End To End

They met during a recruiting weekend on the Florida campus in January 1995- Kevin Carter was the All-America, soon to be the sixth selection in the NFL draft. Jevon Kearse was the gangly safety-linebacker prospect, looking for a place to pursue his dreams.

Introduced at a party, they talked awhile, then moved on. But whenever Carter returned to Gainesville and watched Kearse work as an outside linebacker, he would think, This kid is going to be a great defensive end. Kearse heard the same thing from his teammates, who told him, You'll be just like Kevin Carter. It was the ultimate compliment. "Kevin is still the talk of the town down there," Kearse says today.

Thanks to a March 28 trade that sent Carter from the St. Louis Rams to the Tennessee Titans, the two are the talk of Nashville. Now, however, Kearse is the known quantity and Carter must prove himself. Kearse, a first-round draft pick in 1999, has become the quintessential sack specialist, confounding offensive linemen with his speed and quickness. Carter is starting over, trying to put a nightmarish 2000 season behind him.

In St. Louis, Carter's problems were twofold: money and coach Mike Martz. The cash part was simple. Going into the final year of his contract (and coming off a dream 1999 season in which he led the league with 17 sacks, made his first appearance in the Pro Bowl and was part of a Super Bowl championship team), Carter sought an extension that would make him the league's highest-paid defensive player. The Rams' offer—a seven-year, $45 million deal that included a $12 million signing bonus—fell short of that, and Carter also felt the package was too back-loaded, with $25 million to be paid over the final four years of the nonguaranteed contract, according to his agent, Harold Lewis. When Carter balked, the Rams spent the money elsewhere, signing quarterback Kurt Warner and wideout Isaac Bruce to long-term extensions. After that, St. Louis was too close to the salary cap to lock up Carter, leaving him disappointed, confused and, in the team's estimation, bitter.

The Martz situation was more complex. Carter had enjoyed a close relationship with Martz's predecessor, Dick Vermeil. He had no such bond with Martz, the offensive coordinator under Vermeil and a man who isn't as nurturing with his players as Vermeil was. Carter and Martz initially clashed after the birth of Carter's first child, Zion, on Sept. 19. Carter had stayed up for 18 hours to be with his wife, Shima, during the delivery. Drained, he says he assumed skipping practice the next day wouldn't be a problem and left a message at the team's facility, informing team officials of his plans.

Martz, though, never heard anything and was livid. He perceived Carter's actions as the insolence of a player operating under his own set of rules. "Kevin needs to look around—other people are having babies in the world too," says Martz, alluding to the fact that Warner and left tackle Orlando Pace had been absent when their children were born during training camp that year and never missed a practice. Martz benched Carter for the start of that week's game, against the Atlanta Falcons, and fined him $20,000.

Carter admits that he didn't handle the situation well, and that his relationship with Martz deteriorated. Martz thought Carter didn't work hard in games or practice and benched him on two more occasions. "Kevin feeds off encouragement, not benchings," says former St. Louis defensive tackle D'Marco Farr, a teammate of Carter's for six seasons. "If you bench him, it will only be a negative." For the rest of the season Carter and Martz spoke only when necessary.

"Anybody who knows me knows I'm emotional," Carter says. " Coach Vermeil never hung me out to dry. He had me over to his house for dinner. He addressed players as individuals. He was involved in my life enough to know to treat me differently than someone else. My relationship with Mike was different. Sometimes he wouldn't address me about a problem. He would just do it through the media."

"When [members of] the media ask you why a player is benched, you tell them," Martz says. "I called Kevin into my office four or five times during the year to talk about his problems, and every time he would say all the right things. In Kevin's mind, he wasn't playing poorly. I never saw him as a cancer, but I really think he got into a funk. He could never get the contract issue out of his mind."

As the Rams' defense—a unit that would surrender a league-high 29-4 points a game—got progressively worse, Carter went into a shell. He sat by himself in meetings and rarely joked with teammates. Although Vermeil called twice a week to offer support, Carter felt like a scapegoat. "You could tell he wasn't happy," says New Orleans Saints right tackle Kyle Turley. "This is a guy who had 17 sacks a season earlier and is talented enough to do it every year. It was pretty obvious something was bothering him."