ESPN Magazine

NOW YOU SEE HIM, NOW YOU DON’T

Chris Warren dodges fame and tackles with the same swift style.
Will he step up this year?

By Mary Bruno

CHRIS WARREN IS IN DALLAS VISITING HIS GOOD FRIEND AND SEATTLE Seahawks teammate Cortez Kennedy. It’s spring 1992, and Warren’s still returning punts and kickoffs for a living. He won’t take over as starting running back until the fall, and it’ll be a couple of seasons before NFL insiders regard him as one of the league’s premier runners. But when the teammates wander into Macdonald’s for a bite, Warren has a close encounter with fame. Kennedy’s, that is.

People immediately put down their Quarterpounders to hail ‘Tez, the perennial Pro Bowler with the personality as big as his 6’3", 293-pound frame. They wave and ask for his autograph, and the kids behind the counter slip extra burgers in his bag. Warren is off to the side, unrecognized and slackjawed over all the fuss. "Chris is like, "Hey, they know you everywhere,’" recalls Kennedy. "And I said, ‘You think my name is big? Wait a couple of years ‘til you start playing and we start winning.’"

Well, Warren is still waiting. The 6’2", 230-pound running back with 4.4 speed entered the Seahawks’ starting lineup that fall. Four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons have followed, thanks to an upright, straight ahead, one quick fake and bye-bye style reminiscent of Eric Dickerson. Warren has been to three consecutive Pro Bowls and led the AFC in rushing in 1994 – all, mind you, while playing for a team that hasn’t been to the playoffs since Ronald Reagan left the White House.

By anybody’s standards, Chris Warren is the best damn football player you’ve never heard of.

Blame Warren’s anonymity partly on the fact that he plays for a second-rate franchise in a second-tier TV market. But the crux of Warren’s problem is Warren. The 28-year-old Seahawk may be the league’s most underrated superstar, but he’s also its most reluctant. Just ask his mom.

"I’ve been with him and someone will say, ‘Aren’t you Chris Warren?’ and he’s said, ‘No, I’m not,’" marvels Regina Eagle, a credit union branch manager in Virginia who also handles her son’s finances. "I say to him, ‘You’re very charming, very attractive, you need to go to the forefront because life is short and football life is even shorter.’ But he turns down opportunities because he doesn’t see himself in that light."

The light he does see himself in may be the afterglow of Chris Warren, Sr., whom Regina divorced when Chris was 4, and with whom, Chris says, he’s no longer very close. A year-round jock, Chris, Sr. brought his oldest son to every basketball, softball and flag football game he played. Junior inherited not only his dad’s passion and aptitude for sports, but also an almost quaint philosophy about sportsmanship. "He always told me just to let my performance speak for itself," says Warren. "That there was no need to hotdog or talk about how good you are."

Warren, it seems, took that advice literally. As a boy in Charles County, Md., he’d whack home runs in Little League, then trot back to the dugout and sit soberly on the bench while his teammates went wild. Once at a Little League awards banquet, his mother remembers, she and Chris carted home a boxful of trophies: most home runs, most RBI, everything but Most Valuable Player, which went to one of the white players on the team. When she expressed her indignation, her son said, "As long as I know and the guys I play with know that I was the MVP, that’s all that matters to me."

Over dinner, Warren echoes the same self-effacing sentiments, preferring to talk about how tickled he was to hear Dickerson say he agreed with those who compare the two runners. "It made me feel like a little kid. Of course," he adds with a laugh, "I didn’t let him now that; I had to be a man about it." Ask him about his most memorable moments as a pro, and he doesn’t brag about his longest run. He rhapsodizes about being hit by Derrick Thomas, or watching Barry Sanders run, or taking pictures at the Pro Bowl.

But ask how he feels about not enjoying the same celebrity as the Lions star or even Deion wannabe Keyshawn Johnson, and he bristles. "If you work hard, and your resume shows you deserve it, you should get your Sports Illustrated covers, your commercials, your shoe deals," he says. "But you see all these bogus stories that make the cover of SI--guys who haven’t even played in the NFL yet, with a big smile on their face, like they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. "I probably have a chip on my shoulder, but I don’t want to have to go out and sell myself. They can find me."

Warren doesn’t make finding him easy. "I’ll come by Chris’ locker and he’ll say, ‘Get away from me,’" says Dave Neubert, Seahawks’ public relations director, who has the thankless, at times impossible, task of corralling Warren for reporters. "I tell him, if he wants the recognition, he has to be willing to give up the time."

Up to now, that’s a tradeoff Warren hasn’t been willing to make. After our first talk, he failed to show for three appointments. "I was busy," was his excuse.

But this is only the beginning of busier times for Warren. He’s being called upon to take on the role of team leader and carry Seattle into the playoffs. If he does it, a lot of people will want a piece of his time. Like it or not, says Kennedy, "That’s the price you pay for being a superstar."

As reticent as Warren’s always been, he’s never lacked for ambition. How many 15-year-olds talk their moms into moving 40 miles to another state just so they can play a different position on the football team? Knowing he’d be a too-small, unrecruitable linebacker at Lackey High School in Charles County, Warren wanted to go to Springfield, Va. to play halfback for Robinson High School. "So we moved," says Eagle.

