PRO FOOTBALL : Vikings Rediscover the Runner in Walker

New Orleans doesn’t get many chances to present the NFL’s game of the week, and so the question is whether the undefeated Saints will be ready Sunday for the Minnesota Vikings, who, with their new offense, beat the San Francisco 49ers, 17-14, Sunday.

In 1989-90, the Vikings were a disappointment when they tried to play conventional football with Herschel Walker.

This year, they have changed to a one-back offense that not only fits Walker but also enables the Vikings (2-1) to get all their best players on the field at one time--among them three gifted wide receivers and a tight end who plays like a wide receiver--Pro Bowl veteran Steve Jordan.

Jim Finks, the Saints’ president, would feel better about his team this week if it, too, was more daring.

“We don’t use enough no-huddle,” he said the other day. “That’s one of the great offenses to come along--or to come back, rather--in recent years.

“The thing it does, it makes your offense less predictable. And it makes the defense more predictable by keeping them from substituting.”

Finks, a former NFL quarterback who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1950s, appreciates the advantage that the Buffalo Bills’ no-huddle system gives passer Jim Kelly.

“In every game, every quarterback has confidence in certain plays, and he feels uncomfortable with other plays,” Finks said. “Feel is so much of football, and you lose that when the coaches send in the signals.”

Does New Orleans need the no-huddle to beat Minnesota’s one-back?

“What you seem to need most in any NFL game is a little luck,” Finks said. “Luck is the most underrated part of winning or losing.”

The three Bills: The undefeated, no-huddle Buffalo team struggled to overtake the unimpressive New York Jets this week, as it often does on the road. But it did win.

One explanation comes from Norm Pollom, Buffalo’s former chief scout, now in retirement in Palm Springs:

“An NFL winner is a team that has three or four dominant players. You can fill in with good players and even a few average guys, but it’s impossible to win consistently without at least three dominant players.”

As the scout who helped turn the Bills around in the late 1980s, Pollom said: “On offense, the three are Jim Kelly, (running back) Thurman Thomas and (wide receiver) Andre Reed.”

When the Jet defense elected to take Reed out of the game, Thomas escaped coverage and caught 13 passes from Kelly, including the 15-yard game-winner.

Number, please: NFL club owners have been meeting every month or so this year in an effort to develop a collective bargaining formula that will appeal to their players--whose approval is needed to perpetuate the college draft.

And last week, the owners ratified a proposition that had shocked them five years ago, when they turned it down after the players mentioned it.

This time the clubs agreed to share virtually all NFL income equally, making possible an NBA-type payroll cap with a wage scale for younger players as well as some kind of free agency.

“I’d say I’m optimistic about it,” Jim Irsay, vice president of the Indianapolis Colts, said Sunday. “You’ve got to be optimistic that (something) will get done.”

The players, however, didn’t hear the one thing that would make the owners’ offer meaningful--the number of years players have to put in to get free agency.

As recently as 1985, they would have settled for seven years, which was Raider owner Al Davis’ number.

They may not settle for three now.

The question is whether, even yet, the owners see the threat to their little empire.

Just win: The Raiders this year are about as sound, in all positions and departments, as they have ever been.

So they won convincingly with quarterback Jay Schroeder again Sunday, when dropped passes kept them from winning spectacularly.

That extended Coach Art Shell’s record to 14-2 in the arena he calls the Black Bottom.

Few NFL coaches have been more successful in home games--even Raider coaches.

In regular-season competition, Shell is 13-2 (.867) at the Coliseum, where the club’s 10-year record is 47-23 (.671). At Oakland it was 88-24-3 (.786). Overall at home, since their first year in Oakland, the Raiders are 157-68-3 (.688).

The Shell game in the era of no-huddle and run-and-shoot football often seems unnecessarily uneventful. Thus, against the Indianapolis Colts, Shell unveiled the NFL’s first nine-man offensive line, even including wide receiver Willie Gault as a blocker.

There isn’t much electricity in a nine-man line, but it does help keep the pressure off Schroeder, which is Shell’s second priority. Winning is first.

A scapegoat: The Rams’ Jim Everett proved again Sunday that it is impossible for one to look like a great NFL quarterback when one’s offensive line is collapsing on every play.

Everett’s main problem, for which he isn’t to blame, is that the Ram line has degenerated--in two or three years of holdouts, trading, aging and injuries--from one of the best in the NFL to one of the worst.

This year, moreover, the Ram offense has been retooled to stress power again--not passing--and Everett is clearly more effective in let’s-throw-it football.

At just over 6 feet 5, Everett is a bit too tall to be an ideal quarterback. When he can’t always get his long legs under him before he throws, Everett’s accuracy is impaired.

But that’s not why the Rams are 1-2. Those responsible are some of the other men and women in the organization.

Quote Department:

Marv Levy, coach of the Buffalo Bills, on sweating to outscore the New York Jets, 23-20: “We’re going to have a lot of games like this.”