Pro Football : Broncos Look Like Single-Wing Team--and What a Wing It Is

With quarterback John Elway standing in the backfield as a tailback, the shotgun formation has lately been the Denver Broncos’ primary formation.

The Broncos have used shotgun passes and runs on first and second downs, as well as third, in moving ahead of the Seattle Seahawks in the AFC West--leading to this question:

In the T-formation era, can you get to the Super Bowl with a single-wing team?

“You sure can when you have Elway back there,” former National Football League Coach Red Hickey said this week. “Denver is an ideal shotgun team--great receivers, not much running game.”

Hickey is the coach who, as the 1959-63 leader of the San Francisco 49ers, brought back the shotgun.

“People worry about quarterback injuries in this formation,” he said. “But it isn’t that dangerous if the quarterback doesn’t try to be a fullback.

“Elway is an experienced NFL runner now. He knows when to slide out of trouble.

“Philadelphia and San Francisco could also win in the shotgun with Randall Cunningham and Steve Young.”

The San Diego scoreboard fired up Elway Sunday, he told reporters after leading the Broncos to an easy 31-17 win.

“When they showed I only had 2 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions against the Chargers (in recent games), that added gas to the fire,” he said.

Denver looked unbeatable against San Diego. But two weeks ago, Seattle had also looked unbeatable, crushing San Diego, 34-3.

In the AFC West this season, what’s happened is that after years of losing, San Diego has suddenly played well enough to command respect.

But that has only alerted the division’s best teams, Seattle and Denver, to bear down and blow the Chargers out.

When they get more speed--and if, down the road, they can successfully replace Dan Fouts at quarterback--the Chargers will be a factor.

But this year, look for the division title to be settled at Seattle a week from Sunday when the Broncos (7-3-1) play the Seahawks (7-4).

Elway, the only man in the league who can run out the clock with pass plays, has become a triple-threat this year--perhaps the NFL’s most effective combination passer, runner and leader.

“One edge he gives you is that he can get those long-distance third downs,” Denver Coach Dan Reeves said after Elway had converted third and 11, third and 14, and, twice, third and 10 in San Diego.

That’s one thing. Another Elway edge is that he usually gets the most out of his teammates.

Team-wide leadership is, indeed, the Broncos’ hidden weapon. No NFL organization has more of it than they get from the four key people, Reeves, Elway, defensive coach Joe Collier and owner Pat Bowlen.

Collier has lost most of his best players to injury and retirement this year and still his team defends with distinction.

For better or worse, the nation still sees pro athletes as role models.

Despite the trouble that some sports figures have had with drugs and in other negative scenes, they are still looked up to, a Travelers Companies survey shows.

The firm’s recent random poll of 1,015 adults found that pro athletes are preferred as role models by more than 2 to 1 over business executives, the second-most popular class.

Linebacker Reggie Williams of the Cincinnati Bengals doesn’t take the honor lightly.

Speaking of NFL players and other pro athletes at a New York press conference, Williams, the league’s 1986 man of the year, said: “Our expectations for young people must be exemplified by our actions. If we’re asking our youth to be outstanding citizens, our actions must speak louder than our words.”

Instant replay officials have reversed an average of four calls a week this season, NFL spokesman Joe Browne said Tuesday.

The broadcast medium doesn’t talk about it much any more, and the print medium doesn’t write about it. Moving on to livelier issues, most reporters seem to be waiting for the next glaring error.

Quietly, however, the upstairs officials have corrected 43 officiating errors this year--at least two each week, five last week.

And, said Browne, that’s more action than there was last year, when in a comparable period only 30 calls were reversed.

“Last year, it took a while for the replay officials to get used to the equipment,” he said.

The equipment and the extra salaries are costly. The league barely voted in replay officiating this season, 21-7, and the economizers are still against it.

But in an era of exploding parity in pro football, it’s clearly worthwhile. One bad call can mean the Super Bowl.

