Watch Out If He Ever Goes on Offensive

“The thing I would hate about playing Howie Long if I were a quarterback is the way he laughs at you,” the offensive lineman who declined to have his name used was saying. “I mean, you get the feeling he’s enjoying it.

“You don’t mind Alzado playing out of a rage, or Gastineau playing for the cameras, but Long just kind of grins at you like you’re something he’s going to pull the wings off of, or push downstairs in a wheelchair.”

In other words, it’d be a great part for Richard Widmark. If Widmark went 270 and stood 6-5 in his bare feet.

Howie Long is, by consensus, the best in the NFL at what he does--which is, basically, maim the ballcarrier, eat the quarterback, bury the offense. Defensive end is a semi-glamour position. It’s not quarterback or running back or wide receiver but it has its devotees, and Howie Long rates high on any consumer recognition list. He is in some demand for outside commercials selling everything from razor blades to magazine subscriptions.

But Howie’s position has its limitations. And frustrations. Last Sunday, for example, Howie Long and his front set held the Seattle Seahawks to an average of 2.8 yards per rushing play, sacked the quarterback twice, forced him to hurry and miss on 12 of 21 passes, held Curt Warner, a great runner, to 2.2 yards a carry and a long run of four yards. The Raiders still lost the game by 30 points because Long and the defense kept turning the ball over to their offense.

Maybe Howie Long is kicking the wrong butts?

Howie doesn’t think so. “I just wish we (the defense) could break open a game like that ourselves, run back fumbles for touchdowns, block kicks for touchdowns.”

What is really intriguing is, maybe Howie Long is in the wrong position. As well known as he is, he is as anonymous as a waiter compared to a mere rookie who was drafted as a defensive tackle by the Chicago Bears.

The whole football world is talking about the icebox that talks, the human appliance that keeps falling on the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers.

William (The Refrigerator) Perry may well be the most famous defensive player ever to play the game. Not even Dick Butkus, Bronko Nagurski or Mean Joe Greene commanded the public attention this 308-pound food-storage cabinet attracts. Advertisers are taking numbers to get an audience with him. TV is clamoring for his appearances. Movies are dangling offers.

He is calling into question the whole philosophy of big-time football. It is a game in which the basic strategies were never devised with 300-pound human beings in mind who could run 40 yards in anything under a day.

Bear Coach Mike Ditka is being hailed as an innovative genius for inserting this Monster of the Midway into a lineup where he gets the ball. Any kid who ever played sandlot football could not only tell Ditka that it works, he’d also ask what took him so long to try it?

I don’t know about you, but every street game we ever played in, if a guy 100 pounds bigger than the rest showed up, there was no one to tell him he was going to play in the obscurity of defense or the sacrificial slot of blocking. He wanted the ball and he got the ball. If you were smart, you said to your teammates, “OK, you get the big guy. I’ll fade back in case he passes.”

Of course, he didn’t pass. You knew he wouldn’t. He just ran over people. I haven’t seen that the game has changed so much. Coaches just aren’t as smart as kids in public parks were. Coaches actually tried to tell The Refrigerator to lose some weight. Coaches are that way. Coaches would probably cut King Kong because he was too slow. Coaches would tell Paul Newman his eyes are too blue.

We would have played The Refrigerator in my old neighborhood. And the only time he wouldn’t have had the football was when he was home eating.

Howie Long would have gotten the football in the old hometown, too.

It might solve his frustrations and the Raiders’ problems now, too. If Long sits up nights, dreaming of ways to get the ball away from the other team’s defense as the only way to win, why not give him the ball in the first place?

Well, one reason is, Howie doesn’t want it. “My job is to stop the football,” he said. “That’s what I’m trained to do. My job is to move in a yard, penetrate and stay low and hold ground. Pretty boring, my job, come to think of it.”

Exactly. Doesn’t sell Toyotas, either.

I’ll tell you one thing. Back in the old gang, when we had a big guy, we didn’t have to settle for any field goals to keep from getting shut out.

And you know that play where The Refrigerator caught the pass and was all alone in the end zone? You think that was because of the design of the play?

Forget it. I know from the old playground days. Nobody wanted to be near him. It was the same way in the old days. We’d all pretend to be covering someone else. Bet me the Green Bay Packers weren’t fooled on the play, either. They read it all too well. They were in a prevent defense. Preventing their own suicide.