SUPER BOWL XXI: DENVER vs. NEW YORK GIANTS : Pro Football / Bob Oates : Even With Elway, Broncos Chances Are Slim

In the race to the Super Bowl, nothing has changed from last week. If the New York Giants could beat the San Francisco 49ers, 49-3, they can beat anyone.

At the end of the season, the 49ers were probably the National Football League’s second-best team.

The Denver Broncos may be in the top five or six. And it is true that with John Elway, they have the league’s liveliest quarterback.

Going into the Super Rose Bowl Jan. 25, it is Elway who creates the illusion that the Broncos have a chance.

But the reality is that their opponent is the more disciplined team, the more vigorous, the better balanced.

“My guys are tough,” Giant Coach Bill Parcells said the other day. “We haven’t been out of any game since 1984.”

The Broncos can’t quite make that claim. As recently as three weeks ago they were buried by the Seattle Seahawks, 41-16.

It will be the biggest upset since Super Bowl III--Joe Namath’s year--if the Broncos win.

In an injury-free 1986 NFL season, who would have emerged as the game’s dominant team?

The Chicago Bears can doubtless make the strongest case. With an uninjured Jim McMahon at quarterback, the Bears, almost certainly, would have completed a 16-0 schedule.

Though McMahon missed most of the season with a shoulder injury, the Bears were 14-2, losing to the Rams and Minnesota Vikings.

It seems unlikely that on the night of Nov. 3, the Bears, had they had McMahon, would have lost to the Rams with Steve Dils. It seems even less likely that with a strong McMahon, the Bears could have been upset by a 9-7 Minnesota team.

But suppose the Bears had finished 15-1 again. That would still have been enough to give them the home field against the Giants last Sunday.

Just a year ago, en route to victory in Super Bowl XX, the Bears caught the Giants in Chicago and blanked them, 21-0.

“That game has been my motivation this whole season,” Giant linebacker Lawrence Taylor said. “Last year, I knew we were as good as the Bears. I personally saw what their home field did for (them).”

When they had McMahon, that is. Not when they had Steve Fuller, or Mike Tomczak, or Doug Flutie.

The biggest play of the Giant-Redskin game Sunday was the coin toss. When the wind is blowing 30 or 40 m.p.h., it isn’t difficult to take the wind in the first quarter if you get the chance.

What’s really difficult is winning the toss, which the Giants, perhaps a team of destiny, did.

They might have won the game anyway if they had lost the flip. The point is that when the weaker team lost it, the contest went out of the game.

Either team riding a first-quarter, 30-m.p.h. wind to a 10-0 lead would have been hard to beat. When the stronger team moved ahead, the rest of the game was a windy bore.

Thus, in the interests of justice and fairness, the NFL should no longer schedule these kinds of games on any team’s home field. Conference title games should all be played in neutral domes.

As the defenders of the status quo all say, moving the site of such a game would deprive hometown fans of their place in the sun, and the wind, and the snow, but how many fans buy NFL tickets?

How many Giant fans hold seats in Giants Stadium?

The answer is 19,000. All 76,000 seats in Giant stadium are in the hands of 19,000 privileged ticket buyers, who sell them off or give them away.

The ratio is about the same in most other NFL cities.

It’s time for the league to put its game ahead of any 19,000 people.

Thinking about Jan. 25, Denver Coach Dan Reeves said: “Lawrence Taylor is the (Giant) we’ll have to make sure of on every play.”

On every pass play, Reeves meant. Not on running plays.

Taylor tends to disappear when you run the ball to his side.

At this point in his career, he isn’t a complete linebacker. He is overrated, in fact, if compared against an all-around linebacker like Chip Banks when Banks is playing his game.

Against Denver Sunday, Banks, the Cleveland Browns’ left outside linebacker, starred, for example, in the following series of successive plays:

--On first down after Denver had intercepted at the Cleveland 36-yard line, Banks stopped a running play in the Denver backfield.

--That made it second and 13, when he broke up a screen pass.

--On third down, Banks blitzed Elway and chased him into an unproductive throw.

--On fourth down, watching Banks nervously, Elway quick kicked.

It is beyond Taylor’s expertise to put together such a series of plays. His weakness is run defense. He is no more than an ordinary linebacker if the requirement is playing off a run blocker and making the tackle. When the Redskins called ground plays Sunday, he was seldom double teammed.

Taylor happens to be the league’s best pass rusher, meaning that he excels in what has become a spectacular area of football.

But though he was voted the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, he isn’t even the Giants’ MVP. That would be fullback Maurice Carthon.

The most shocking plays of Sunday’s Denver-Cleveland game may have been the two interceptions by Denver linebackers Ricky Hunley and Jim Ryan, each in the first half, and within a span of three minutes or so.

Until then, Elway had taken the Broncos nowhere. Cleveland quarterback Bernie Kosar had been dominating the game. The question seemed to be the margin by which the Browns would win.

Then, suddenly, Kosar was throwing interceptions--one at the end of the first quarter and one on the second play of the second.

Afterward, Kosar, 23, was not quite the same. He didn’t quit, but he was obviously playing with less confidence.

Only at times in the last three quarters did he look like the passer who had led the Browns on their impressive 86-yard touchdown drive in the first quarter.

What happened?

“I didn’t see (Hunley),” he said.

And Ryan?

“I didn’t see him, either.”

The Broncos’ explanation was disarmingly simple. At unexpected times in their defensive scheme--unexpected by Kosar, at least--Denver’s linebackers had merely dropped into pass coverage. Instead of rushing the passer, or covering running backs, they had eased back into the secondary to get balls intended for Cleveland wide receivers.

Joel Collier, Denver’s defensive coordinator, has come up with tactics like that throughout his career. He had as much to do with putting Denver into Super Bowl XXI as Elway. It was he who changed the game’s momentum and gave Elway a chance.

Collier will find that it’s harder to slow down the Giants. But he’ll try. He always does.

Elway’s 98-yard drive Sunday will be long remembered.

“I can’t believe he did it,” said Cleveland’s steadiest linebacker, Clay Matthews.

Even so, Elway is coming up to his biggest game with a label he’s always had, erratic.

For example, in the first Bronco-Giant game in November, it was Elway’s first-down interception on the Giant goal line that cost the Broncos their best chance to win a game they lost by only three points, 19-16.

Everyone, of course, throws interceptions--but not on first down, in good scoring position, against such a defense. You don’t get that many shots against the Giants. You can’t afford to shoot one into the wind.

Otherwise, as a football team, the Broncos were as good as the Giants that day. But not today.