Heavily courted by college football powerhouses, Warren chose the University of Virginia because it was close to home. After two promising years, he pulled a D in Greek mythology and ran afoul of UVA's eligibility rules which were stricter than the NCAA's. He weighed staying at UVA or transferring to another Division I school, but he didn’t want to sit out a year. So he enrolled at Ferrum College, a tiny Division III school in southeastern Virginia where there were no TV cameras, no game films to watch, no free shoes, and worst of all, no airplanes. "We’d go to Maryland, and it would be, like, a ten-hour bus ride," he recalls. "There was none of that glamorous college football life."

Not much competition either. Warren would often play the first half, rack up about 150 yards and four or five touchdowns, then shower, change and spend the second half in the stands. "We didn’t want to embarrass people," says Ferrum’s former offensive coordinator Tim Clifton. Good thing, because in just two years, Warren piled up a school record with 4,583 yards running and receiving. "The guy," says Clifton, "could catch a BB in the dark."

Even so, Seattle didn’t take him until the fourth round of the 1990 draft. "The physical skills were there," says Seahawks’ running back coach Clarence Shelmon, "but his understanding of defenses and what you’re trying to accomplish with each play wasn’t." Shelmon taught Warren the little things that make good runners great. Falling forward after the run, for instance. And, above all, a patient, persistent, grinding mindset, something Warren never worked on at Ferrum because he never had to.

Warren’s lack of big-time exposure hindered him off the field as well. On a rainy December night in 1994, Warren, teammates Mike Frier and Lamar Smith were on their way home from a pool hall in Kirkland, Wash., when Smith’s car swerved into a utility pole. Smith sustained a spinal fracture and an ankle sprain. Warren broke his nose and two ribs. A spinal injury left Frier paralyzed from the waist down.

"To this day, I don’t know what happened," Warren says. "It could have been the wet pavement, bad lighting, that the lane suddenly turned into a median strip. I just don’t know." But somehow in the chaos and confusion, several eyewitnesses mistakenly identified him as the driver, and Kirkland police arrested the Seahawks star, and a legal and media nightmare began.

Eagle flew to Seattle to be with her son. "You couldn’t go outside," she says. "If you did, the press were all over you. They would actually lean on the doorbell."
Smith was finally charged with vehicular assault. But for weeks local columnists made Warren look like a liar and suggested strongly that the Seahawks were engaged in some sort of Chappaquidick-like cover-up. Warren hasn’t forgotten.

"The accident showed me that everyone can think highly of you one minute, then, in the blink of an eye, your name is mud," he says. "Now, there’s always a doubt about my character, a doubt that was planted by people who don’t know me, who don’t know what kind of person I am. I’m honest. If I do something, I admit it."

Three days after the accident, bundled in a flak jacket to protect his broken ribs, Warren started against Indianapolis. The following week, against Houston, he rushed for 185 yards. That effort speaks volumes, says coach Shelmon. "Chris didn’t want to let his team down, and this was a team that had nowhere to go."
Warren made ugly headlines again last year when a woman accused him of grabbing and harassing her in a nightclub. Warren admits getting into a shouting match, but insists he never touched the woman. No charges were filed, the complaint was dropped, and the way he sees it, "She was basically looking for a pay day."

The two incidents, he says, have made him stronger, more careful, and much more wary of the press. He’s not secretive, for example, about his three children, though he’s not forthcoming, either. Ariana, 4, and Kayla, 3, live with their mothers in Seattle. "I’d rather not say anything about that," says Warren. "I do take care of them, and I see them when I can." His third child ("my last one, by the way") is a son, Chris III, born last June.

Considering his ambivalence about the limelight, it’s surprising that Warren is so fascinated by Denis Rodman—"especially his tattoos." Warren has one on each shoulder: The right features the two theatrical masks, comedy and tragedy, because he thinks they capture all the ups and downs of life; the left is a running back galloping right out at you. "I figured when I was older, I could show my grandkids," says Warren who, in a raspy-voiced parody of himself in his dotage, adds, "Yeah, I used to be a football player. I scored five touchdowns a game."

Before the 1994 season, Shelmon gave his protégé a list of goals for the year: 1,300 yards rushing, 40-50 receptions, a top-five finish among NFL rushers. Warren taped the goals to his locker and methodically achieved each one. He rushed for 1,545, tops in the AFC, and caught 41 passes for 323 yards.

Last season, the goal was to be the best at his position in the NFL. Warren’s 1,346 rushing yards ranked second in the AFC, his 15 touchdowns led the conference, and his skills as a blocker and pass catcher propelled the Seahawks into playoff contention for the first time in his career.

Warren’s goal this year is simple: win. He’s sick of losing. After signing a $10 million contract to remain a Seahawk for the next three years, he spent his spring training with the team, the first time he’s done so. "If the guys see me there, it puts pressure on them to get ready to play," he says.

Warren pushes his teammates as hard as he does himself. When he noticed veteran free safety Eugene Robinson leaving the field after practice, he called him on it. "He would usually stay after practice and catch passes or work against a receiver or do something," says Warren. "I told him he was breaking his normal routine. Now, whenever we go against each other, I challenge him in some way."

That attitude is new, says Robinson, who’s known Warren since his rookie days. "Now he’s hungry, you see it, and you think, ‘Man, this brother wants to win.’"
Head coach Dennis Erickson sees the same thing. "Chris has been here most of the off-season working his rear end off, Here’s a guy who wants to get better, who wants to do whatever it takes to win. To me, that’s leadership."

And music to Warren’s ears. Tired of being ignored, yet unwilling to push his way into the spotlight, he’s finally being given credit for what he does on the field. And that’s just the way he likes it.