Pro Football / Bob Oates : Simms’ Touchdown Passes Were the Final Touch for the Giants

The New York Giants have emerged as a dominating pro football power. At the moment, they are the league’s best team by such a wide margin that it seems almost pointless to go on with this year’s Super Bowl game.

Or so Giant fans are saying in New York today. They may even be right.

But in the first 12 of the season’s 16 weeks, the Giants weren’t that good. They lost to non-playoff teams in Dallas and Seattle. They struggled against St. Louis, Philadelphia and other losers.

And in San Francisco on Dec. 1, they fell behind the 49ers at halftime, 17-0.

It was in the second half that night that they became what they are today. And in those last 30 minutes at Candlestick Park, it was the sudden emergence of quarterback Phil Simms as an accurate bomb-throwing passer that changed a good team into what may be a great team.

Simms has been throwing touchdown passes ever since, in five consecutive games. His passes, four of which went for touchdowns, were what made the 49er rematch a 49-3 rout Sunday.

Earlier this season, when the Giants were laboring, they had shown everything else they showed the 49ers Sunday. They didn’t have a big-play pass offense, but they had a pulverizing defense all along. And they had been attacking with an extraordinary running back, Joe Morris.

They have had all the parts, in short, except one, and since Dec. 1 they’ve had that, too.

It was a December insult that changed the lives of those who play for the Giants.

The 49ers, in their defensive game plan at San Francisco, insulted Simms by disregarding him.

Quarterbacks don’t like to be ignored. But in October and November, Simms showed so little and Morris had shown so much that the 49ers decided to concentrate eight or nine defensive players against Morris.

On most plays, that left two or three defenders to cover Simms’ receivers and none to rush him.

Other NFL teams, fearing Morris more than Simms, used similar tactics, turning many Giant games into low-scoring affairs. The 49ers, however, are stronger defensively than most teams, and so their December game plan seemed brilliant in the first half.

In the second half, Giant Coach Bill Parcells had no real choice but to unleash Simms, who, often, was restricted to throwing on safe passing downs earlier this season.

For example, wary of interceptions, Parcells usually gave the ball to Morris on third and long, instead of Simms, even against teams as weak as Philadelphia.

To win in San Francisco, Parcells was forced to attack with Simms--instead of with Morris, who had been locked out of the game by the 49er defense. And the Giants were immediately successful, winning, 21-17. They have used Simms in major roles ever since.

An eighth-year pro, the Giant quarterback has always had two indispensable qualities. He’s smart enough and he’s gutsy. He will stand in the pocket, against the rush, as long as necessary.

He hasn’t been a widely respected passer, but the physical act of passing isn’t the hardest thing about being a quarterback.

A quarterback with a lot of courage and a reasonably strong arm can improve a great deal if he puts his mind to it. If it doesn’t bother him too much to get hit, he can improve from year to year, and from week to week.

That helps explain Simms. He has improved more than most quarterbacks in recent years, and in recent weeks, and now he is up there with almost any passer in the league.

He had a long way to come. In the 1970s he began as a Division II quarterback at Morehead State in Kentucky, the only school that wanted him. And he wasn’t even recruited there.

The Morehead people contacted Simms only after an assistant coach saw him being interviewed on TV--in plain clothes--before a high school all-star game. The assistant liked his poise.

Once with the Giants, Simms spent much of his first five years battling injuries that probably delayed his development.

He is now completing his third season without an incapacitating problem.

Among other things, it has been plain since Dec. 1 that Simms belongs at quarterback on the NFC’s Pro Bowl team. But even though he was on last year’s team, his opponents thought so little of him this fall that they voted in two others, Tommy Kramer of Minnesota and Jay Schroeder of Washington. So far this season, the Giant quarterback is 3-0 over those two.

Son of a Louisville tobacco factory worker, Simms will have one of the Giants’ largest personal rooting sections when he goes for his third straight over Schroeder Sunday. He has four brothers, four sisters, a wife, a daughter and a son.

Quarterback Doug Flutie has been getting most of the blame for the Chicago Bears’ 27-13 defeat Saturday, and some of it should be his.

But, mainly, the problem was the collapse of the Bears’ defense.

In only his second NFL start, Flutie never figured as the kind who could win a shoot-out with the more experienced Schroeder. If their defensive team was going to give up three touchdowns and two field goals, the Bears were always going to lose.

It seems likely now that their defense was overrated during the regular season, when the Bears played so many weak teams that they didn’t realize how much they missed last year’s defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan, who is now with Philadelphia.

Only when they had to beat a good team, Washington, was the Bears’ new defense exposed.

One difference between Ryan’s way and the new Bear way was obvious on blitzing plays Saturday. The same Bear blitzers who were so successful last season never once reached Schroeder on Washington’s game-winning plays.

As coached by Ryan, the Bears used to be a unique kind of blitzing team. As Ryan once said, his linebackers don’t blitz the passer, they blitz the passer’s blockers--the players assigned to pick up the blitzers.

Ryan identified these people in the films and went after them. And with the passer’s blockers neutralized, getting to the passer was easy. For last season’s Bears.

This season’s are different.

Although Vinny Testaverde has performed unimaginatively and unsuccessfully in two consecutive bowl games, the pros still expect him to be drafted first this spring.

“Tampa Bay will either keep him or trade him to some other team that will draft him first,” Dick Steinberg said.

The New England Patriots’ personnel director, Steinberg added that most scouts weren’t surprised when Penn State upset Testaverde’s team, Miami, Friday night.

“When you have time to put in new defenses (against) Testaverde, he can have trouble,” Steinberg said. “Penn State changed its whole defense to give him some looks he didn’t expect.”

As a quarterback, in other words, Testaverde is more instinctive than cerebral. His predecessor at Miami, Cleveland’s Bernie Kosar, is just the opposite.

“Vinny will be a very good one when he’s an experienced pro,” Steinberg said. “In physical terms, he’s one of the best quarterbacks who ever came up.”