Humphrey was doing a year ago?

“Sitting around, moping,” he says, laughing.

“At this time, I was probably still thinking about what was I going to do, as far as coming out of college and going into the draft, or coming back and playing at Alabama. I was still in a cast, limping around. That’s about it.”

Welcome to the big time. Make way, Jon Keyworth, Rob Lytle, Rick Parros and Dave Preston, there’s a new bucking Bronc on the list, No. 11 with a bullet.