DECLINING DYNASTIES : Fate, Injuries, Draft, Death Some Keys as Teams Shuffle

Dwaine Board.

A nine-year defensive end who has started for San Francisco in two Super Bowls. A symbol of why the NFL dynasties of the ‘60s and ‘70s have declined into mediocrity.

Last season, for the first time in 22 years, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Raiders all missed the playoffs in the same year. It could happen again this year and when you look for reasons, you might as well start with Dwaine Board.

Board was a fifth-round draft choice of the Steelers in 1979, when they became the last team to win two consecutive Super Bowls. But there was no room for him on an aging but still effective defensive line, so he was waived and picked up by the building 49ers, in their first year under Bill Walsh.

“It’s difficult to stay on top for a long time because when you have good players, that forces you to drop good players,” says Pittsburgh Coach Chuck Noll, who also left Dave Brown unprotected in the expansion draft in 1976, losing a cornerback currently tied with Pittsburgh’s Donnie Shell as the active career interception leader.

“Dwaine Board is an example. We couldn’t keep him but he became a fine player for the 49ers. Normally, that’s the kind of player who makes your team. When your older players are producing and still winning, it makes it difficult to bring all of your other people along.”

There are, of course, more reasons than Board for the decline of the teams that dominated the NFL for two decades.

Like Donald Trump, Gabe Rivera, Dan Marino, Larry Gordon, George Young, Bobby Beathard, Bill Walsh, Billy Cannon Jr., Marc Wilson, Bill Arnsparger, Keith Gary and Darryl Sims; Larry Bethea and Rod Hill.

Fate, injuries, lawsuits, even death.

And the decision in 1976 to move the draft from January to late April.

Dallas began as an expansion team in 1960 with the same people in charge that remain in charge today--Tex Schramm as president, Gil Brandt as chief talent evaluator and Tom Landry as coach. The Cowboys went 18-46-2 those first five years but Schramm, Brandt and Landry remained in place, maintaining the stability that good teams must have.

In 1965, they went 7-7, then made the playoffs 17 of the next 19 years. They played in two NFL championship games and five Super Bowls, two of which they won. But last year, they lost seven of their last eight to finish 7-9 for their first losing season since 1964.

The Raiders’ ascension began in 1963, when Al Davis took over an Oakland team that had been 1-13 in the American Football League the previous year and coached it to a 10-4 record. The Raiders made the playoffs 15 of the next 19 years, running up the league’s best won-lost record during that period and winning three Super Bowls before falling to 8-8 last year.

Miami, born in 1966, began its ascendance in 1970, when Don Shula arrived and turned a 3-10-1 team to 10-4.

By 1972, Miami had won the Super Bowl with the NFL’s last unbeaten record, 17-0. Through last year, they had made the playoffs 12 times in 17 years.

But even in 1984, when Miami went 14-2 in the regular season and represented the AFC in the Super Bowl, its defense had begun to erode, coinciding with Arnsparger’s departure from defensive coordinator to head coach at Louisiana State. Last year, the Dolphins finished 8-8, surrendering 405 points, third worst in the league.

Pittsburgh, founded in 1933, had never qualified for a post-season game when Noll took over as coach in 1969. He went 1-13 his first year, 5-9 his second and 6-8 his third before starting a run that led to four Super Bowl victories in the ‘70s.

Pittsburgh’s success stemmed from remarkable drafting. In 1974, four of the first five picks were Hall of Fame quality--Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster.

But Stallworth, Webster and Shell are the only Steelers still active from that era and since the last Super Bowl victory after the 1979 season, they’ve gone 71-66 including 6-10 last year.

What went wrong?

In the parity-oriented NFL, success leads to poorer drafting position and poorer drafting position usually leads to poorer drafts.

Even teams that draft well late rarely get superstars unless they talk a lesser team into a trade. Miami’s selection of Marino with the 27th pick in the draft was sheer luck--injuries, a mediocre senior season and a variety of rumors about his off-the-field activities made one of the game’s premier quarterbacks available that late.

But usually, you have to be bad to get good--the Giants’ Super Bowl season last year may have been the product of 4-12 and 3-12-1 seasons in 1980 and 1983 that enabled them to draft linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks, the keystones of their defense.

Miami has had inordinate injury problems on defense, had three players die prematurely and, other than Marino, hasn’t drafted particularly well, perhaps because Beathard left to rebuild the Redskins and Young left for New York.

Dallas and Pittsburgh haven’t had good drafts for a decade and the Raiders haven’t been able to find a quarterback--Wilson has performed more like $9 after being given a $900,000-year contract when Trump made noises about luring him to the USFL.

Moreover, where the Dolphins, Cowboys, Steelers and Raiders used superior scouting to come up with steals in the January draft, picking later has given other teams time to catch up. So has central scouting and the combine tryouts in January that make the same information available to all.

“The late draft minimizes blunders,” says Young, who along with Beathard in Washington, Walsh in San Francisco, Dick Steinberg in New England, Jim Finks, Jerry Vainisi and Bill Tobin in Chicago and John Beake and Dan Reeves in Denver have built losers into winners.

Miami’s problems began even as the Dolphins were building the league’s best passing attack. For the year they drafted Marino, the defense began eroding and a series of tragedies stripped the team of several good players.