In Joe Montana’s best game of the season, the San Francisco 49ers were the NFL’s most impressive team last weekend.

They manhandled a first class defensive power, the Cleveland Browns, who, going in, led the NFL in overall defense as well as pass defense and point defense.

“Everybody on our team played well,” Montana said this week. “It would be nice if we could stay at this level.”

Nice, and not impossible, but tough. The 49ers will play the Bears and, among others, the Rams in December.

Surprising the Cleveland defense, Montana and Jerry Rice combined to get touchdowns in three different ways. First, on third and goal, Rice went in motion and raced laterally into the open for a short one. Then on third and 20, though covered, he caught a perfectly thrown long one. Then he closed out with a 28-yard scoring catch on a crossing pattern.

Rice is arguably the NFL’s best receiver since Elroy Hirsch and Lance Alworth. The difference between him and the others today is the speed with which Rice accelerates into his moves. The first two or three steps he takes--after his brain says “Move!”--are purely fast forward.

Nobody on the Cleveland team could keep up with him. Maybe nobody in football can.

Gene Upshaw will be on a football field again Sunday. He’ll be there to get his Hall of Fame ring when the Buffalo Bills come into the Coliseum to play the Raiders.

That may remind Raider fans that in Upshaw’s era, their team had a stable offensive line.

Year after year, for game after game after game, the offense attacked with Jim Otto at center, Upshaw at left guard and Art Shell at left tackle.

It is possible to win without all that, as the Raiders did Monday night. But not game after game after game.

The rules committee should take a long look at Cleveland’s first touchdown Sunday night.

On a play that started near the 49er goal line, a San Francisco defensive player stripped a Cleveland runner of the ball--which was fumbled forward into the end zone, where the Browns fell on it for a touchdown.

In other words, the 49ers were penalized for making a big play. As their punishment for forcing the Browns to fumble, they lost seven points.

It has always seemed clear to many viewers of such plays that forward-moving fumbles shouldn’t be allowed in the NFL. The ball, if recovered by the fumbling team, should be returned to the point of the fumble.

Why reward mistakes?

Although the Indianapolis Colts eventually won handsomely Sunday, 51-27, the Houston Oilers were still in the game in the fourth quarter, when Eric Dickerson got away for 29 yards to the Houston four-yard line to set up the back-breaking touchdown.

And this week, Houston Coach Jerry Glanville was still talking about Dickerson’s run.

“The defense has everything shut off where he wants to go, he comes back and brings the ball down to first and goal,” Glanville mourned.

That’s the dimension that skillful running backs provide, but the Colts will need more than big runs to keep winning. In their next two, they’re up against Cleveland and Buffalo, the best in the AFC, probably, east of Denver.

There is this difference between the Heisman connection in Dallas and the one here.

In Dallas, Tony Dorsett and Herschel Walker have been crying about not getting the ball.

In Los Angeles, Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson have been seen blocking instead of crying.

If the Raider highlight film this year fails to include Allen’s blocks ahead of Jackson’s runs Monday night, it will be incomplete.

It is his sense of timing that makes Allen the blocker he is. Invariably, he seems to get his man at just the right time, which is easier said than done.

The Bears are at Minnesota Sunday night in the game of the week. Each team is 7-1 this year with its union people, although the Bears’ strike team has put them within striking distance of another division title. They’re 9-2 in the NFC Central to Minnesota’s 7-4.

If the Bears lose this one, it will be harder than they think to win the division title from the Vikings--as far ahead as they seem now. The Bears will get San Francisco, Seattle and the Raiders in their last three. Ahead for the Vikings are only Green Bay and Detroit, then Washington.

So Bear receiver Dennis McKinnon, who last week publicly criticized his team’s defensive coordinator, Vince Tobin, is still worried. Out of his own wallet, McKinnon is offering bonuses of $100 to $500 for big plays by Bear special team players.

“Just trying to get back to the Super Bowl,” he said.