Herschel Walker

Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker says there is a chance that he might end his NFL career after this season. "I might retire," Walker told the Dallas Times Herald. "I have enjoyed this season more than I thought I would. But I just know that I won't be doing this much longer. I'm serious. There is a chance I won't be back. " Team president Tex Schramm said he wasn't concerned and compared Walker to the Cowboys' head coach. "I think he's a lot like Tom Landry.

Herschel Walker, arguably one of the NFL's more underappreciated players - apparently with the Eagles, at least - received a vote of confidence yesterday: a three-year contract with the New York Giants. Walker, the Eagles' leading rusher last season, signed a $4.8 million contract with the Giants less than a week after being released by their NFL East rivals. The former Heisman Trophy winner reportedly will get $500,000 in salary for this season and a $1.8 million signing bonus.

Cowboys running back Herschel Walker is a human Yellow Brick Road - the opposition just follows him to the football. With Tony Dorsett in Denver and the Dallas offense in an overall demise, Walker has shouldered more and more of the workload for Tom Landry's 2-5 Cowboys. Having rushed for 665 yards and having added 347 more on 32 receptions, Walker's 1,012 offensive yards have accounted for 38 percent of the total Dallas output. The third-year Pro Bowler out of Georgia is just 24 yards behind San Francisco's Roger Craig for the NFL lead in yards gained from scrimmage.

Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker will miss the team's first three exhibition games because of a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee, the club announced yesterday. Walker suffered the injury Wednesday during a goal-line scrimmage. The injury was originally diagnosed as a bruised tendon or a sprained knee, but an examination by team doctors on Sunday revealed a more serious injury. A spokesman said the injury would not require surgery. "I would like to get back into the swing of things," Walker said.

One week after a dominating victory over the team many feel is the best in the National Football Conference, the Eagles struggled with one of the worst teams in the NFC last night. The Eagles looked nothing like the team that smashed the San Francisco 49ers by 32 points a week ago. But they made the big plays when needed - the biggest being Greg Jackson's interception with 40 seconds to play - and escaped with a 21-17 victory over the Washington Redskins at Veterans Stadium. A letdown?

With everything that has happened to Herschel Walker over the last five years, the last thing you'd expect to find is such an essentially happy man. His smile is constant. It's not a smirk or a grin. There's nothing boastful or fake or forced about it. It's just the look of a man who is very pleased just now to be Herschel, doing what Herschel does best. Forget about the fact that he is about 10 carries away from the second 1,000-yard rushing year of his career. Disregard the 247 yards he has gained catching the ball, plus the eight touchdowns and the sturdy, effective, unselfish job he has done of blocking.

Ricky Watters, finishing the last of a series of live radio interviews on his first day in an Eagles uniform, turned to leave the press lounge on the fourth floor of Veterans Stadium and ran right into another free agent who was signed yesterday. Raleigh McKenzie - all 6-feet-2, 277 pounds of him - clogged the doorway. Watters, perhaps realizing that McKenzie will soon be in charge of opening the middle of the field for him, quickly embraced the former Washington Redskins offensive lineman.

Herschel Walker is one happy guy. Through every question of every interview during the Eagles' training camp, he ends each answer with a smile and is generally as pleasant as a Boy Scout who stops by to collect newspapers. But now hear this: Walker said he was a little bothered watching a tape of Saturday's 35-33 preseason triumph over Pittsburgh. He did not like the way a 6-foot-1, 225-pound veteran running back hit the big holes his offensive line gave him. Too tentative, Walker said.

Want another Herschel Walker story to tell your grandchildren? How about this: Now you can say you saw this guy run right out of his shoes. OK, so maybe it was only one shoe. And maybe a defender pulled it off. But his 9-yard touchdown burst and 61 second-half rushing yards helped the Eagles gain their biggest victory of the young season - the 31-7 plastering of the previously undefeated Dallas Cowboys. He finished the game with 86 yards and two touchdowns on 19 carries.

