PRO FOOTBALL : Resolution of NFL Courtroom Battle Depends on the Owners

The NFL’s principal question at the moment is whether there are enough enlightened club owners to get an armistice this winter in their long courtroom war with the players.

The evidence is not encouraging. For the last five years, owner response to player requests--in all meaningful areas, from a form of free agency to some form of wage guarantee--has been a flat no .

Owner strategy, moreover, is still the same: divide and conquer. This time, the owners have been appealing over the heads of union management to the sort of player who would sell out a principle in order to get a few more benefits for himself.

As always, some players are going along with the owners. There are, as always, many factions, many points of view, among the NFL’s 1,400 athletes. Some are quite young, some aging. Some are wealthy, some struggling. Some favor the union’s new negotiating stroke--the move toward decertification; some are against it.

Among the 28 owners, by contrast, when it comes to money, there is only one faction.

That has been the owners’ strength in their last five years of hiding behind the NFL’s Management Council, whose executive director, Jack Donlan, is widely perceived to be out-slickering the players’ executive director, Gene Upshaw.

Network commentators, representing institutions that are perceived to be in bed with the NFL, made that point again Sunday.

The facts:

--The owners tell Donlan what to do.

--What makes Upshaw ineffective is the owners’ togetherness, their intransigence, their standing instructions for Donlan: Just say no.

Almost daily, the Management Council manages to target Upshaw, calling attention to what it calls his mistakes. And no doubt, he has made some. Who hasn’t?

His assistants have doubtless also been wrongheaded at times, although in the opinion of veteran union activist Ed Garvey and others, the NFL’s players have been well served by Upshaw and his staff.

Upshaw’s basic problem is that the players are in a fight they can’t end. They can’t, that is, without capitulating to the owners. Only the owners have the clout to end this one justly.

And so far, they have continually refused to send, say, six or eight of their peers to negotiate meaningfully with the players.

Instead, the owners keep sending Donlan with orders to do the things that they disdain to do openly.

During the NFL’s long fight over a new commissioner this year, some spirited leaders emerged among the owners. Where are they now?

The man who won, Paul Tagliabue, said labor peace is his first priority. Where is he now?

The federal courts have acquired a reputation in the NFL of being a seat of refuge for those who own the teams.

The thinking is that the nation’s many conservative new judges--those appointed in Ronald Reagan’s eight years as President--can be counted on to side with the NFL’s conservative ownerships in any showdown with the players.

But that is a gamble that will prove disastrous to some if by any chance it is lost.

The truth is that the NFL’s draft of college players is so glaringly un-American that jurists could well throw it out if it is not protected by the shield of NFL player cooperation.

They might throw it out someday, anyhow. Why should fat-cat professional players be allowed to conspire with the league’s monopoly ownerships to deny college players their rights as free Americans?

The 28 NFL owners, despite their recent temporary victory in a St. Louis court, are skating this year on thin ice.

The Monday night game was a signal to the Raiders that in the Astrodome next Sunday, the Houston Oilers will be a handful.

A team that keeps coming on after repeated adversity is nobody’s choice of opponents.

But if the Raiders get hot in Houston, they might--for a while--be able to stay hot. They will come back from Texas to play three consecutive games at home for the first time as a Los Angeles team.

And they’re already 4-1 this season at the Coliseum.

Starting Nov. 26, the Raiders, on successive Sundays, will be home to the New England Patriots, the Denver Broncos and the Phoenix Cardinals.

In other words, they have a shot at a 7-1 Coliseum record for the first time since 1985, when a 12-4 Raider team made the playoffs.

Of all the remaining opponents on the Raider schedule, Denver is probably the team they’re least likely to beat. Mike Shanahan returns as a Bronco assistant with an old friend, John Elway, on Dec. 3 at the Coliseum.

The last two coaches to lose to the Broncos described them with the same adjective, great.

After losing to Elway’s last-minute drive Sunday, Kansas City’s new coach also said: “I’ve seen that before.”

Marty Schottenheimer was, however, taking poetic license. The winning Elway move went only 62 yards in Kansas City. Against Schottenheimer’s 1986 playoff team in Cleveland, Elway drove 98 yards at the end--and only tied the score. The Broncos won in overtime.

Elway is, of course, old hat. The new deal in Denver this year is an aggressive defense established by the Broncos’ first-year coordinator, Wade Phillips, successor to a longtime bend-don’t-break defensive philosopher, Joe Collier.

Phillips began his NFL career at New Orleans in the 1970s, when the Saints were led by his father, O.A. (Bum) Phillips.

Dan Reeves, the coach who has had one winning team after another in Denver, wanted Wade for a simple reason: Reeves admires the two coaches who admire the young man, Bum Phillips and Philadelphia’s Buddy Ryan.

Appropriately, Phillips has rewarded Reeves not only with an often leak-proof defense but also by repetitiously saying the right things.

Wade Phillips’ answer when asked the secret of his success in Denver: “Our offense has controlled the ball (with rookie runner Bobby Humphrey). You’re not going to have a great defense without a good running game.”

That is a Ryan commandment.

“I go back to Buddy,” Phillips said. “He made a lot of things possible. I’ve taken some of the things I learned before in New Orleans and Houston, and put in a lot of Buddy’s stuff.”

At New Orleans, Wade was the head coach during the last four games of 1985 after Bum retired. Ryan snapped him up the next year.

As the defensive coordinator at Philadelphia, Phillips, seemingly, had one of the NFL’s best jobs. Why did he leave?

“Buddy runs the defense,” he said.

One rap against the run ‘n’ shoot scheme is that it’s a passer’s offense that gives its own running backs a hard time.

The Detroit Lions are proving again this season that this isn’t so.

Under Coach Wayne Fontes and his offensive assistant, Mouse Davis, the 1989 Lions have moved up to fifth in National Conference rushing.

What’s more, they’re leading the conference in average yards rushing per carry.

The Lions are also passing well enough with rookie quarterback Rodney Peete to upset the Green Bay Packers, which they did Sunday, 31-22.

The surprise, however, is their running attack.

Barry Sanders, Detroit’s Heisman Trophy rookie, made the key gains in the Green Bay game when the Packers were in pass defenses, presumably watching Peete.

“The whole game plan was to stop Barry,” Packer linebacker Tim Harris said. “But he just breaks tackles.”

Lindy Infante, the Packer coach who will be in Candlestick Park Sunday to subject his team to the 49er machine, described Sanders, who weighs 203 pounds and stands 5 feet 8, as a new kind of NFL player.

“He’s probably the prototype of the back of the 1990s,” Infante said. “He’s got all three--speed, power and great cutting ability.”

Davis, the coach who developed the run ‘n’ shoot years ago on high school and college teams, has been impressed with the way Peete has taken hold of the offense after missing the season’s first month with injuries.

“Rodney makes a rookie mistake now and then,” Davis said. “But most of the time, you don’t even realize he’s a rookie. He’s getting more on track all the time--with a better cadence, better audibles and better leadership.”

Peete has also put on 10 pounds in Detroit, Davis said, to get into the 205-pound class and add strength.

Even so, the Lions are still bothered by the kind of problem that plagues most four-wide-receiver teams: Only two of their wide receivers apparently have the requisite NFL quality. These are second-year players Robert Clark and Richard Johnson.

The league’s other run ‘n’ shoot team, Houston, has four in that class, as the Raiders will see Sunday in the Astrodome.