"You can be called a bust, but there are two sides to every story," Mr. Verser said in a recent interview. "If they thought I was going to be a bust, they would have never drafted me. It's just that (Cris) Collinsworth signed earlier than I did, and he got the opportunity to play.
Mr. Verser and Mr. Collinsworth both were wide receivers, drafted 1-2 by the Bengals in 1981. Cincinnati was coming off three straight losing seasons, and Mr. Verser and Mr. Collinsworth - both with sprinter's speed - figured to spark a dull offense.
But Mr. Verser quickly fell out of favor, on the weekend following the draft. He skipped a rookie mini-camp as a contract holdout, while Mr. Collinsworth signed quickly and earned raves in his first workout. That weekend, the first days of May 1981, helped doom Mr. Verser to a career on the bench.
He finally signed in late May 1981, but the damage may already have been done.
Mr. Collinsworth won a starting job immediately, and became a Cincinnati folk hero with his engaging, aw-shucks personality. He was a three-time Pro Bowl choice, did TV commercials, and married a former University of Kentucky cheerleader. He remains famous as a broadcaster on NBC, WLW radio and HBO.
Mr. Verser, unassuming and soft-spoken, lives in relative anonymity. Of his Bengal career, he remains more bewildered than bitter. He does not begrudge Mr. Collinsworth his fame: "To me, he was in the right place at the right time. . . . If I was him, I'd do exactly what he did."
Mr. Collinsworth recalled that Mr. Verser was "off the charts" with spectacular predraft workouts in '81.
"He was so explosive, but I really think he ultimately may have been in the wrong offense for what he did best," Mr. Collinsworth said. "If he was with the Raiders or another team that threw deep, he could have been really special. But the way it was, we had sort of a dinky-dunky, ball-control offense . . . which played to my strong suit."
Collinsworth caught 67 passes as a rookie. Verser caught six.
It went much like that for four years, until the Bengals finally traded Verser just before the 1985 season.
When Verser played for the Bengals, there were annual newspaper reports about how, "This is the year," that coaches wanted to start getting him the ball.
"It never happened," Verser said. "They always told me I would play more, but I never got a chance."
Bengals General Manager Mike Brown, the assistant GM in Verser's day, said Verser was a great talent who lost invaluable ground by holding out.
"Cris took advantage of his absence," Brown said recently. "Being as good as Cris was, that was enough to make the difference."
Verser did make a spectacular play or two in his career, and averaged 19.7 yards per catch. But he caught just 23 passes in four years (1981-84) with Cincinnati.
He was traded to Green Bay in August 1985, and moved on to Tampa Bay before finishing his NFL career as a strike-replacement player for Cleveland in 1987. After leaving the Bengals, he never caught another NFL pass.
Different look
Verser remained in Cincinnati after leaving football. He worked in car sales, social services, and the juvenile court system before becoming a police officer in 1993.
He works out of the District Five office near Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Working day shifts, he goes out in his cruiser and patrols Winton Terrace, Northside, and part of Clifton. He said much of the work involves traffic enforcement and domestic disputes.
Last month, Verser sat in the District Five office lobby and discussed his NFL career, and why he stayed in Cincinnati instead of returning to Kansas City, Kan., where his 13 siblings still live.
Still in uniform for the interview, having just been dismissed from his shift, Verser smiled easily and spoke softly. Between sentences, he traded good-natured barbs with fellow police officers as they passed in and out.
Physically, Verser has changed dramatically.
He still is 6-foot-2 but weighs a chiseled 255 pounds, having added 45 pounds of weightlifting muscle since retiring from football. His black hair, once bushy, is now shaved close.
Verser added the weight for police work. "To deal with whatever's out there," he said, glancing outside a window and gesturing with his left hand.
He sometimes muses that he could still play football.
"But I'd have to be a tight end now," he said, laughing.
He retains the trim waist and sculpted physique that once led a writer to dub him, "a heavyweight boxer in a football uniform."
How did Verser, whose first Bengal contract was a two-year, $260,000 deal, come to be a policeman whose annual salary is less than his NFL rookie signing bonus of $50,000?
