A lot on Little's mind

Linebacker never will forget accident

By Ron Borges, Globe Staff, 1/30/2002

EW ORLEANS - Even at the apex of a dream season, The Nightmare is never far from Leonard Little.

Yesterday, Little sat squirming uncomfortably in a seat at the Superdome. He wasn't talking about his 141/2-sack season or the fact that the timing of it couldn't have been better, because he will be a free agent in a month and likely to become a multimillionaire in a league that will pay handsomely someone who destroys quarterbacks the way he does.

Those were topics open for discussion, but they have become secondary in his life, just as football has because even at this moment, Little understands he once destroyed much more than a quarterback's timing. Once he destroyed a life and a family in a way he never can make right, no matter what he does.

So he smiles a little less than you might expect for a 27-year-old on the cusp of stardom and riches. He smiles a little less than you might expect for a guy who has made a big reputation for himself when his chance finally came this season.

He smiles a little less and sometimes he doesn't smile at all. At least not when the memory of Oct. 19, 1998, returns and he recalls again the mistake he made the night of his 24th birthday.

''It never goes away,'' Little said of what happened when he went out drinking with some of his Rams teammates and a tragedy followed that no sack, no Super Bowl victory can change.

He admits he had way too much to drink. Others around him claim he was never much of a drinker and some of his older teammates, who are no longer in St. Louis, goaded him into drinking so far to excess that he was blind when he tried to drive home. They say those people never should have put him in a car and let him drive and that part is undeniable because Little never got home. He got into a fiery car crash instead that killed a St. Louis woman and left a young husband a widower and a young child without his mother.

''That stays on my mind 24-7,'' Little said, his eyes drawing a bead on the laces of his sneakers. ''It's something I'll have to deal with the rest of my life. I'll never forget it and I shouldn't. I have to live with the worst decision I ever made in my life. You can't blame anybody else. People try to but you can't. You have to do it like a man.''

Less than a month after the accident the Rams sent their rookie linebacker home for the rest of the season. They told him to face what he had to face and find some way to cope with it. Alone.

And so he did, but the coping was not easy. Nor quick.

The first choice he considered was never going back to St. Louis or to pro football. Instead he thought of simply staying in the room downstairs until his hair turned gray and his life had slipped away like the woman who died that night through no fault of her own.

''I thought every day about never playing football again,'' Little said, the words coming out calmly but his eyes staying lowered until each question had been answered and his voice was stilled. Only then could he look at his questioner until the next question put him back for a moment in the twisted wreckage he created that night.

''I stayed at my mom's house,'' Little recalled. ''I stayed downstairs in a dark room for three or four weeks. I thought about never playing again. What right you got to play after doing something like that?''

What right indeed? That is what a goodly number of people in St. Louis felt and certainly what the family of his victim felt when a court ordered him to serve 1,000 hours of community service but no jail time for an accident Little concedes really was no accident at all because of the decisions he made that night.

''People know the situation but they don't know me,'' Little said. ''They judge me from that situation I was in. But God forgives. That's what the Bible says. I was a Christian but I got away from it when I got into the NFL. There's a lot of things that can distract you from what's right when you come into the league. I think about that now and I think about the consequences of what I do. I didn't do that back then.''

Leonard Little sounds like an old man when he speaks these words. He sounds like someone with a heavy weight on his shoulders, one that not even a 141/2-sack season as the pass rushing replacement for former All-Pro defensive end Kevin Carter can erase.

But he knows nothing should erase it. Not completely. He has gone on with life since returning to the Rams a year after the accident, playing in six games during the team's 1999 Super Bowl season and 13 this year as St. Louis's most dangerous pass rusher, but nothing he does can erase one night, one mistake. Not sacks or Super Bowl rings. Nothing, maybe, but what he can't get.

''I've never talked to her family,'' Little said. ''I wish I could. I wish I could tell them how sorry I am. If they could forgive me it would help me out a little bit but we're all human. The Bible says you got to forgive people but it's not easy.''

Compassion is hard to find in such a situation and Leonard Little understands that, just as he understands how blessed he has been since he took over for Carter this season and landed in a position where he finally could do what he does best.

But while he has found sacking quarterbacks easier than his barely 250-pound body would seem to allow, he admits that forgiving a man who did what he did is not easy. Not easy at all.

''If it was me could I forgive somebody?'' Little said. ''I think so. It would be hard. I'm not saying it would be easy, but I believe I could. But I'd never forget it. Lord no.''

And so he has not, but Leonard Little has forgiven himself as best one can and tried to move on. For months after the accident, he felt like he was trapped inside a nightmare that would not go away. Two years later, it still has not, but life is different now because you move on or you sink and disappear.

Little has yet to start a game in four years in St. Louis since being drafted out of the University of Tennessee as an undersized defensive end prospect, but he has played in 43 games and has become a specialist in a highly prized trade. He is a man with one job and it is a clear and distinct one. He is on the field to attack the quarterback, something he did this year as well as anyone in the NFC but Michael Strahan.

''When Kevin was traded I knew there would be an opportunity for me this season and I had to take advantage of it,'' said Little. ''I knew I'd play a more prominent role if he left. I'm one of the smallest defensive ends in the league. Me and Jevon Kearse and John Abraham. But we got speed.''

Little has as much speed as anyone but he had to learn how to harness it, a transition that took time. This season - with free agency looming - it seems he finally figured that out.

''He now understands with the speed he has how effective he can be chasing down plays from behind,'' says Rams defensive line coach Bill Kollar. ''He made an awful lot of plays from behind.

''You see a pass 10 or 15 yards down the field and then you see No. 91 coming into the picture. I'm very excited about what he was able to do this season. He's becoming a force as a pass rusher that we hoped he would.''

He may be a force who has to move after this season but wherever he goes, Leonard Little will take a memory with him that never will fade away. It is not a memory of Super Bowl glory or fallen quarterbacks.

It's a memory of a mistake made and a life that must be lived in its dark shadow.

''You never get away from it,'' Little said one last time. ''Even when you have a lot of success like I had this season, you know that night happened. You gotta live with that. It don't mean you can't go out and play football and have fun, but you got to deal with it the rest of your life.''