PRO FOOTBALL : Success Has Packer Fans Doing the Lindy

In the 1960s, when the Green Bay Packers started charging through the league under the direction of a new coach, Vince Lombardi, they said their running backs were getting one order: “Run to daylight.”

Today the Packers are saying that they’ve been revived, finally, by another determined new coach, Gelindo (Lindy) Infante, who has come up with a new order: “Pass to daylight.”

The difference in the instructions reflects the difference between pro football in the early ‘60s and late ‘80s.

On typical offensive plays Sunday in San Francisco, where the Packers upset the 49ers, 21-17, they quickly spread four or five receivers around in the shorter zones, much as the 49ers were doing it.

And Infante’s young quarterback, Don Majkowski, was required to read every receiver before unloading.

“Someone’s got to be open,” his coach told him.

Often enough, someone was.

In Infante’s second season, his team isn’t as far along as Green Bay was in Lombardi’s second season, when it reached the NFL’s title round. The Packers figure to be roughed up by Minnesota in Milwaukee this week and if they are, they will be 6-6 and nearly out of playoff range.

But for the first time in many years, they have the look of a team on the rise. They’ve toppled Chicago and San Francisco this month, and after 11 weeks they’re tied with the Bears for second in the NFC Central, a game behind Minnesota.

In action, Majkowski (the J is silent) resembles 49er quarterback Joe Montana. Otherwise, he is more like Bart Starr, the quarterback on the Lombardi teams. He and Starr were both low draft choices--a 10th and a 17th round, respectively--and both have been patient students.

Last winter, Infante spent hour after hour in one-on-one lectures with Majkowski. Almost nobody on the team stays in Green Bay all winter, but Majkowski, a Virginian, did.

And he absorbed so much of Infante’s intricate system that he could execute it impressively in Candlestick Park with the help of Green Bay’s three first-class first draft choices of recent years--flanker Sterling Sharpe, running back Brent Fullwood, and blocker Ken Ruettgers.

If they can ever teach the game to this year’s No. 1, Tony Mandarich, who like Ruettgers was a good college blocker, they’ll have something.

The Raiders and Rams both play crossroads games Sunday. It doesn’t seem possible that the Raiders, 5-6, can make the playoffs if they lose to the 4-7 New England Patriots with the 9-2 Denver Broncos coming in next week in the second of three in a row at the Coliseum.

In the New Orleans Superdome, the Rams will be in the game of the day against a team they can beat--but only if they present a balanced defense for running back Dalton Hilliard and the Saints’ passer, Bobby Hebert.

Hilliard is one of the NFL’s new-model ballcarriers--short and heavy. The most famous of these is Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions, the Heisman Trophy winner last season who is going for rookie of the year.

Sanders and Hilliard each stands just 5-fee-8 but weighs more than 200 pounds. Thus, they can hide behind 300-pound blockers, yet have the size and power to contend with muscular defensive players.

Their small stature also motivates them.

“There’s always someone saying, ‘He’s too short to get it done,’ ” Hilliard told New Orleans writers this week. “It keeps me going.”

His teammates call Hilliard a team player, a cliche rarely applied to running backs. They point to his decision in the fourth quarter last week to take himself out of the Atlanta game with the ball on the Falcon one-yard line.

“I got a helmet in my calf on (a running play),” Hilliard said. “You have to be mature enough to recognize when you’re not 100%. There are other guys on this team who can get it done, too.”

The 49ers have been able to keep the machine going this year, defying the Super Bowl jinx--so far, at least--leaving the Cincinnati Bengals to demonstrate what usually happens to modern-era Super Bowl teams.

Last season, when the Bengals were relatively injury-free except for quarterback Boomer Esiason’s arm problem, they clearly used up most of their injury luck.

This season they’ve been overtaken by the law of averages.

Their problems actually started in the Super Bowl, when nose tackle Tim Krumrie broke his leg in the first quarter. He’s back now, but not back to where he was.

The Bengals couldn’t sign either their best receiver, Eddie Brown, or one of their best two blockers, Max Montoya, until after training camp. And since then, both have had recurring injuries: not incapacitating, but harmful.

Next, the Bengals also lost fullback Ickey Woods and, for a while, two other backs, Woods’ replacement, Eric Ball, and halfback James Brooks--among others.

And, finally, Esiason has proved that a quarterback can play with a sore arm, but not with a sprained ankle--and not very well with a sore lung.

Most good NFL clubs are built at the draft table these days. But high choices are no guarantee that you’re on your way to heaven.

In other years, the Atlanta Falcons have proved that often enough--but not as as spectacularly as they’re illustrating it today.

The player they made the first choice in the 1988 draft, linebacker Aundray Bruce of Auburn, was benched last week--and will stay there Sunday in New Jersey when the Falcons meet the Jets.

Marion Campbell, the Falcon coach, said so the other day in a quiet visit with Atlanta reporters.

“Aundray started 10 games, had 12 tackles,” Campbell said. “That’s 1.2 tackles a game. Had 13 assists. That’s 1.3.”

Bruce told the Associated Press that he agrees with the Atlanta coaches who told him, “I was making too many mental errors, and I was costing the team.”

Then he added: “Basically, I don’t know the (defensive) scheme, and I probably will never, ever learn it.”

Said Campbell: “I don’t know of any (scheme) that’s easy. . . . “That’s not good for (Bruce) to be saying. That’s not healthy.”