"Eventually, I figured I would get into some kind of social work," he said.
But he did not figure on being out of the NFL before age 30.
And it all dates to that weekend in May 1981.
Was 'can't miss'
Verser was drafted No. 1 by the Bengals - 10th overall in the NFL - out of Kansas on April 28, 1981. Draft analysts almost unanimously rated him the best receiver available. Great speed (4.4 in the 40 dash), hands and leaping ability.
"I think he will be extremely successful in the NFL," said Pete Brown, Bengals director of player personnel.
Headline: May 3, 1981 - Bengal brass raps Verser's agent as No. 1 pick skips rookie camp.
"I was branded as the first rookie to ever miss their mini-camp," Verser said.
Bengals GM Paul Brown called it "agentry," gamesmanship on the part of Verser agent Michael Reed. In the same story, The Enquirer reported that everyone gushed about one player at rookie camp:
Cris Collinsworth, a wide receiver from Florida, stole the show with his elegance in the air. Collinsworth, fleet and sinewy at 6-foot-4 and 192 pounds, was impressive on his pass patterns.
Verser was back home in Kansas.
By the time Verser signed, Collinsworth was already a star. And veteran receiver Isaac Curtis - whom Verser was to replace - squeezed out a few more seasons while Verser played mostly on kickoff returns.
Collinsworth was already a polished receiver, having come from a passing offense at Florida. Verser, who had never had big stats at Kansas, apparently needed work.
The problem, a Bengal insider said recently, was that Verser did not always run precise routes.
"If you told him to run seven yards, he might run nine. If you said 10, he might run eight. He just had trouble getting the patterns down. . . . The quarterbacks would throw the ball, and he wouldn't be there."
Verser does not agree.
"I worked hard. I had the playbook down," he said. "But we were winning, so why change things? . . . One game against Pittsburgh, I went 73 yards for a touchdown. Then I never saw the ball again for a month."
That was 1981, when the Bengals went to the Super Bowl led by an MVP season from quarterback Ken Anderson and a Pro Bowl year from Collinsworth.
Which brings up Super Bowl XVI, another sore point for Verser. He took some blame for the famous goal-line stand by San Francisco, when Cincinnati was snuffed at the 1-yard line in the third quarter of a 26-21 loss.
"Every year around the Super Bowl," Verser said, "someone tells me, ŒI was listening to WLW the other night, and they were on there saying something about you, how David Verser didn't hear the call and missed a block and Pete Johnson was stopped at the 1-yard line.'
"Well, I'm not the only one who didn't hear the call, because nobody heard it."
But, Verser and his No. 81 jersey stood out on the replays. And Anderson later wrote in his book, The Art of Quarterbacking, "David did not run the pattern deeply enough."
Injuries hurt, too
Matters did not improve for Verser in his second season, 1982. Nor in 1983. Or 1984.
Headline, 1983 - Verser feels left out of Bengals' game plan. (This is a recording).
There were also injuries. A knee injury in 1981. A shoulder and a bruised sternum, both in 1983. A bruised thigh in 1984.
"Running back kickoffs, you're going to hurt," Verser said.
By 1983, Bengals head coach Forrest Gregg still hoped Verser would flourish. His speed and raw talent still tantalized the franchise.
"David needs to play," Gregg said. "We think David has great talent, great potential . . . (But) How can you play him when he's hurt?"
By 1984, Gregg was gone to Green Bay, and Sam Wyche was the new Bengals coach. Surely Verser would get a chance under the innovative Wyche, and Wyche said yes, he wanted to play Verser. But . . .
"He's been hurt so daggone much," Wyche said. "And he's been a slow healer."
Verser was also criticized for his approach. He was occasionally lackadaisical in meetings and practices, finding it hard to concentrate when he believed he would not play anyway.
By 1985, the statute of limitations was running out. Verser was no longer guaranteed to make the Bengals on potential alone.
Headline, July 1985 - Verser sitting on the bubble.
