This Is No Showcase for Quarterbacks : NFC: The Bears’ Tomczak remains on Ditka’s hot seat. The Saints’ Walsh still might be too inexperienced to have much impact.

The NFL’s first four-game first round will reach some kind of climax on a cold afternoon at Soldier Field today when the New Orleans Saints see if the coach of the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka, is still on speaking terms with his quarterback, Mike Tomczak.

One team or the other will be out of the playoffs by tonight. And in Tomczak’s view, the Bears (11-5) have a chance to survive only because he argued Ditka out of replacing him last week with a rookie quarterback, Peter Tom Willis.

Such a change, according to Tomczak, would have destroyed Bear morale--in the same sense, perhaps, that Philadelphia coaches may have hurt the Eagles’ morale Saturday when they briefly benched quarterback Randall Cunningham.

Willis was warming up on the sideline early in the fourth quarter of a game the Bears lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, 21-10, when Tomczak walked up to Ditka and declared flatly that he wasn’t responsible for the team’s scoring problems.

Eyewitnesses told Chicago newspapers that Tomczak told Ditka: “Every time someone makes a mistake, you blame it on me. You can’t do this to me again.”

Tomczak implied that if replaced, he would be taking the fall for Chicago’s stodgy offense, which ranks close to that of the Saints and the New York Giants as the NFL’s most conservative.

Tomczak’s basic point, he said later, was that putting him on the bench would send the wrong message to his teammates: that Ditka lacks confidence in the club’s only solid, experienced quarterback.

And that, Tomczak feared, would take the Bears out of the playoffs in Week 1.

The strangest thing about the argument is that the fiery coach, who has always said that he admires dictatorial coaches such as Vince Lombardi, gave in to a mere player. Surveying his options, Ditka waved Willis back to the bench.

And with that, the Bears lost their best chance to examine a promising rookie passer who might have helped them today had he passed some kind of test last week.

Willis, however, is still untested. In recent days, Ditka has been suggesting that he will insert Willis this time if Tomczak falters again. But lacking NFL experience, could Willis help?

“Sometimes it takes drastic things to get the job done,” Ditka said, noting that Willis is one of the NFL’s more experienced young quarterbacks. He set numerous school records last season, his fifth year on the Florida State varsity.

Ditka and Tomczak both declined comment on last week’s argument.

The Saints have a young quarterback, too. He is Steve Walsh, and New Orleans Coach Jim Mora hasn’t been been getting much production out of his youngster, either. Until a few weeks ago, Walsh, a second-year pro, was Troy Aikman’s backup at Dallas.

“It takes time to build a quarterback,” said New Orleans General Manager Jim Finks, a former NFL quarterback. “Everything seems to be a blur to Steve today. He is going through the menopause of all quarterbacks. There’s no substitute for a lot of NFL experience.

“He’ll come out of it eventually. Or he’ll come out of the league.”

Finks doesn’t expect any miracles from New Orleans (8-8) in only its second NFL playoff game.

“We’re struggling,” he said. “We haven’t played as well at any time this season as we played much of the time in 1987, 1988 and 1989.

“This is a rebuilding year for us. We have 19 players who have been in the league two years or less.”

On both offense and defense, the Saints have also been hurt by injuries, losing Dalton Hilliard, their best running back, 11 weeks ago.

Hilliard might play today. For Chicago, halfback Neal Anderson, who ranks with the top ballcarriers in the league, will play.

Hilliard vs. Anderson. That’s about the best you can hope for in the fourth game of a long weekend. These teams can’t pass much, but they can run. Their problem is, in the playoffs, teams have been unable to run to the championship.