Pro Football / Bob Oates : Warner and Williams Keep Seattle Backfield in Step With the Past

The Seahawks will attack the Raiders here next Monday night with one of the National Football League’s few traditional, old-fashioned backfields.

There is a true halfback here, Curt Warner, a 205-pound slasher who has become the AFC’s first to exceed 1,000 yards this season.

And there is a true fullback, John L. Williams, a 225-pound rookie from Florida who was drafted first this year because Coach Chuck Knox wanted the two things that Williams brings to the position: seldom-miss blocking and seldom-drop receiving.

After studying Warner closely, Williams has made this discovery: “Curt is most dangerous when his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

At Texas Stadium Thanksgiving Day, as the Seahawks took possession on the Dallas 40-yard line in the fourth quarter, Williams looked at Warner and knew it was all over for the Cowboys.

“When he comes back to the huddle and his eyes are doing that, it means he is on a roll,” Williams said.

From the 40, Warner got all the yards in three consecutive carries, going 14, 17 and 9 yards.

And on each run there was a lead block by John L. Williams.

Perhaps the most puzzling thing about the Seahawks is quarterback Dave Krieg’s erraticism.

At Dallas, during one of his big passing days, Krieg couldn’t miss. Earlier this season, Krieg missed so often that they had to bench him.

“If I knew what to do about it, I’d do it,” Knox said.

Streak-hitting is routine in baseball. But largely because football allows a larger margin for error, streak players are less noticeable. Except when Krieg is throwing the ball.

The rest of his opponents this year--the Raiders, Chargers and Broncos--may have no idea what they’re getting into.

Going into the final weeks of the season, the Rams are probably playing the best football in the league.

Against the Jets Sunday, they again seemed to be the NFL’s most complete team, and, what’s more, a candidate for the best team still led by a rookie quarterback.

They can be compared, in any event, to the 1945 Rams, who won the NFL title with rookie passer Bob Waterfield--in a wartime season when there was less to beat than there is now.

The builder of the 1986 Rams, Coach John Robinson, may not lead the league with his defense, special teams, offensive line, receivers or running game. But it’s hard to think of any rival that surpasses the Rams in all of those phases.

As for new quarterback Jim Everett--the way he played in the Meadowlands Sunday--he seems too good to be real.

It is only after winning that football players like to see the club owner in the locker room. Even so, Art Modell of the Cleveland Browns used to be a locker room visitor every Sunday, lose or win.

No more.

“I found I was congratulating a player who, after the coaches viewed the films, might have had a bad game,” Modell said. “Or I was ignoring a kid who played his heart out. . . . So I don’t go down there anymore.”

The AFC Central hasn’t had a standout team since the years when the Pittsburgh Steelers monopolized the Super Bowl.

But the Browns may be edging into the void. With good defense and Bernie Kosar improving at quarterback, Cleveland is 9-4 this week and one up on the 8-5 Cincinnati Bengals and quarterback Boomer Esiason.

There may be more talent in Cincinnati, but there also is more turmoil.

“We have a lot of people who talk a lot but don’t produce,” Bengal running back James Brooks said.

Thus, in their first 10 games this season, the Bengals had seven kicks blocked: three punts, three field goals and an extra point.

And in Cincinnati recently, one sign carrier at Riverfront Stadium took note of Esiason’s quarrels with Coach Sam Wyche and called him Baby Boomer.

But the loss in Denver hurt. The Bengals, who will be at home to the Browns in a division showdown Dec. 14, must play the Patriots and Jets in their two other games.

The Browns, who also must play the Bills and Chargers, could enter the playoffs as an 11-5 team.

Late hits have been a part of football for as long as there has been pro football.

One of the many victims was Bobby Layne, the former Detroit quarterback who died Monday.

Twenty-nine years ago, a Bear end named Ed Meadows mowed Layne down--tardily--and broke his leg.

Layne had handed off the ball and was just standing around watching the play when Meadows ran up and hit him.

Los Angeles football fan Goldie Norton, who was there, remembers that Detroit won the NFL title anyway that year with a substitute quarterback, Tobin Rote.

Hugh Culverhouse, the disappointed owner of the 2-11 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, calls speculation that he will sell out erroneous.

“If we were on a losing streak like John Mecom suffered through (for 18 years) at New Orleans, I couldn’t take that,” Culverhouse said. “I believe I’d sell.

“But at Tampa, we know what it’s like to play in the playoffs, and we want to get back.

“You may remember that when John McKay was first (coaching) here, we went further faster than any NFL team in history.

“We were the first to get to the playoffs in franchise year three. And one winter, we played the Rams in the NFC championship game--the year they won, 9-0.

“We’ll be back.”

Quote Dept.: Coach Tom Landry, on the Dallas Cowboys’ fast start last week: “I hate to see us move down the field for the first touchdown because it usually means you don’t do anything the rest of the day.”

Coach Dan Reeves, explaining that he already has a lifetime contract at Denver, where Elway reportedly has been offered one: “You lose, and they declare you legally dead, right quick.”

It is sometimes said that the best athletes to play quarterback for NFL teams in recent years have been Elway and the Cowboys’ Roger Staubach.

Both have shown the ability to run like halfbacks and the skill to throw long passes with the regularity of quarterbacks.

To this select list, another name may have to be added soon. At the Coliseum last Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles’ Randall Cunningham seemed to be a stronger and more self-assured ballcarrier than either Elway or Staubach.

And as a passer, against the Raiders, he showed uncommon power and accuracy.

If Cunningham keeps throwing the ball that straight, he’ll make a prophet out of the Raiders’ Lester Hayes, who said: “He gives the Eagles’ offense life.”

As a running back, Cunningham cuts, dips and slides with the practiced ease of a veteran, but he may not be able to do this consistently over the years. The good defenses will know how to hold him in the pocket.

For another, an NFL quarterback takes his life in his hands running the ball. Or so NFL veterans always say.

Cunningham disagrees. “More quarterbacks are hurt in the pocket than running the ball,” he said.