DOUBLE TROUBLE : Ability to Pass <i> and </i> Run Makes Eagles’ Cunningham the NFL’s Most Dangerous QB

On the day three years ago that Randall Cunningham took over at quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, he began by running out and speaking individually to each Eagle receiver, starting with the tight end.

He walked from man to man during the timeout as the trainers assisted his injured predecessor, Ron Jaworski, to the sideline.

Afterward in the locker room, a reporter asked Cunningham what he’d told his receivers.

“I told (them), ‘You’d better get your routes together,’ ” he replied. “Because if you’re not open, I’m running.”

That’s how it was in Philadelphia then. And that’s how it’s been, more or less, ever since. On game days, Cunningham is either throwing or running the ball. He is 80% of the Eagles’ offense.

In each of the last two seasons, he led the club in both rushing and passing. Two years ago, he was 14th in rushing in the National Football League.

Last season, with a 6.7-yard rushing average, he moved up to 11th on the NFL’s list of 126 players who ran the ball at least once. And, last year, he was second in the league in yards gained passing.

“Randall is the only complete player in the (NFL),” his coach, Buddy Ryan, said recently. “He’s the best punter, you know. And this year we’ve had him calling the plays, too. No other quarterback does all that.”

No other quarterback, in fact, is as feared today. At the age of 26, after only four years in pro football, Cunningham has jumped to the head of the class.

In rating quarterbacks, there’s no unanimity among those who play and coach the pro game. But among most of them, judging by what they said in training camp this summer, Cunningham is the new No. 1.

There may be better passers, they frequently said, but Cunningham is the only good passer who runs like a good running back.

After chasing him around in one game, Mike Singletary, the Chicago Bears’ all-pro linebacker, said: “Randall can make (defensive) guys look stupid more than anyone I’ve seen.”

After studying Cunningham closely, Sid Gillman, one of the few coaches in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, said: “This is the only NFL quarterback who wouldn’t surprise me if he ran for a 90-yard touchdown--or threw one.”

As a new season starts this week--it’s year 70 for the NFL--the pros are talking about Cunningham’s potential to run like a college wishbone quarterback.

They’re talking about his achievements as the field commander of a team he led to the NFC East championship last year, only the second time up there for the Eagles in the last quarter century.

They’re talking about trouble ahead as he wades into the league’s toughest first-half schedule--starting with a division winner, Seattle, on Sunday, followed by consecutive games against the last four Super Bowl champions--plus Minnesota in the second half of the season.

And they’re talking about Cunningham’s life style. In 1985, when he arrived in Philadelphia from Nevada Las Vegas, he brought along a girlfriend, Lisa Minor, who eventually objected and departed when, reportedly, he started dating three other people--singers Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson and actress Holly Robinson.

This summer, unhappily for Cunningham, Houston was booked into Philadelphia for one night only, the night of an Eagle game last month.

As the story goes, he finally decided to talk it over with Ryan, who has been his biggest booster.

“Hey, Coach Ryan,” he said one day that week. “If I play the first half Saturday, how about giving me the rest of the night off?”

“You and who else?” Ryan sneered.

“Me and (teammates) Keith Byars, Keith Jackson and Todd Bell,” Cunningham said, listing three other prominent players who also figured to sit out the second half of the club’s second exhibition game. “We want to go see Whitney.”

Ryan scratched an elbow, looked up at last and said, “Well, all right, Randall, but don’t stay out all night.”

This says more about Ryan, of course, than Cunningham. For possibly the first time since the days and nights of Bobby Layne, good athletes were ducking out of an NFL game when it was only half over--leaving the sportswriters of Philadelphia with nobody much to interview afterward but themselves.

When he heard about it, Norman Braman, who owns the Eagles, braced his controversial coach.

As Braman tells it, Ryan, a farmer at heart whose horse farm is in Kentucky, said: “It’s like when your kids are invited to a party in town. If you’re bailing hay, they can’t go. If you aren’t bailing hay that day, why the hell shouldn’t they go?”

Side by side, there’s no doubt who’s bigger--Houston or Cunningham. At 6 feet 4 inches, Cunningham looks even taller because the legs on his 203-pound frame are so insubstantial.

In a crowd of football players, he is instantly recognizable as the good-looking one with the thin hips, thin legs, thin mustache, thin gold necklace and closely cropped hair.

He seems altogether too fragile to play the game the way he does, running the ball so often that in a 28-team league, he’s one of the 11 leading ground gainers.

“It’s only a question of time until he gets a knee (injury),” a Washington Redskin official said one year, rather unkindly, after Cunningham made every big play in a 31-27 upset.

In rebuttal, Philadelphia quarterback coach Doug Scovil said: “Randall is hard to hit squarely. He knows how to roll. He’ll still try for the last yard sometimes, but he does understand the value of the (quarterback) slide.”

Scovil’s star pupil, who has examined the problem personally, acknowledges that football is hard on quarterbacks. At the same time, he advises that the worst place for a passer the pocket.

“More quarterbacks are hurt in the pocket than anywhere else,” Cunningham said. “Who would you rather get hit by--a 295-pound defensive lineman or a 195-pound defensive back? When I (run), I’m just trying to get out there a ways where I can mess around with those DBs.”

