Pro Football / Bob Oates : Parity Turns This Season Into the Pick ‘Em Playoffs

Look what parity has done now. It has made a crapshoot of the playoffs.

Any of the 10 playoff teams can win the National Football League championship next month.

Any of the 10 can lose its next game.

Of each of the surviving teams, you can say precisely this:

“I don’t know who’s going to win the Super Bowl this time, but they aren’t.”

NFL rules and methods--including the draft and other procedures--have brought this about. All were designed to produce equality for all, and they’re doing it. Welcome to parity.

And welcome to the crapshoot, which begins with the two wild-card games this weekend and ends at Miami on Jan. 22 in Super Bowl XXIII.

The 10 shooters:

1--SAN FRANCISCO (10-6)

The 49ers have the league’s best combination of good, imaginative coaching, good players and vital postseason experience.

Bill Walsh is the only NFL coach who has reached the playoffs in each of the last 6 years, and in Joe Montana he has the kind of mature, dangerous quarterback whom every playoff team wants.

The 49ers are vulnerable because they aren’t that much better, because they may have to play in a blizzard next month and because they’ve been hit by multiple injuries in the defensive backfield, where they may get little if any help from Eric Wright, Don Griffin or Tory Nixon.

Every team has injuries, but as San Francisco safety Tom Holmoe said: “It’s tough to be so beat up at one position this time of year.”

The indispensable 49er is nose tackle Michael Carter, whose absence was costly in the Ram game Sunday, but who is expected back.

2--CHICAGO (12-4)

The Bears can win the Super Bowl because they are led by one of the NFL’s most effective motivators, Mike Ditka, and because they will have the home-field advantage in the conference final Jan. 8 if they win their first playoff game on New Year’s weekend. That one is also scheduled for Soldier Field, the ice box they love.

Said Minnesota defensive end Bubba Baker: “Think of everybody (Ditka) has lost this year--his quarterbacks (Jim McMahon), his big-play receivers (Willie Gault), his blitzing linebacker (Wilber Marshall), his best defensive lineman (Richard Dent). And others. And he didn’t make excuses. He just went out and won.”

One difference between the Chicago and Minnesota coaches, who play in the same division, is that Ditka made sure that his team won all 6 from the pushovers in the NFC Central: Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Detroit. The Vikings lost twice to Green Bay, and even to Miami.

The Bears are vulnerable for all the reasons Baker mentioned.

3--MINNESOTA (11-5)

The Vikings can win the Super Bowl for the best of all possible reasons. They have the most talented players in the league, as the Pro Bowl voters conceded.

Against Chicago Monday night, after breezing to a 21-0 lead, the Vikings let down and almost lost it. Preventing letdowns is a coaching staff’s responsibility. Ditka’s team doesn’t let down. The Vikings often do.

The Viking leader, Jerry Burns, also pulled quarterback Wade Wilson Monday night, apparently figuring that Wilson was at fault for problems that had been created by others--players as well as coaches. That decision won’t bring up anyone’s confidence level in Minnesota.

So the Vikings are vulnerable--the more so because they run the ball so indifferently. Most Super Bowl teams run it well.

Moreover, as a wild-card team, the Vikings must win on the road to win the championship.

But they are the strongest wild-card team since the 1980 Raiders, who won a Super Bowl. The Vikings have the talent to do just that.

4--CINCINNATI (12-4)

The Bengals can win the Super Bowl because, for one thing, like the Bears, they’ve earned the right to play at home next month after a welcome bye this weekend. Second, they’re pretty good.

“They’re the best team I’ve seen this year,” said Raider owner Al Davis.

Coach Sam Wyche is an innovator whose offense is hard to handle when it is as well balanced as it is now with Boomer Esiason throwing and Ickey Woods running.

In addition, Wyche is getting the breaks this season to compensate for last season, when, with mostly the same good team, he finished 4-11 after everything broke wrong.

The Bengals are vulnerable on several counts. Many of their best players are inexperienced in playoff pressure. Their defense isn’t among the league’s mightiest, and it is wrongly constructed, stronger in the secondary than in the line. And, among other things, the Bengals have tended to unravel against determined opponents.

5--RAMS (10-6)

This team can win the Super Bowl because it remains one of the NFC’s best this season, on a plateau with those identified above and the New Orleans Saints.

Jim Everett is nearing another plateau with the league’s best quarterbacks. One of Everett’s few remaining flaws is a tendency to push the ball--which accounts for his overthrows. A polished NFL passer gets his arm up higher and whips the ball.

The Rams also need more speed for Everett to throw to. They may have lost the division title early on when they wouldn’t pay Ron Brown what he thought he was worth. Now that he’s back, Brown probably should be starting.

