Molden's golden for New Orleans

DENVER - It was more than a decade ago, and Sierra High School freshman football coach Bob Walker was one of those people who couldn't wait until the end of Daylight Savings Time.

It meant Alex Molden would go home an hour earlier.

"I hated to coach him," said Walker, laughing at the memory of the New Orleans Saints cornerback as a teenager.

"He never wanted to quit, even when it was time for practice to be over. He wanted to go on and on and on. That was the only way he would quit - when it finally got dark."

The light, after flickering for the past couple of years, is shining brighter for Molden these days. He'll start Sunday when the Saints host the Denver Broncos at the Louisiana Superdome, getting the nod because starter Fred Weary injured his knee last week and is out for the season.

His starting assignment is about 13 weeks too late.

"This was supposed to be my breakout year," Molden said from his home in New Orleans.

Molden awoke on the Thursday before the season opener with an excruciating pain in his groin. Three hours later, he had surgery to untwist tubes in his left testicle that were cutting off circulation. Doctors told him the injury was life-threatening.

The injury cost Molden the first game. It also cost him his starting job, as Kevin Mathis stepped in and played well enough to stay in the lineup.

Molden came back and intercepted passes in the second and third games of the season, but couldn't regain his job.

"There's no written law that says you can't lose your job by injury," Saints coach Jim Haslett said. "It's a week-to-week, day-to- day basis in this league."

It still bothers Molden, who will be a free agent this offseason and plans to test the market. Losing the starting job may have cost him millions.

But Molden, frankly, was supposed to be a big-time star by now. He left Sierra for an all-Pac 10 career at Oregon, then was the first defensive back chosen in the 1996 draft. You could build an all-star team with players chosen after Molden - Eddie George, John Mobley, Eric Moulds, Marvin Harrison, Daryl Gardener and Duane Clemons among them.

Molden started 15 games in both 1997 and 1998. But he's had four coaches in four years in New Orleans, skipping through Jim Mora, Rick Venturi, Mike Ditka and Haslett. He didn't start any games last season.

Now he's making up for lost time. He has four weeks to prove to Haslett that he should have been starting all along, four weeks to show the rest of the NFL that he can live up to his potential.

"I want to get a nice contract," Molden said. "I understand that not starting is going to hurt me. I'm going to make a push these last four weeks and hopefully into the playoffs. If I have to sign a one- or two-year contract to prove myself again, I'll do it."

He talks like a grown-up, about money and responsibility and trying to get his golf handicap down and coming home and wrestling on the floor with his two boys, Isaiah (4) and Elijah (nearly 2). About how Christin, his wife and college sweetheart, "saved" him a couple of years ago, getting "the Lord into my life."

But Molden is only 27, not far removed from the streets of Colorado Springs and the Boys and Girls Club where he spent so much time. He vividly remembers watching John Elway on television, memories trumped only by the time he batted down his hero's pass when the Saints played the Broncos in a 1998 preseason game. Molden's mother, Cassandra, still lives in town, and he returns home once or twice a year.

"Living in New Orleans in this flat terrain, there's not a whole lot to see," Molden said. "I love the mountains. And the people there are so much more friendly than they are here. Go to McDonald's, the grocery stores down here, they don't treat you the greatest."

Walker, still Sierra's freshman football coach and community liaison, knows about being treated well. It was Molden who submitted Walker's name into the NFL's annual search for the nation's high school coach of the year a couple years back. The award, though, is only for head coaches.

"He's just a wonder," Walker said. "You just never know when a kid like him is going to come along. Success hasn't changed him at all. He's the same Alex, just a lovable kid. Everybody here knows him, and they feel the same way."

- John Branch may be reached at jbranch@gazette.com

ESOTERIC STAT OF THE DAY: The Broncos have lost at least two games in every December since 1988 except 1991.

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