PRO FOOTBALL : Just Call It No-Fault Offense

When the season began, critics of the run-and-shoot offense said it would never work in pro football.

They called it a high school offense. They said that the NFL’s first two run-and-shoot teams, the Houston Oilers and Detroit Lions, were just wasting their time.

They were wrong.

Or so it seems at the halfway point of a long season in which the Oilers are leading the AFC in offense, and the Lions are second in the NFC in points scored.

“We’ve both moved the ball against everybody,” Mouse Davis, Detroit’s run-and-shoot philosopher, said Monday.

At the same time, both teams are having trouble winning, apparently for different reasons:

--The Detroit defense has been erratic. Against Washington Sunday, the Lions lost, 41-38, when they couldn’t hold a 35-14 lead after Detroit quarterback Rodney Peete left with a hamstring injury in the third quarter.

--The Oilers keep trying to win exclusively on passes by quarterback Warren Moon. Against the Rams Sunday, the Oilers called 50 pass plays and lost, 17-13, after calling only 10 runs.

This may reflect a basic misunderstanding on the Houston team of what the run-and-shoot system is all about.

Properly operated, it’s about running as well as passing, its advocates say. The back in the one-back run-and-shoot offense should be getting the ball once every three plays--on either draw plays or traps--at random times and on all three downs, including third and 10.

Instead, the Oilers’ best back, Allen Pinkett, got it only nine times at Anaheim on a day when Moon dropped back 50 times.

Houston’s big-pass offense nearly won it, anyway, in the fourth quarter. Nothing but benefit plays saved the Rams: a drop by a Houston receiver who had a touchdown in sight, a slip by another Oiler on an Anaheim soft spot, an offside jump by the Rams--unseen by the officials--and other such plays.

But none of it would have mattered to the Oilers if they had been calling a few draw plays.

The Rams (3-5) are still in the race for the playoffs in a season that has brought 17 sub-.500 teams to the NFL after two months of upsets.

The Ram defense has taken most of the heat this year, but the offense will be on trial at Anaheim Sunday against the league’s best defensive organization, the New York Giants.

Which is a reminder that linebacker Lawrence Taylor is still on the team.

Many of those closely studying the tapes of Giant games this fall have noted a strange phenomenon: When Taylor rushes the passer, he has often broken through untouched.

Are the blockers getting to be afraid of him?

“I don’t think it’s that,” Minnesota defensive coach Floyd Peters said. “The problem is that from a standing start, Taylor can accelerate into full speed faster than anyone I’ve ever seen--in any sport.”

The Green Bay Packers will be at the Coliseum Sunday to play the Raiders (6-2) at the hour of the Ram kickoff, 1 p.m., as the confused NFL scheduling department continues to muddle through its worst season.

The Raiders would be 7-1 if more people had held quarterback Jay Schroeder’s wind-blown passes at Kansas City Sunday.

Schroeder’s best pass was delivered on third and eight from the Raider 29 in the fourth quarter to his new tight end, Ethan Horton, who carried it far into Chief territory before fumbling at the Kansas City 31.

A converted running back, Horton hasn’t played tight end long enough to realize that five yards before the fumble, he’d gotten everything out of that play that was essential.

His mission just then, with a first down well earned, the Chiefs closing in on him and a Raider scoring chance imminent, was to protect the ball at whatever cost.

He should remember next time.

This much can be said for Schroeder: If he and his counselor, Raider quarterback coach Mike White, were in Kansas City, the Chiefs would win the division title going away and probably the AFC championship as well.

As of opening day two months ago, it was clear that Kansas City General Manager Carl Peterson and his coach, Marty Schottenheimer, had put together a championship lineup--except at quarterback, where they were still leaning on an old war horse, Steve DeBerg, 36, a 14-year veteran of standby service on four or five NFL teams.

It seemed obvious that they would go as far as DeBerg, with his limited abilities, could take them.

And it still looks that way.

An extremely accurate practice-field passer, DeBerg, at game time, too often throws too early or too late or to the wrong target. He is probably the least instinctive football player on a greatly talented team.

“Steve is a nice guy who can do some things well,” Dick Steinberg, the New York Jets’ general manager, said last summer. “You just shouldn’t expect to win championships with such a quarterback.”

Peterson and Schottenheimer, however, quietly got nice-guy DeBerg some more help just before the season, when they brought in free-agent fullback Barry Word.

And in Kansas City’s winter weather, the Raiders became the latest to learn what that kind of help means to a journeyman quarterback.

As a ballcarrier, Word, 6 feet 2 and 225 pounds, is so skilled that he has moved Christian Okoye to the bench--the same Okoye who led the NFL in rushing just a year ago.

When the Chief-Raider game was on the line, Schottenheimer used Word as his principal weapon, even on passing downs, converting Okoye into a short-yardage rusher.

As a 1-2 punch in the critical fourth quarter, Word and Okoye, with DeBerg handing off, were too much for the Raider defense.

Coming in fresh on third-and-one plays, Okoye, a 260-pound giant, had the speed to get to the outside if the hole closed down.

So who must the Raiders fear now in the second half of the season?

DeBerg.

Joe Montana, the apparently invincible San Francisco 49er quarterback, threw two fourth-quarter touchdown passes to pull out another one Sunday.

Still, it was his second-quarter comeback that looked decisive. With Green Bay in a 10-0 lead 38 seconds before halftime, Montana crossed 61 yards on three passes, reducing the Packer lead to three points and regaining the momentum for the 49ers.

That didn’t surprise Leonard Koppett. A veteran editor and researcher for the Bay Area’s Peninsula Times Tribune, Koppett, writing in the New York Times last week, said the secret to Montana’s majestic record is his second-quarter offense, not his famous fourth-quarter offense.

“In 54 of (their last) 114 games--almost half--the 49ers have scored within the last two minutes of the first half,” Koppett noted, adding that they’ve won 88, or 78%, of the 114.

“The real measure of their two-minute drill is their (first-half) success. A score just before intermission can change the dynamics, tactics and morale of the rest of the game.

“In a close contest, more often than not, victory is nailed down at the end by the defense. But at halftime, making the most of an opportunity to add points is often the key to victory.”

Ask the Packers.

Quote Department:

Donald Shipley, Washington judge and Redskin fan, ordering prosecutors to set an early trial date for Ricky Sanders, the Redskin wide receiver arrested in an assault case: “Mr. Sanders doesn’t want to have this bearing on his mind as he heads for the Super Bowl.”