PRO FOOTBALL ’87 : Pro Football / Bob Oates : Bears Play Giants Early--and Maybe Late

For many years, the football season opened in Chicago each summer with the annual College All-Star game.

And next Monday night it will be like the old days in Soldier Field when the NFL champions, the New York Giants, come in to get things started once more, this time against the Chicago Bears.

Forget the exhibition games last month. Forget the other regular-season openers Sunday. There is something of a national consensus that one of the last two Super Bowl winners, the Bears or Giants, will win it again.

In one national magazine, 16 of 26 daily newspaper football writers picked one or the other.

This is an era of ferocious defense in pro football, and the most recent two champions are perceived to be one-two in that art form.

A difference between them is that after a big summer, Giant quarterback Phil Simms is at the top of his game at the same time that Bear quarterback Jim McMahon has been driven to cover by another injury.

“I never saw Simms better,” Giant receiver Lionel Manuel said after catching the game-winning pass Saturday night at Pittsburgh, where Simms drove the Giants 80 yards in the last 1:06.

The NFL assumption is that stand-in quarterback Mike Tomczak can’t win the Super Bowl for the Bears. The assumption is that McMahon will return to take charge this fall either just in time or just too late.

Chicago’s defensive people can’t wait to find out which. The match-up of the month is Simms vs. their defense.

The season starts with possibly no more than four blue-chip quarterbacks--Dan Marino of Miami, John Elway of Denver, Bernie Kosar of Cleveland, and Jay Schroeder of Washington--unless Simms makes it five.

As of 1987, most of the others seem to be too young, too old, too ordinary, too erratic or too beat-up to play 16 creditable games.

And, conceivably, Kosar is the comer. This is a quarterback with everything but a defensive team. Not since John Unitas and Joe Namath has any passer thrown so regularly to the correct target.

Which isn’t to say that Kosar is a picture thrower. To the contrary, his passing form may be the NFL’s worst. Nor does he have a gun like Marino or Elway.

But the arm isn’t weak, he rarely jams the ball in, and he sees more of what’s going on across the line of scrimmage than any other quarterback.

Kosar will be the AFC’s most closely watched performer during the league’s September schedule, in which Cleveland plays New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Denver.

The cloud over the NFL as the teams launch a new season comes from the strike threat.

“I’ve been disappointed by the few number of (employer-employee) negotiations,” Commissioner Pete Rozelle said this week.

Pessimistically, he added that in the league’s four previous bargaining years--in 1968, ‘70, ’74 and ‘82--there was a strike each time.

“I’m willing and interested to get involved,” Rozelle said. “I can see where the areas of compromise are if they’re willing to compromise. But I can’t give both sides everything they want, obviously.”

For that reason, neither group wants him, he said, suggesting that his position is far different from that of Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who helped settle last year’s baseball strike.

“(NFL players) say there are eight issues still on the table,” Rozelle said. “(The owners) say there are 300. If they aren’t willing to compromise, there’s no way I can wave a magic wand. I don’t expect to be a knight on a white horse.”

The state of the NFL today in other areas, according to Rozelle:

--”I would hope that by 1990, we’ll (expand) to two more cities. (The candidates) are Oakland, Baltimore and all the others you’ve read about.”

--”The blocking-rule changes this year (will bring) more long punt returns and kickoff returns.”

--”I don’t think Art Schlichter (who is recuperating from a gambling problem) should play this year.”

--”My understanding is that (Seattle linebacker) Brian Bosworth (who wants to wear uniform number 44) will have a linebacker’s number Sunday.”

--”No judgment has been made by the owners on whether to play with (strike-breakers) if there’s a strike. The difficulties for the owners are putting teams on the field and TV rebates. The difficulty for the players is that the leading teams don’t want (scabs) deciding whether they make the playoffs or not.”

Doug Flutie would have had a perfect first quarter for the Bears in the Raider game Saturday--6 for 6 for 82 yards and 2 touchdown passes--if Willie Gault held his longest pass, a near-perfect 47-yard throw that reached Gault in an open zone at the two-yard line.

“It isn’t like trying out to be a preacher or a tennis pro,” Flutie said.

“When you’re a (quarterback candidate), you don’t get all week to try out. You get a few minutes in an exhibition game--and then, you have to get a break or two. A guy has to come open deep, or a play-action pass has to work, something like that.”

Flutie didn’t get the big break Saturday, but he did demonstrate that at 5 feet 10, he can operate successfully, for a while, in the pocket--at least against the Raiders .

A week earlier, however, against the St. Louis Cardinals, he was much more effective as a rollout passer.

His NFL destiny remains unclear. He’s almost the only one who thinks Flutie is any good.

Mike Ditka, who has coached the Bears to a record 39 wins in the last three seasons, on how to hold a wild and crazy team together:

“Every (team) has outspoken players, but (their coaches) don’t always let them speak up. I don’t stifle their identities.”

Ditka’s long suit is motivation. “His players are always ready,” Chicago writer Don Pierson said. “They haven’t played one flat game since Mike has been here.”

There are two conversation pieces in Ditka’s office at Lake Forest, Ill.: his large collection of stuffed bears--along with one lonely stuffed ram--and a one-word desk sign reading, “Communication.”

Explaining the sign, Ditka said: “My doors are always open. (Any player) can come right in.”

Maybe that’s the place for Flutie.