How important is Sunday's game against the Washington Redskins for the Eagles' franchise at this point in the season? Just listen to Herschel Walker and Seth Joyner - the respective leaders of the offense and the defense. Though Walker and Joyner have been the two constants on a team that has been reshaped by injuries and defeat, both have led throughout the season in different ways. Walker is inspirational and always positive. Joyner prefers tough love and candor. But in these troubled times, they both have the same message for their teammates.

Belmont Stakes winner Union Rags has been retired because of a tendon injury in his left front leg. The announcement on Saturday came a week after the colt's veterinarian had said he would be out with the injury but that his prognosis was "excellent" for a return to the races next year. Russell Jones , adviser to the colt's owner, Phyllis Wyeth of Chadds Ford, says Union Rags is "a pretty attractive stallion prospect" and that there has been a high level of interest.

DICK VERMEIL, Carl Hairston, Troy Vincent and Herschel Walker are among 12 modern-era candidates with ties to the Eagles who were nominated for the 2012 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Vermeil coached the Birds from 1976-82. Hairston, a defensive tackle, was with the team from '76-'83. Vincent, a cornerback, was an Eagle from 1996-2003, and Walker, a running back, played with Philly from '92-'94. They join cornerback Eric Allen ('88-'94), kicker Gary Anderson ('95-'96)

Brian Westbrook . . . 4.6 Charlie Garner . . . 4.6 Wilbert Montgomery . . . 4.5 Correll Buckhalter . . . 4.5 Steve Van Buren . . . 4.4 Timmy Brown . . . 4.4 Tom Woodeshick . . . 4.3 Herschel Walker . . . 4.2 Heath Sherman . . . 4.0 Duce Staley . . . 4.0 Ricky Watters . . . 3.9 Clarence Peaks . . . 3.7 Keith Byars . . . 3.6 Tom Sullivan ...

Herschel Walker and Ricardo Mayorga yesterday threw their hats into the mixed martial arts ring. Walker, the 47-year-old former NFL running back, said he has signed a multifight contract with promoter Strikeforce. Walker, who played for the Eagles from 1992 to '94, will begin a 12-week training camp next month in San Jose, Calif. The 1982 Heisman Trophy winner already holds a fifth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Mayorga, 35, is a former welterweight and super-welterweight world champion in boxing.

HOLMDEL, N.J. - The hardest thing to assess going into the NFL draft, Eagles general manager Tom Heckert was saying recently, isn't whether a guy is big enough or fast enough or smart enough to do what it takes at the next level. The thing you often don't know, Heckert said, is how much the guy really wants it. How hard he will work, how he'll handle being banged up, whether he'll eagerly attack film study, how having money in the bank will affect him. "Some of these guys are so good at their position that they don't have to do all the extra stuff" as they progress up the high school and college ladder, Heckert said.

In his two decades of running with footballs, from his days as high school hero in Wrightsville, Ga., through three years at the University of Georgia, where he won the Heisman Trophy and his team won one national championship and played for another, three years with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League and now, midway through his 12th year in the NFL, reincarnated as the starting fullback for the Dallas Cowboys, Herschel Walker...

Herschel Walker, the former Heisman Trophy winner who is fourth on the NFL's career list in all-purpose yardage, was released yesterday by the New York Giants. Walker, 34, played only one season with the Giants after having divided his previous nine NFL seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings and the Eagles. The Giants had signed Walker to a three-year, $4.8 million contract in April 1995 because of the uncertainty of re-signing Rodney Hampton, who became a free agent at the end of last season.

Herschel Walker said all he wanted was to be treated like a man. He wanted someone to outline his status face-to-face. He was irked by the highly public manner in which the Eagles sought Ricky Watters to become their featured running back. He was insulted by rumors that he might be asked to take a pay cut. He believes he was shoved aside by the Eagles after three seasons. He asked for his release, and got it last March 28. Six days later, he signed with the New York Giants.

Herschel Walker, professional football's all-time leader in combined yardage, seldom touches the ball in the New York Giants' backfield. As the starting fullback, his primary role is to block. Walker also returns kickoffs, which can't be pleasant news for the coverage-impaired Eagles. Despite his inactivity, though, Walker established himself several weeks ago as the combined-yardage leader. His 22,271 yards, passing Walter Payton's 21,803, include his three years in the USFL.