Trying to Stop the Music : With Offenses Increasingly in Tune, Ron Lynn Works to Create Discord With the Charger Defense : <i> “It’s entertainment. Start the calliope. Doot-doot, doodle-oodle, doot</i> -<i> doot, doodle-oodle</i> . . . <i> “</i> --Ron Lynn, Charger defensive coordinator

Sacks are down all around the National Football League. Points are up. And the agent for one Charger player says the team’s owner, construction magnate Alex Spanos, is now taking game films home to study, as if they were profit statements, spreadsheets or the latest government figures on housing starts.

Worse for Charger defensive coordinator Ron Lynn is that his immediate superior, first-year Coach Dan Henning, is still installing an offensive system. And Henning’s immediate superior, Steve Ortmayer, is in the last year of his contract as director of football operations.

So here’s the deal, Ron:

You figure out a way to keep opponents from gaining 200 yards a game. And never mind all those bells and whistles attached to that calliope on the other side of the ball.

Maybe then Spanos won’t complain publicly about the “three-man prevent” you tried in defeat against Houston quarterback Warren Moon two weeks ago. Maybe then the Chargers will finish 9-7, win the AFC West and earn Henning honors as coach of the year. Maybe then Ortmayer will retain his job.

And while you’re at it, Ron, we want you to do this with a depth-poor unit that starts four free agents and two other players acquired by trade. After that, we’ll let you have a shot at tackling the national debt.

Fortunately for the Chargers, Lynn doesn’t look at his job that way. He’s much more into football than politics. And he sees it this way:

“You have diametrically opposed options right now,” Lynn says. “One is to sit back and try to cover. One is to try to rush all the time. Either one of the two can get you killed.”

In Week 1, the Chargers ran into a Raider offensive line that played over its head. They lost by 26 points. In Week 2, the Chargers emphasized pass coverage at the expense of pass rush against a run-and-shoot attack, and Moon picked them apart.

The defense didn’t sack Moon once. Henning was not pleased.

“If you don’t get the quarterback with the rush or the coverage,” he said, “it’s hard to determine which is best.”

Last week, Lynn unveiled a seven-man front not dissimilar to the Rams’ vaunted “Eagle” defense. It produced three sacks and helped force five Steve DeBerg interceptions as the Chargers beat Kansas City, 21-6.

But the sad fact for NFL defenses everywhere is that the number of sacks has been dwindling since 1985, the year Chicago’s defense dominated the league. During that season, sacks numbered 1,306. The next year, that figure dropped to 1,198. In 1987, sacks declined again to 1,106. Even if the strike hadn’t subtracted a game from the schedule, sacks almost certainly would have been down. Last year, sacks totaled 1,035.

Through three games this year, the 196 sacks thus far project to 1,045 over the 16-game schedule. That’s a negligible increase from last year.

There are several reasons for the decline.

Offenses have finally figured out they can’t block pass-rushing outside linebackers like Lawrence Taylor, Andre Tippett and Wilber Marshall with running backs. Increasingly, they have assigned that chore to offensive tackles who have refined the “slide” technique to force outside rushers even further outside.

Most teams have also cut down on the number of steps they allow their quarterbacks to drop back on passing downs. Instead of seven steps, quarterbacks are utilizing five- and even three-step drops to give pass-rushers less time.

The expanded use of the shotgun formation has turned out to be a successful way to protect quarterbacks in long-yardage situations. It’s easier to see a blitz coming and check off to a safer option. The shotgun is not new. But more teams than ever before have installed it.

Finally, almost every team has packaged some kind of four-wide receiver formation. It spreads defenses out and forces them to tip their hand more before the snap.

“Visually,” Lynn says, “the defense has to make some declaration.”

As a result of all these factors, scoring has proliferated. The average points per game through three weeks stands at a whopping 48.4. At that pace, 1989 will the highest scoring year ever in the NFL. The previous high was 46.1 in 1965.

“Somebody referred to it as fast-break basketball on grass,” Lynn says. “And that’s not a bad description. When we get to third down, that’s what it has turned into.”

And it’s no accident. Almost all the rules changes in the past decade have favored offensive linemen and wide receivers while protecting quarterbacks. During that period, the dominant force on the NFL’s Competition Committee has been Miami Coach Don Shula. The committee recommends rules changes to the owners.

It’s also no accident that Shula’s quarterback, Dan Marino, hasn’t been sacked in the Dolphins’ past 15 regular season games.

