PRO FOOTBALL : Games Get Way Most Coaches Want Them

There is a good reason why NFL teams are scoring fewer points this year:

They are playing less football.

Taking advantage of a recent rule change, the coaches are slowing things down in two ways:

--Fewer plays. There are 15 fewer plays in an average NFL game this season (144) than there were in the seasons before 1989 (159).

--Stalling. Coaches are asking their teams to stand around between plays until the 45-second clock is about to run down.

At fault in both cases is the 45-second rule, which the league adopted in 1989 after a lobbying campaign by coaches.

Other NFL executives--those wishing to interest football crowds, not coaches--said 40 seconds would be enough between plays. Some recommended 37 seconds. But they were all shouted down.

The coaches wanted more time to call the signals and send in situation substitutes. Their goal is always to control the game, taking it out of the players’ hands, and the result is football that often seems as slow as horseshoes.

The catalyst for change in 1989 was the long, long NFL afternoon. In some cities, games dragged on for nearly four hours--and almost everyone concluded that a three-hour game would be better.

But to get it, the NFL took a wrong tack, deciding to start a 45-second clock whenever passes fell incomplete or when the ball went out of bounds. The 1989 changes shortened the game, but only by taking plays out of the game.

The more constructive way to shorten games is to shorten the period between plays--to 40 seconds, say, or 35. That would increase the number of plays to 160 or more, making offensive momentum and scoring more likely. The NFL should vote it in at its next annual meeting, if not sooner.

Motionless football: Only three NFL teams scored as many as three touchdowns Sunday. Only two--the run-and-shoot teams, Houston Oilers and Detroit Lions--scored more than 21 points.

Except in Houston, the average game had three touchdowns, providing little in the way of entertainment.

It is being said that the coaches have converted to conservative football in emulation of the New York Giants, whose ball-control field-goal team won the Super Bowl.

But that isn’t quite it. The others are copying the Giants, all right, but what they are copying is the stand-around game that the Giants perfected last year under Coach Bill Parcells.

New York beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl by standing around at the scrimmage line until 44 seconds had expired, then running into the line and standing around for another 44 seconds, then kicking a field goal and standing around again. Parcells’ objective: to keep the ball motionless and thus keep it away from the other team.

This season, almost everyone is doing it.

If the NFL doesn’t put an end to this foolishness, Parcells will be remembered as the most influential coach since Knute Rockne.

No-entertainment business: Nearly 90 seconds remained in a low-scoring game Sunday when, on national television, the team that was ahead went into the kneel-down formation.

The quarterback took the snap and knelt, ending the play. Then, with 43 seconds to play, he did it again, whereupon everyone got up and strolled off the field, coaches, players and ball boys.

Doesn’t anyone in the NFL ever watch the last minute and a half of an NBA game?

Once upon a time, Joe Montana could produce two or three touchdowns in the last minute and a half. Once upon a time, the NFL’s owners were in the entertainment business. This year, they all seem to have invested in NBA teams.

Green fights back: For the Washington Redskins, the question now is whether they can make it through the playoffs with quarterback Mark Rypien.

A shaky winner again Sunday, over the Chicago Bears this time, Rypien met his usual quota of big plays and off plays.

It is their defense--particularly their new zone defense anchored by cornerback Darrell Green--that accounts for the Redskins’ 6-0 start.

Formerly, opponents could and did take Green out of the action by isolating him on a single receiver.

Now, on most plays he is in the midst of the defense.

“The more I move around, hopefully, the more confusion I can cause,” he said the other day.

Green, the league’s fastest player, has four interceptions, within one of his single-season best.

“We’re pretty much a defensive team,” Coach Joe Gibbs said.

Happy Saint: The NFL’s only other undefeated team has a better defense than Washington’s but possibly a tougher schedule.

“The hardest part isn’t (the schedule),” New Orleans tackle Stan Brock said. “The hardest part (for unbeaten players) is keeping our heads and our perspective.”

On the plus side for the Saints, quarterback Bobby Hebert has improved after sitting out a year. Nor does he as readily blame teammates for plays that go awry. During his lost season, he thought things through, no doubt, and realized what he was missing. He seems happier, along with everyone else in that town.

Memphis is hot: When the NFL evolves into a 30-team league in a couple of years, Los Angeles businessman Willie Davis plans to have an interest in one of the expansion franchises.

Davis, who made the Hall of Fame as a 1960s defensive end for the Green Bay Packers, is associated in the Memphis endeavor with two cotton multimillionaires, Billy Dunavant and Paul Tuder Jones.

“Tennessee is hot football country,” said Davis, who owns KACE-FM in Los Angeles and four other radio stations. “The 5 million in the population area are all football fans. They led the USFL in attendance.”

The NFL will decide next year among 10 expansion-team applicants. And if Memphis is a winner, its games will be played in the Liberty Bowl, which seats 65,000.

“It will be a grass field, the best in the South,” Davis said.

Where are they now: NFL alumni reporter Bobby Mitchell says that tackle Bob Brown, who played for the Philadelphia Eagles, Rams and Raiders in 1964-73, builds race cars and remodels cars for show in Oakland.

Quote Department:

Lindy Infante, coach of the 1-5 Green Bay Packers: “When you don’t have success in football, there are different fates that await different people.”

Wayne Fontes, Detroit Lion coach, whose team came back to beat the Minnesota Vikings Sunday: “Every time we beat somebody, they’re not (perceived as) very good.”

Fontes on how to start 5-1: “The teams that win in this league are the teams that prevent ( turnovers ) from happening.”

Jim Arnold, Detroit punter: “Typically, the thing that haunts this team is getting a little bit of success, and then getting a little bit cocky.”

Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Washington Redskins: “When you’re ( 6-0 ) , the thing you have to fear the most is complacency.”

Harry Galbreath, Miami guard, on life on the same team with Dan Marino: “When we win, the ( offensive line ) doesn’t get any praise. When we lose, everybody ( blames ) us.”