Running back David Overstreet was killed in an accident and so was linebacker Rusty Chambers. Another linebacker, Larry Gordon, died of a heart attack.

Injuries cut short All-Pro linebacker A.J. Duhe’s career and have hobbled cornerback Don McNeal, nose tackle Bob Baumhower and linebacker Hugh Green. The players drafted to replace them, notably defensive lineman Mike Charles and linebacker Jackie Shipp, have been major disappointments.

This year, linebacker John Offerdahl, who made the Pro Bowl as a rookie last season, tore a bicep in the first exhibition game and is lost for at least half the season, forcing Shula to once again revamp his defense.

Dallas, first team to use a computer, used to discover such superior non-football playing athletes as Cornell Green. But it got locked into a system while other teams were finding new ways to discover talent.

The system was athletes over producers.

Regularly picking low, the Cowboys often went for athletes with potential like Hill, a cornerback from Kentucky State, their first pick in 1982, when they chose 26th. Bethea, their first pick in 1978, never worked out; Cannon (1984) and Robert Shaw (1979) had their careers cut short by injury, and tackle Howard Richards (1981) was rarely healthy and didn’t play well when he was.

Moreover, teams are warier about trading away high draft choices.

Dallas sent Craig Morton to the Giants in 1975 for the pick that turned out to be Randy White and they got Seattle to give up the high pick that turned into Tony Dorsett for a passel of draft choices in 1977.

But in 1981, when they desperately tried to deal up with New Orleans or the Giants in an effort to get Taylor all they got was “sorry, not this time.”

“We don’t gamble as much now,” says Brandt. “We go for the proven competitor. Rod Hill was our biggest mistake. He was from a small school and hadn’t played against top flight competition.”

But the blown draft choices have taken their toll.

Even though Dallas stole Herschel Walker with a fifth-round pick in 1985 on the gamble that the USFL would fail, they haven’t drafted well enough to provide him with a supporting cast, so the team has aged dramatically, particularly on the defensive line. During the 1-7 second half last year, two 36-year-olds and a 34-year-old were playing full time.

“We flat ran out of gas,” says John Dutton, 36. “We were down to four defensive linemen. We were tired.”

Pittsburgh, meanwhile, would love to have Board back on the defensive line. Two first-round picks, defensive ends Sims and Gary, have been major disappointments and the 1985 draft, when Sims was chosen, was an all-out bust--the most valuable rookie that year year was punter Harry Newsome.

The Raiders, without a quarterback and with an offensive line that aged all at once, also were distracted by off-the-field problems stemming from the team’s 1982 move to Los Angeles. It kept Davis, one of the brainiest football men around, in court more than on the field.

“We haven’t been totally focused on what we’re here for the last seven or eight years, which is to win,” Davis says. “Last season was a great disappointment. We let it slip away. I’m committed to getting back to football. . . . We want to be No. 1, that’s the goal. The greatness of the Raiders is in the future.”

One way to assess the problems is to examine the 1983 draft, perhaps the strongest in history.

It produced seven starters each for the Bears and Giants, the last two Super Bowl champions and seven more for New England.

It had such depth that All-Pros like Mark Clayton and Richard Dent lasted until the eighth round and Karl Mecklenburg to the 12th. Even San Francisco, which had traded away five of its first nine choices, got three good ones--running back Roger Craig, linebacker Riki Ellison and defensive back Tom Holmoe.

Miami chose Marino and Clayton along with Pro Bowl punter Reggie Roby and linebacker Mark Brown. The Raiders got center Don Mosebar on the first round; All-Pro nose tackle Bill Pickel on the second; defensive end Andre Townsend on the fourth and starting wide receiver Dokie Williams on the fifth.

Dallas, on the other hand, has only its first pick, defensive end Jim Jeffcoat, remaining on the roster. Linebacker Mike Walter and safety Al Gross were released and became starters in San Francisco and Cleveland.

Pittsburgh, stuck with mediocre quarterbacking, bypassed Marino to take Rivera, “Senor Sack” from Texas Tech. He was paralyzed in an auto accident during the season. No one from that draft remains with the team.

Is all this just part of the inevitable up-and-down cycle of sports?

Dallas and Pittsburgh don’t look like playoff teams for 1987 and Miami has a shot only because Marino can carry them there.

The Raiders, with the acquisition of James Lofton and Bo Jackson, should be stronger but the quarterback problems persist--untested Rusty Hilger, who has thrown 52 passes in his first two NFL seasons is the latest attempted solution.

But it also takes nothing from what they have accomplished.

“There is a changing balance of power and there has been for some time,” says Noll. “Look at the Giants. They were a force when I played, and now they’re a force again, but that’s a long time in between.”

The Giants’ Young has another perspective.

“We haven’t done that much,” he says. “We don’t think we’re anywhere near where the Steelers were in the ‘70s. All we are is a team that’s won one Super Bowl and wants to win again.”

And, adds a man who has never concealed his dislike for the Cowboys:

“Dallas made the playoffs for 20 years. Whatever way they were drafting, they were doing fine. It’s silly to criticize their system. I’d like to do whatever they did for for 20 years.”