Defensively, the Rams are different this season, but on balance no better than they used to be as a zone team. Their strength is Coach John Robinson, for whom players enjoy playing.

Vulnerabilities: Good defenses have stopped the 1988 Ram ground game. The Rams are not only a wild-card team but a visiting wild-card team this week.

6--HOUSTON (10-6)

The Oilers can win the Super Bowl with the players they have on offense, where they resemble an all-star team. They line up mostly Pro Bowl-type linemen, running backs and receivers. And by the time the regular season was over, their quarterback, Warren Moon, had arrived as No. 1 in the NFL.

The scoring drive Moon led with poised, accurate passing last week--on his first series after he had been blind-sided and knocked out by a Cleveland blitzer--was typical.

Defensively, if less talented, the Oilers are as aggressive as their lovable coach, Jerry Glanville.

Last week, when the snow started to fall in Cleveland, the Oilers, who then had a big lead, let down and blew it. So who has the edge in this week’s AFC wild-card rematch?

Said former NFL coach George Allen: “The Oilers are too good to lose to anybody back to back in any kind of weather.”

They’re really vulnerable, though. Much like Minnesota, they’re a candidate for the most erratic bunch in the league.

7--SEATTLE (9-7)

The Seahawks can win the Super Bowl by merely playing their best game 3 consecutive times.

In an up-and-down season for all in the NFL, the Seahawks have reached as high and stooped as low as anyone, but when they’re on their stick they’re formidable with the Milton flyer, veteran quarterback Dave Krieg.

In retrospect, the best thing that happened to Coach Chuck Knox’s players might have been their venture into the frozen wilds of New England earlier this month, when, in defeat, they learned how the other half lives in that weather.

As Knox, who has taken Seattle to four playoffs in 6 years, said Tuesday: “We will handle the cold weather better this time.”

They will have to, of course, because they’ve been scheduled into Cincinnati on New Year’s weekend.

Halfback Curt Warner’s bad ankle makes them vulnerable. So does their big-game record.

8--BUFFALO (12-4)

The Bills can win the Super Bowl by playing as well as they did through the first 12 games, in which they were 11-1.

It is believed in the East that they have the best defense in the league with, among others, Bruce Smith. Their offense has also shown strength at times with Jim Kelly and classy receiver Andre Reed.

What’s more, after this week’s bye, the Bills will get a wild-card team at Buffalo in their first playoff game.

But this year, with the wild cards tougher than ever, that won’t be as helpful as it once was.

If the wild card is Cleveland, it will be a more experienced cold-weather team than Buffalo’s.

If it’s Houston, the Bills will be up against more talent than they have. And by then, the hothouse Oilers should be used to the extreme cold after playing in it 3 straight weeks.

The Bills have also appeared vulnerable recently, with a 1-3 record in their last four.

9--PHILADELPHIA (10-6)

The Eagles can win the Super Bowl with the NFL’s most resourceful quarterback, Randall Cunningham, whose coach, Buddy Ryan, is the creator of a modern, aggressive defense.

Indeed, to hear him talk about it, Ryan expects to win.

“I think our defense the last 4 weeks probably played better than any in the NFL,” Ryan said this week, noting that defenses win Super Bowls. “There are a lot of teams out there who don’t want to play us.”

The Eagles had six losing seasons consecutively, two under Ryan, before he constructed a division winner this year in the NFC East. He regards the creation as his greatest accomplishment.

“You have to get the kind of players you want together,” he said. “That’s 90% of coaching.”

Their rapid rise in the NFL and their inexperience in playoff pressure make the Eagles vulnerable. But Cunningham could find a way.

10--CLEVELAND (10-6)

The Browns can win the Super Bowl because they’ve shown that they can beat Houston--which would suggest that they can win in Buffalo, and, if they win again there, they can surely take Cincinnati or Seattle. And then anyone the NFC wants to send up.

That’s the scene they’re playing in Cleveland now, since 38-year-old quarterback Don Strock threw 3 interceptions last week and fell behind the Oilers, 23-7, before pulling it out, 28-23.

With Bernie Kosar at quarterback, the Browns were a preseason Super Bowl favorite. With a noticeably sub-par Kosar eventually playing injured in 9 of Cleveland’s 16 games, the Browns made the playoffs anyway--and they did it in the AFC’s most competitive division, which sent three entries into postseason play.

A solid, well-balanced team, the Browns, despite their injuries, split with both of their principal rivals, Cincinnati and Houston.

Even so, they are more vulnerable than most NFL teams. Strock is so old that he once backed up Bob Griese. When Houston returns to town, how could he beat the AFC’s best players twice ?