NFL coaches explain the Cunningham threat in these terms:

--There’s no real way to draw up a defense against quarterback runs.

--On every down, all 11 defenders are used as delegated pass rushers or to account for all receivers and running backs.

--There’s nobody to account for passer Cunningham if he runs instead.

His aren’t designed running plays. Except for quarterback sneaks, Cunningham’s runs are all scrambles.

“Quarterback (carries) are part of our offense,” he said. “Buddy wants me to take off five or six times a game, minimum. We aren’t (obsessed) with it, but if the hole is there, we take it.”

He said this quietly but confidently. He has the manner and manners of a well-brought up student who is at once pleasant to be around and obviously ambitious.

“About all I do is drive to practice, practice, drive home, and study the playbook,” he said.

Living in a bachelor apartment across the state line in New Jersey, he commutes in one of his three cars--a Mercedes-Benz, Porsche or Ford Bronco--and never stops anywhere for a beer. He said he hasn’t had a beer since college.

“Life (for a prominent athlete) is kind of like a ladder,” he said. “When you take a step on the ladder to success, you don’t want to take a step backward.

“I’m talking about drugs, alcohol and anything else that will bring you down the ladder.

“All kinds of people are trying to pull you off, and most of them don’t even realize they’re doing it. They’re just out to have some fun.

“You have to watch out for yourself all the time. Don’t expect anyone else to. Don’t fall into any traps.”

Don’t even use tobacco in any form, he told himself long ago when he was formulating his personal philosophy. That was at Santa Barbara High School, where he began as a pitcher.

A standout in both baseball and football, he was told that he could have a pro career in either, but not both, whereupon he chose to concentrate on football. Why?

“Football crowds are bigger than baseball crowds,” he said. “I want people to enjoy me--and there are more football people.”

The youngest of four brothers, Cunningham chose to enroll at Nevada Las Vegas instead of USC--where brother Sam (Bam) Cunningham played football so well--because, in Randall’s time, the Trojans spotlighted running backs, not quarterbacks.

“(At Las Vegas) they have a pro-type (quarterback),” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be the star of the team--the guy who leads the team.”

If all this sounds as if Cunningham is pretty cocky, he isn’t, Eagle owner Braman said protectively.

“Jim McMahon is cocky,” Braman said. “Randall is confident.”

How confident?

Well, there was a day in the last month of 1987 when the Eagle game plan was to establish the run against the wide-open Miami Dolphins, who won it on Dan Marino’s passes. Although Cunningham had then been in the league less than three years, he stood up in the locker room afterward and criticized Philadelphia’s signal-calling.

“We should have played the same game that (Marino) played,” he said. “We should have taken what they were giving us. We should have thrown on every play.”

When Philadelphia reporters ran this by Ryan, the coach defended Cunningham’s free-speech rights. “Nobody has to be a yes man around Buddy Ryan,” he said. “I’ve never been one myself.”

That is true. It’s also true that after thinking it over--all last year--Ryan gave Cunningham the signal-calling responsibility this year at the start of the exhibition season.

He said it might become a coaching responsibility again, at times, during the regular season.

Before this summer, Cunningham said, he called only one game in his career, a college freshman game.

No other quarterback has regularly called NFL plays since Jim Plunkett, the Raiders’ last Super Bowl winner.

But it used to be part of the job for most quarterbacks.

Ryan remembers that Joe Namath’s signal-calling--even more than his passing--won Super Bowl III for the New York Jets.

“The toughest quarterback to play against is the guy who calls his own plays,” said Ryan, who in Namath’s championship year was the Jets’ defensive coordinator.

Is Cunningham a strategist?

“If I were grading him as a play-caller, I’d give him about a B,” said Philadelphia football writer Bill Ordine.

Cunningham has a higher grade in mind for himself, something closer to an A.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” he said. “The way the defensive front jumps around these days, you’ve got to decide (on the play) at the last moment. So the best place (to call a play) is the line of scrimmage, just before their last jump. The second best place is the huddle.”

His coach understands.

“It only takes one kind of player to win--tough, smart players,” Ryan said. “The thing I like about Randall is that he’s tough and smart.”

It is also true that, thanks to Ryan, Cunningham has matured in a hurry.

Coming to Philadelphia in 1986 from Chicago, where his unique 46 defense helped the 1985 Bears win the Super Bowl, Ryan realized that prize prospect Cunningham couldn’t develop unless he played some regular-season football.

But the team would lose continuity, the new Philadelphia coach knew, if Cunningham played a quarter before or after starter Jaworski played three quarters.

In the Eagle film room one night, watching the exhibition-season tapes, Ryan came up with the answer. He would make Cunningham the team’s third-down quarterback specialist.

That year, the league’s third-and-10 conversion rate was about 12%. Not bad, but Cunningham’s was better. The young Eagle quarterback converted 24% of the time.

At the end of the season, Ryan said: “We’re a couple of drafts away from the (Super Bowl). But we’ve got the quarterback.”

And, now, they’ve had the drafts, too.

What’s next?