Holding, says Charger defensive Mike Charles, is the great equalizer for offensive linemen. Charles and Shula didn’t get along when Charles played in Miami. And it is no wonder.

“Shula and his rules people got together,” Charles said. “Now holding is part of the game.”

And it’s all part of a trend that isn’t likely to end soon. The new guard NFL owners are people such as Victor Kiam of New England, Patrick Bowlen of Denver, Ken Behring of Seattle and even Jerry Jones of Dallas.

They have mostly scoffed at tradition. And they have insisted the NFL needs to market itself more to the sporting public. Don’t expect this group to advocate the kind of rules retrenching needed to restore the balance that has shifted away from defenses.

Lynn says officials could call offensive holding on every play if they wanted to. Henning, whose background is on offense, says the number of holding calls usually depends upon which officiating crew is working a game.

“The thing that I’ve noticed more than anything is they don’t call interference as much anymore,” Henning says.

Lynn says that’s because defensive coaches make sure their players don’t bump receivers more than once in the first five yards. Lynn says that rule is at the root of most of the defense’s ills right now.

“If I had a magic wand,” he says, “I would go back to the way it used to be relative to playing wide receivers in the five-yard zone. You used to be able to bump ‘em as many times as you wanted.”

Henning’s point about the difference between officiating crews is an offshoot of the trend to higher scores. But it’s an interesting one. It turns out many NFL teams scout officials as closely as they scout their next opponent. But it’s a tricky business.

“If you coach to the officials every week, you can’t ever stop doing that,” Henning says. “And it becomes a very tedious proposition to tell your players that this is what’s going to happen this week, and this isn’t going to happen. I’ve seen situations where we’ve tried to coach to the officials, and it has backfired. And I’ve seen situations where we haven’t done it, and that has backfired, too.”

The defensive answer to today’s liberated offenses lies in procuring versatile athletes--defensive backs strong enough to rush the passer and fast enough to cover; linebackers big enough to stuff the run and quick enough to pick up a back; defensive ends fierce enough to hand-fight a 300-pound tackle and mobile enough to run with the tight end if necessary.

In other words, first-round draft picks. The Chargers start five--Lee Williams, Burt Grossman, Bill Ray Smith, Leslie O’Neal and Gill Byrd.

Generally, Lynn is willing to sacrifice size for versatility. But, he says, “Our concern is always going to be, ‘Are we stout enough to sit in there and play against the run if a team just decides to come in and run at us?’

“Our alternative to that is to line up in different fronts, change them up and try to get some element of confusion in their game. Or to be able to stunt and dog enough on running downs to get a tackle for a loss and put them in a situation where now they can’t control the clock and the down markers.”

To that end, the Chargers will line Grossman up at right end on one play and left end the next. Williams has rushed the passer this year from both the inside and the outside. O’Neal, listed on the depth chart as an outside linebacker, lined up as a nose tackle more than once against the Chiefs.

“There’s always a risk when you take a guy away from his original position,” Lynn says. “But we’re trying to get the best matchup.”

Phoenix, this week’s Charger opponent, will be an acid test. The Cardinals’ offensive line is huge. After allowing 785 yards and 77 points in the first two weeks, the Charger defense played that one solid game against the Chiefs.

“Two (bad) games are not going to take away three years of preparation,” says free safety Vencie Glenn. “Ron Lynn is a level-headed guy. He is not going to panic.”

“When things go bad early, you can’t start thinking everything else is going to go bad,” Charles says. “We don’t want to start being tentative. You can’t be afraid to unload.”

Said Henning after the Houston defeat: “I think we’re playing the right people in the right places. They just have to play better.”

Coach Buddy Ryan’s Eagles damned the torpedoes and blitzed full speed ahead last Sunday against San Francisco. They sacked Joe Montana eight times. But they also allowed 428 yards passing. And they lost, 38-28, when Montana threw four touchdown passes in the final quarter.

Yes. That music you hear in the background is a calliope.

Charger Notes

Charger wide receiver Quinn Early temporarily popped his left shoulder out of joint during practice Thursday. But he managed to get it back in place before practice ended. Early said it would not affect his playing status for Sunday’s game in Phoenix. . . . Rookie center Courtney Hall has a sore ankle but will also probably play. Coach Dan Henning had a one-on-one chat with Hall in the locker room after practice. “I think he’s probably got a little bit of the rookie blues,” Henning said.