In August '85, Verser was traded to the Packers - reunited, oddly enough, with Gregg. The Bengals got "an undisclosed draft choice" in return for Verser.
"We don't have an awful lot at stake," Bengals patriarch Paul Brown said then. "But it's better than nothing."
Verser continued to battle injuries, bouncing to Green Bay and Tampa Bay and then Cleveland as a strike replacement player in 1987. When he could no longer pass an NFL physical, he retired.
'David had it all'
Back in Kansas, John Hadl still cannot figure it. Hadl, the former San Diego Chargers quarterback, was Verser's offensive coordinator at Kansas.
"I don't know what the heck happened there (Cincinnati)," said Hadl, now an associate athletic director at Kansas. "That guy was as good an athlete as anyone could ever see. God, he was a super receiver."
Before the 1981 draft, Hadl compared Verser to NFL greats such as Lynn Swann and Lance Alworth.
"He's better than most of the receivers I threw to," Hadl said then.
He stands by that remark.
"Athletically," he said, "David had it all."
Protects anonymity
June 1997. Verser will not reveal where he lives in Cincinnati, for privacy reasons.
"People find out where you live, and because you used to play for the Bengals, they want something or just want to be around you," Verser said, smiling.
He never married, has no children. He was engaged once, but it did not work out. "She lived in California and didn't want to be away from there."
His parents, Robert and Clareta, both died of cancer, a year apart in 1984 and 1985. That was tough, for it was around the same time that Verser's football career began its final stages.
He still goes to see his siblings in Kansas - he was born ninth of the 14 - but likes living quietly in Cincinnati.
"I know more people here than I do in Kansas City," he said. "That's why I stayed here. I figured there would be more opportunities to find work."
Verser prefers not to discuss his private life, other than to say things are going well. He likes being anonymous, relatively speaking.
A columnist once named Verser's Mercedes 380 SL the snazziest car in the Bengals' training-camp parking lot, but Verser allowed himself few other luxuries.
"That car is long gone," he said. "I drive a Maxima now. Just an old regular-person car."
On the job, there is the constant threat of danger. No one has ever fired a gun at Verser, but someone once attacked him with a knife. A fellow officer disarmed the assailant by plunking him with a nightstick.
"I always think about what I'm going to do if this or that happens," Verser said. "There are a lot of drugs out there, but most of that is at night, and I don't work nights right now."
He still visits Spinney Field, the Bengal headquarters just west of downtown. He chats with longtime Bengal employees such as equipment manager Tom Gray and trainer Paul Sparling. And yes, Mike Brown.
Not 'a bust'
"He still comes back, and it's always good to visit with him," Brown said.
Brown has seen it before. For every Collinsworth there is a Verser. For every Boomer Esiason there is a David Klingler.
"The thing that it points out is how the draft misleads people," Brown said. "The reality is that most first-round picks don't become what everyone thinks they will."
Brown feels for Verser, because Verser is such a nice guy. But nice means nothing in the brutal NFL, as Verser found out.
But the game still tugs at him, and he has mulled coaching. "But the opportunity hasn't really come up, and I haven't applied anywhere."
The problem, he said, is his name.
"Any time I read about myself in the paper, it's David Verser, bust," he said. "So people say I don't know anything about football, which is wrong. It's dead wrong. But there's nothing you can do about it."
There is a tinge of bitterness, but not sadness. You could feel sorry for Verser the failed athlete, but he doesn't. He knows there are people with worse lives, such as the divorced and homeless and underprivileged he sees daily. And so Verser is proud to be a policeman, proud of the prestige and respect that comes with the job.
"He was a really great guy," Collinsworth said. "I always enjoyed being around David. You just wonder what would have happened if another team drafted me, and if the Bengals would have played David from the beginning. I still would have liked to see him have a chance somewhere else . . . I always thought he was going to end up a star."
Even now, Verser thinks about that. He believes he could still crack 4.5 seconds in the 40-yard dash, and if that seems farfetched, you get no arguments from the high-crime Winton Terrace housing project.
"I chase guys up in the Terrace all the time," Verser said. "I catch every single one of them."
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