PRO FOOTBALL : This Run-and-Shoot a Well-Oiled Machine

Once they understand their roles, most passers, receivers and running backs seem to enjoy run-and-shoot football, which is even fun to practice.

But it can be a pain to offensive linemen.

Bruce Matthews of the Houston Oilers, the unanimous all-pro considered by many as the NFL’s best blocking guard, said so the other night.

“In the run-and-shoot, you don’t feel like you’re even playing football,” Matthews said. “You keep waiting for the game to start.”

A consensus 1982 All-American at USC, he added: “Just once, I’d like to knock the hell out of somebody again.”

Jack Pardee, the coach who is bringing the run-and-shoot to the Oilers, has heard that before.

“Everything happens so fast in this system that you need a new kind of block,” Pardee said. “The long, lingering pass-protection block is out. The offensive line has to set up in a quick, short stance--the short set that (Coach) Don Coryell used for (quarterback) Dan Fouts in San Diego. (Linemen) learn to like it because they win.”

In the meantime, prize run blocker Matthews, whose brother Clay Jr. is a Cleveland linebacker and whose father, Clay, was a San Francisco 49er linebacker in the ‘50s, confesses to making progress slowly.

As a notoriously pass-oriented approach, the run-and-shoot blends four wide receivers with five linemen and one running back, but no tight ends.

“I see the pluses,” said Matthews, who lives in Agoura Hills. “But it’s so different from the game I played in high school, college, and seven years of pro. That’s how I made a name for myself. Now, my only job is to just give the (pass rusher) a quick pop. Strangely, it’s usually enough. That’s the run-and-shoot.”

Warren Moon of Houston, the $2-million quarterback who has four years left on the NFL’s first $10-million contract, said the Oilers will adjust to the run-and-shoot faster than the Detroit Lions got the hang of it a year ago.

After struggling until midseason, the Lions won their last five, and haven’t lost since.

“We’re trying to learn a new system with a bunch of different players, all of them playing part time--including me,” said Moon who, like Matthews, came up through Los Angeles prep football.

“You can’t get continuity with part-time players--but we’ll get it faster than Detroit because we have more NFL veterans than Detroit had last year.

“The run-and-shoot isn’t really complicated. Basically, there are only two formations. You’re either balanced or unbalanced--with either two wide receivers on each side, or three to one side.

“It’s tough to learn, though, because there are so many options. The receivers have the option to go anywhere--and the quarterback has to know why they go where they go. You can’t really master it until until the same bunch of players are working together week in and week out.”

Around the league, they’re comparing the absence of Ram linebacker Kevin Greene to the absence of Eric Dickerson, whose asking price three years ago was too much for club owner Georgia Frontiere.

If the Rams kept Dickerson--the NFL’s top running back--and combined him with their first-class quarterback, Jim Everett, they might have eliminated San Francisco, conceivably, in at least one of the 49ers’ recent Super Bowl seasons.

And even at Dickerson’s price, that would have been worth it.

Although Greene, defensively, is somewhat comparable to offensive star Dickerson, the Rams, instead of paying up, are still jogging along the same old money trail that cost them Dickerson.

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ira Miller put it this way last week:

“The Rams’ Kevin Greene, one of the NFL’s best pass rushers, has earned less money in his entire five-year career than the Rams gave (running back) Gaston Green in 1988. In two years, Green has rushed for all of 190 yards.”

The Raiders are apparently determined to play low-scoring football this season. And if so, nothing could be finer for them than the solid kicking game they seem to have.

Few of their opponents combine a punter and kicker to match the Raiders’ Jeff Gossett and Jeff Jaeger.

To win last week’s low-scoring game, on an afternoon when the offense was blanked, Jaeger was three for three on field-goal attempts, at distances of 31, 47, and a game-winning 33 yards.

He is seven for eight this summer, having missed only at 47 yards in a crosswind at Candlestick Park.

As a punter, Gossett provides height and precision rather than distance. He won’t have the longest punt of the NFL season, but he got an important one out of bounds at the seven-yard line last week. And his altitude is such that few of Gossett’s punts are effectively returned.

A sure-handed athlete who played basketball and baseball in school, Gossett doubles as the holder for Jaeger, who lettered in basketball and baseball and as a defensive end, golfer and wrestler.

Both, in other words, have the all-around athletic background that suggests steadiness, which to a kicker is probably a more useful trait than any.

On a great run in the Astrodome Saturday night, David Meggett of the New York Giants, who stands 5 feet 7 and weighs 180 pounds, gained 49 yards on a punt return in which he was in heavy traffic much of the way.

As Meggett caught the ball, the Houston Oilers gave him no place to move except down the middle, so he smashed into them, then ducked underneath. Five yards farther along, he seemed to be stopped again, then broke another tackle before angling away.

“David is as tough as he is fast,” said Giant General Manager George Young. “There’s a place for a little man in pro football, but he has to be a tough little man who is strong enough to play like a big man.”

The Meggett statistic that cheers the Giants the most is his record against opposing blitzers. As a rookie running back last year, Meggett, in 30 blitz chances, blocked the right linebacker 29 times.

And the miss wasn’t a missed block.

“It was a missed assignment,” Young said.

The Giants plan to alternate Meggett with their 215-pound top draft choice, Rodney Hampton of Georgia.

“For change of pace,” Young said.

Running backs play the one NFL position in which a quality performer can step in and excel as a rookie--as Meggett did last year, and as Hampton did last week, when, carrying the ball for the first time from scrimmage, he raced down three quarters of the field to a touchdown.

“Rodney is potentially the best running back we’ve had,” Young said. “He can block, he can get deep, he has the hands to get the ball deep, and he can slash left or right.”

The Giants believe Hampton will tip the scales their way in what is expected to be a three-cornered fight for the NFC East title, matching New York against Washington and Philadelphia.