By Cutting the Giants Down to Size, Bears Give Rams Clue to the Future

Scouting report, Los Angeles Rams:

How to beat the Chicago Bears. (Based in part on Sunday’s 21-0 Chicago triumph over the New York Giants in a National Football Conference playoff game at Soldier Field.)

1. Punting:

Be sure to tell the punter that when he kicks the ball, he should use his foot.

Do not do what Sean Landeta of the Giants did Sunday. The line of scrimmage was his own 12. Landeta dropped back to punt. He took the snap. He softly dropped the ball in mid-air in front of him. He kicked. He missed.

Actually, he foul-tipped. Almost a whiff. Officially, the punt covered minus-seven yards. Shaun Gayle of the Bears scooped it up and ran into the end zone for your basic, everyday five-yard touchdown punt return.

It was the worst kick in Chicago since that O’Leary woman’s cow kicked the lantern and started the fire.

2. Richard Dent:

Do not make this man angry. He will hurt you.

Also, be thinking about hiring him for next year.

The man is an All-Pro defensive end. He treats quarterbacks the way dogs treat mailmen. He sacked Giant quarterback Phil Simms 3 1/2 times. Another time, he nearly took his head off. Simms tried to block Dent once and Dent just shoved him into the guy with the ball, tackling both of them.

He and the Bears must be very happy together, you say. Except after the game, Dent got back to talking about how the Bears supposedly reneged on renegotiating his contract. He says he has just about had it with them.

And what did the Bear general manager have to say about all this? “If he wants to take a walk,” Jerry Vainisi said, “let him take a walk. I don’t care how good he plays. You don’t use a playoff game as a hostage to negotiate.”

Keep this in mind after the Super Bowl, no matter which NFC team is in it.

3. Scoring points:

The Bears have played 17 games this season. In 12 of those games, the other team scored 10 points or less. They have three shutouts.

“They’re not 16-1 for nothing,” Giants’ Coach Bill Parcells said.

To score on the Bears, it may be necessary to rush for more than 32 yards in an entire game. That was New York’s total Sunday.

It will help if you can keep your star running back from being knocked goofy. Joe Morris of the Giants got squashed by William (Refrigerator) Perry.

Said Perry: “I thought he’d get up, but he just rolled over.”

Said Parcells: “I would have put him back in the game, but he was having a little trouble remembering things.”

Another way to score is to keep your quarterback from being sacked six times. About that Chicago pass rush, Simms said: “It was nothing out of the ordinary. You know me. I like getting hammered.”

Simms said he was kidding.

4. Keeping them from scoring:

To prevent wide receiver Dennis McKinnon from flagging down two touchdown passes, which is something the Giants forgot to do in the second half, defensive backs should be reminded that they may wish to check from time to time to see if the quarterback has thrown the ball.

Elvis Patterson did not bother to do this. He looked those touchdown balls right into McKinnon’s hands. One for 23 yards, then another one for 20 yards.

“Elvis didn’t see either one of them until I caught them,” McKinnon said.

Aw, don’t be cruel.

5. Kicking:

Even if your punter is not doing so hot, your kicker can save you. That is, if he can kick a field goal after you have moved the ball to the other team’s two-yard line.

Eric Schubert of the Giants did not do this. All he had to do was boot one 19 yards. He hit the left upright on the goal post. This is pretty much the way Schubert kicked in the playoff opener against the San Francisco 49ers. Eric had a nice job teaching school a few weeks ago and will be returning to it soon.

End of scouting report. Actually, it was Pete Axthelm of NBC-TV who had a pretty good scouting report before Sunday’s game. He told the world that New York would not score a point on Chicago’s defense, and sure enough, the Bears racked up their third shutout.

They did it behind Dent, the 6-5, 263-pound passer masher in his third year out of Tennessee State who positively bulldozed Giant offensive tackle Brad Benson when he wasn’t juking and stunting and looking for other lanes through which he could get to the quarterback.

“It’s like chess,” Dent said. “You make a move, they make a move. The ultimate goal is to capture the quarterback. There aren’t that many guys who can do it. That’s what I do best.”

His chess game with management, though, remains a stalemate. “I’m tired of talking,” Dent said. “They wanted me to be more consistent. I’ve been consistent. Now they’re talking about: ‘You got to be in the league a little longer.’ I can’t wait that long. I want my security now. Not later. Now.”

The disagreement has gotten so out of hand that rumors have started, denied so far by Dent, that he would boycott the Super Bowl if the Bears got to it. The insurance policy management gave him a few weeks ago to protect him in case of injury appeased Dent for a while, but it is still a sore point, and Dent has not forgotten that two other All-Pro defensive players, Todd Bell and Al Harris, have sat out the entire season over contract demands.

Vainisi’s strong comments after Sunday’s game won’t help matters any. But Vainisi considers his hands tied, “especially when I’m willing to sit and negotiate and the other side isn’t.” That’s a state of affairs Dent and his agent, Everett Glenn, deny.

Dent’s savage pass rush helped the Bears on a day when their offense failed to score in the first half and on a day when the usually dependable Kevin Butler tried three field goals--short, medium and long--and missed them all, badly.

Nothing was as bizarre as the Giant kicking game, however. Early in the opening period, after Dent sacked Simms for a 12-yard loss at the 12, Landeta dropped back to punt.

This was the same Landeta, a rookie from Towson State, who got fined and teased for scalping $20 tickets to the Giant-49er playoff game for $50, with which he also threw in an autographed picture. Teammates later used some tape and painted signs to make Landeta’s locker resemble a stadium ticket window.

Explaining what happened when he let go of the ball to kick it, Landeta said: “The wind just took it. I dropped the ball and saw it start to move to the right. I had to chase it. I had to go after it.

“The wind would come up and then let down. It was moving the ball on my drops during warmups and I hoped it wouldn’t come up during the game. I’ve never had the ball move that much. Usually, at least you make contact.”

His nubber was picked up by Gayle, a reserve defensive back from Ohio State, who scored his first touchdown since high school. Gayle became the 22nd Bear to score a touchdown this season, and the ninth from the defense.

Giant momentum was gone. It already had suffered when Rob Carpenter fumbled away a pass reception at the Chicago 43 on the game’s first series. New York wound up with only three first downs by halftime, plus a gloomy disposition after Schubert’s missed 19-yard field goal.

Lucky to be ahead, the Bears looked better in the second half. McMahon’s 23-yard touchdown pass to McKinnon came early in the third period, and two possessions later, a 46-yarder to ridiculously wide-open tight end Tim Wrightman led to a 20-yard touchdown hookup between McMahon and McKinnon.

The Bears had the ball for 11 minutes and 18 seconds of the third quarter.

The visitors couldn’t move. Simms, under siege, completed 14-of-35 passes. The ground game never recovered after Morris left. You know about the kicking. “We dug our own hole,” Simms said.

One series in the third period was almost frightening. Dent overpowered Benson and hit Simms, forcing a fumble, which New York recovered. On the next play, Benson backed up early and was penalized for a false start. Next play, Dent stormed Simms, clothes-lined him at the neck and spun him around, although he didn’t go down.

So, Simms called a reverse to wide receiver Byron Williams. He handed off and flung himself at Dent. Dent grabbed the quarterback and tossed him into Williams, who went down for a nine-yard loss.

“They tried to block me with a quarterback,” Dent said. “That would have been pretty embarrassing now, wouldn’t it?”