Saints Can Be Morale Builder

The announcement that the Louisiana Superdome can be ready for NFL games next November is welcome, but someone should take the lead in financing the stadium’s reconstruction in time for the New Orleans Saints’ home opener in September.

It couldn’t cost that much more.

To visit New Orleans during football season is to know that the Saints mean a lot to the sports public in that hurricane-devastated town.

There has always been less money for football tickets in New Orleans than elsewhere in the NFL -- but there is no less interest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, as America’s 1940s president, asked big league baseball and football to continue their schedules during World War II because sports boost morale.

And as the world knows, New Orleans’ morale could do with a bit of boosting.

In this instance, a full normal schedule of home games -- for a team that will probably know the excitement of new coaches and some new players -- would help overcome Louisiana’s fears that the Saints might soon bolt for another, richer city.

Possible financial sources are the rest of us -- that is, the U.S. people under federal auspices -- the NFL stadium-building fund, individual NFL club owners, or other philanthropists.

Chargers Charge

When the San Diego Chargers end their season against Denver next week, their coach, Marty Schottenheimer, will get a last chance to prepare them properly.

In San Diego’s most recent starts, his record was mixed.

Playing at home against 7-7 Miami two weeks ago, the 9-5 Chargers performed with a total absence of intensity and blew it, 23-21.

But in Indianapolis last week, they ended the long Colt winning streak, 26-17, when Schottenheimer had them ready emotionally and mentally.

With Drew Brees at quarterback and with a mighty defense, the Chargers are at least as good as the Colts, Chiefs and Broncos.

But they don’t always play like it.

And their ups and downs can be charged to the coaching staff, which is always responsible for team attitude.

Brees’ Big Day

No other 2005 opponent played the Colts and their passer, Peyton Manning, as well as the Chargers did in last week’s game.

Brees’ passes set up all of their game-deciding scoring plays. And their defense pressured Manning continuously -- the only tactic that can beat this quarterback.

In particular, Brees drove the Chargers ahead, 7-0 -- finding Keenan McCardell with the touchdown throw -- before setting up the four winning field goals with the passes that kept putting his team in position.

He threw two interceptions but all passers throw interceptions if they pass as frequently as they should to play this game right.

The last of Nate Kaeding’s four kicks was decisive in the fourth quarter, 19-17, after Brees had hauled the Chargers away from their goal line with a 55-yard bomb to McCardell.

A subsequent window-dressing 83-yard touchdown run by stocky second-stringer Michael Turner was insurance for Schottenheimer who, earlier, had as usual kept playing for three instead of seven points.

Second-Tier Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers, who are about to finish second in the AFC North this season, will go for the championship of the other Northern division (the NFC’s) at Detroit on New Year’s Day.

A sluggish Steeler team made things easier for NFC North champion-to-be Chicago Sunday by spanking the Bears’ foremost division rival, Minnesota, 18-3.

In earlier NFC North games this year, the Steelers had won in Chicago, holding the Bears to three points, and had outscored Green Bay by four points.

If they can somehow beat 4-10 Detroit, the Steelers will have swept the league’s weakest division.

Not that they’ve been looking that good. Their big passer, Ben Roethlisberger, never did warm up in Minneapolis, where he completed 10 of only 15 passes, and they didn’t have a 100-yard rusher.

Against their own conference, the AFC, the Steelers are now a second-tier team behind the top passing teams, the Colts, Bengals, Patriots and Broncos.

In a passing era, when the Steelers come out for 2006, they’ll have to join up in order to contend. If they do end their conservative ways with the pass offense Roethlisberger can bring, they have a personnel obligation to get him more speed at receiver.

Either that or contrive to schedule the NFC North home and home.

Patriot Tuneup

The New England Patriots, with only 7-7 Miami, 4-10 Buffalo and the 3-11 New York Jets to beat in their own division, will play the Jets at the Meadowlands on Monday night in a game that will settle not much and will show the nation not much except how close the once-battered Patriots (9-5) are to full recovery.

In any case, this game and the Miami game New Year’s Day will serve as a two-week tuneup for a Patriot venture into a playoff season that seemed nearly beyond their capacity not long ago. At home the other day, New England quarterback Tom Brady, en route to a 28-0 decision that seriously harmed Tampa Bay’s drive toward the NFC South title, showed why he’s the NFL’s most valuable player as well as a Super Bowl threat once more.

In the second quarter, at a time when the score was only 7-0, when the Patriots were driving, and when the Tampa defensive team was still attacking furiously, Brady held his ground on second and 16 just as two Buccaneers drove him into the ground, his pass falling incomplete.

Then on third and 16, under a similar assault, Brady again waited patiently as Tampa threw a defensive blanket over his primary target as well as his second receiver. And again, as the Buccaneers closed in, he was about to go down when, suddenly, he whipped the ball to his third receiver -- for 17 yards and a first down. A moment later, running back Corey Dillon scored the touchdown that put the Buccaneers out of business.

Brady, the NFL quarterback who is most likely to make the kind of plays that routed Tampa, led the Patriots to the last two Super Bowl triumphs.

If his team is indeed relatively injury-free at last, he is at the least one of the three Super Bowl XL favorites in a three-way race with Cincinnati’s Carson Palmer and Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning.

Fine for Williams

Any NFL game is full of big men flying around at top speed, so it’s a dangerous place to be. But a Dallas defensive back, Roy Williams, is making it more dangerous than it need be:

* Last year, Williams attacked Philadelphia receiver Terrell Owens and broke one of his legs with a new way to incapacitate offensive players -- a shoulder-pad swing.

* Then after the NFL outlawed the Williams swing, he assaulted Washington running back Clinton Portis last Sunday with a slightly different version of the same dangerous play.

A year ago, in breaking Owens’ leg, Williams, a tough 226 pounds, first grabbed the back of the receiver’s shoulder pads while Owens was moving at full speed. Then Williams pulled his legs into the air and allowed his body to swing freely. As he swung down, Williams slammed heavily into the back of Owens’ legs.

During off-season rules-committee meetings, the NFL made that kind of tackle illegal. So Williams got around the ban Sunday by grabbing the back of Portis’ shirt instead of his shoulder pads, and swinging himself around his opponent as before.

This time, when Williams landed on the player, he didn’t break any bones, but that was just good fortune. After sitting out for a few minutes while the doctors examined him, Portis returned to the lineup.

The Williams swing is a play that seems deliberately calculated not just to slow down an opponent but to severely injure him.

As NFL players all know, Philadelphia can’t win without Owens.

And Portis is the most valuable Redskin in Washington’s run-based offense.

From this distance, it would seem that Williams has earned himself the heaviest fine of the year, at least half his annual salary.

Williams could claim that his play was technically legal because he held the player’s shirt instead of his pads. But no football technique can be deliberately used to maim an opponent.

The league already intends to outlaw grabbing the back of a jersey’s neck hole, but the change probably won’t be made until between seasons.

And the heavy fine would tell Williams that he can’t use his technical legality to deliberately injure more players this season.

The deliberate attempt to injure players is so rare in football that it merits the severest punishment.