Redskins Go to the Air Too Late, Fall to Giants, 20-17

The question in the National Football Conference this year is whether anyone is going to catch the Rams.

In earlier games, it hasn’t looked as if the San Francisco 49ers have enough.

It has looked as if the Chicago Bears might--depending, perhaps, on who holds the home-field advantage in the winter playoffs.

And the Philadelphia Eagles, despite some erratic tendencies, remain a threat.

But it will be an upset if either of the teams in the New Jersey Meadowlands Sunday wins the Super Bowl this time--or even plays in it. Although the New York Giants came from behind to edge the Washington Redskins again, 20-17, neither team is a match for the Rams in offensive explosiveness or imagination.

The winning ingredient was the ability of Giant quarterback Phil Simms to hang tough and throw third-down passes for touchdowns in the fourth quarter--once to tight end Mark Bavaro for 12 yards and next to wide receiver Odessa Turner for 25.

These good plays ended drives of 77 and 49 yards and improved the Giants to 5-1 in the NFC East after the Redskins (3-3) carried a 10-6 lead into the final quarter.

“It was just another Giant-Redskin game,” Giant Coach Bill Parcells said after his team defeated Washington for the ninth time in 11 games, including five in a row in the Meadowlands.

“Simms is what you want in the clutch,” Parcells said of the quarterback who led the last-minute Giant rally to beat Washington six weeks ago. “He and (Giant linebacker) Lawrence Taylor are just alike. They’re magnificent competitors.”

At times in this game, so was the Redskins’ sophomore quarterback, Mark Rypien, who, concluding drives of 82 and 64 yards, equaled Simms in scoring passes--throwing for 29 and five yards to his wide receivers, Ricky Sanders and Art Monk.

“Mark made a game out of it at the end,” Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs said.

Yes, but. . . .

Instead of just making a game of it, Rypien could have won it, conceivably, with a more imaginative game plan in the first three quarters.

During the 3-3 first half and long into the third quarter, the Redskins played as if they were protecting a one-point lead in the last minute. They threw only one first-and-10 pass in the first half, and never did open up until the Giants plodded into a 6-3 lead with six minutes left in the third quarter.

Suddenly worried, Gibbs allowed Rypien to deliver four consecutive first-down passes, all completed, the last for a touchdown and a 10-6 lead. And, now, it was going to be the Redskins’ game if they could hang onto the ball.

They couldn’t. One of their three receivers, Gary Clark, who fumbles a lot, lost possession on their next series after Rypien threw him a first-down pass. Thereafter, the Redskins lost to the fourth-quarter clock.

They opened up too late. So, for that matter, did the Giants--but Clark’s fumble was their deliverance, setting up their decisive touchdown.

Thus, fourth-quarter fumbles have been paramount in two of the league’s biggest games this year, Rams-49ers and Giants-Redskins.

There’s a question whether the Rams would have been able to outscore the 49ers without fullback Tom Rathman’s late fumble. At that moment, Joe Montana was driving the 49ers toward what could have been an insurance touchdown.

In Giants Stadium, before another sellout 76,245 in ideal fall weather, Clark’s fumble was at least that costly to the Redskins--considering their earlier reluctance to throw the ball.

The difference this year between the Rams, on the one hand, and the Giants and Redskins, on the other, isn’t so much Ram quarterback Jim Everett. It’s the modern pass offense the Rams have installed for Everett.

By comparison, the Giants and Redskins have conservative coaches who don’t want to have anything to do with such 1989 frills as four-receiver formations or no-huddle offenses.

When the Redskins were out of it in the fourth quarter, 20-10, after Simms’ second scoring pass, they showed what they’re capable of in the no-huddle offense. On six passes and one run, Rypien got them into the end zone in just under two minutes.

It used to be said that NFL offenses couldn’t win with a full game of such plays--quick, no-huddle passes--but several teams, the Houston Oilers and Cincinnati Bengals among them, have shown in the last two years that it is possible.

Expressing the NFL’s conventional wisdom, Giant cornerback Mark Collins said: “Rypien’s (fourth-quarter) passes just played into our hands. He took too much time off the clock with those (short) throws.”

Most NFL coaches have many other objections to the two-minute offense as a game-long strategy.

Asked why he hates no-huddle plays, Parcells said: “The quarterback has to call the plays.”

It’s also true that when Parcells and Gibbs are the play-callers, theirs is an old-fashioned goal: to set up passes with runs.

Against Washington, Parcells went for it three times on fourth down, and the Giants made all three at critical moments--but fourth-down calls are hardly the mark of a sophisticated offense.

What’s more, in two of those instances, the officials spotted the ball generously for the Giants following two minimal gains by Ottis Anderson, the day’s only 100-yard runner.

This was a game that had the look of one that Washington could have won with a Ram air show.