PRO FOOTBALL : Today’s NFL Talent Is Better Than Ever

Football fans familiar with pro football’s first 72 years divide into two groups when evaluating the last decade or so in the NFL.

There are those who call it an era of mediocrity. And there are those who say that football is better than ever.

Some support for the second view came the other day from the editors of Pro Football Weekly, who rated nine 1990s players as certain Hall of Famers in future voting.

They are quarterbacks Joe Montana and Dan Marino, wide receivers Jerry Rice and Art Monk, linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Mike Singletary, running back Eric Dickerson, tackle Anthony Munoz and safety Ronnie Lott.

In judging them, here’s one gauge: Few if any earlier NFL generations saw as many great players in action in any one era.

And the truth is that there are more than nine. Hall of Fame historian Joe Horrigan has a name for some: Hall of the Very Good.

Pro Football Weekly’s nominees for that Hall: running backs Marcus Allen and Ottis Anderson, tackle Jackie Slater, and defensive stars Howie Long and Joey Browner.

Better than ever? Football? Yes indeed.

Moon makes 10: On their way to an overtime victory over the Dallas Cowboys Sunday, the Houston Oilers caught eight consecutive passes from quick-throwing quarterback Warren Moon.

“(Pass rushers) can’t really get to him,” said Dallas Coach Jimmy Johnson, noting that Moon has been sacked only nine times this year in 10 games. “All you can hope is to throw him off rhythm.”

When the Cowboys couldn’t do that, either, Moon passed for 425 yards to keep his team on course to the playoffs--and to keep himself on course to the Hall of Fame.

Counting Montana, who plans to return next year, there are, surely, three active Hall of Fame quarterbacks: Montana, Marino and Moon. In all, therefore, at least 10 active NFL players are potential Hall of Famers.

Moon, the man Pro Football Weekly forgot, is making NFL history as the leader of the league’s first successful run-and-shoot team. He swamped the Cowboy defense in a 26-23 game in which Dallas scored only two touchdowns--one on a blocked punt, one after a recovered fumble at the Houston 10.

The Cowboys, however, are coming. In the NFC this year, only Washington, New Orleans and Chicago have consistently played better football.

No good way: In this year’s voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which already has 160 members, the board of selectors is considering 66 candidates.

Two are former Rams, Tom Mack and Jack Youngblood, who both belong--although the board has an Eastern tilt that makes it hard for Westerners to make it.

Six other candidates should--but perhaps won’t--be accepted by acclamation: Raider owner Al Davis, former coach George Allen, former coach Bill Walsh, Detroit cornerback Lem Barney, Dallas wide receiver Bob Hayes and Baltimore tight end John Mackey.

About 35 voters, most of them newspaper reporters, are on the selection board, one for each team, plus six or seven at-large voters.

Each has individual ideas and theories that flaw the process. Baseball’s process is probably more seriously flawed, and basketball’s is worse. The whole problem is that there isn’t a good way to do it.

More politics: Along with other national institutions, the NFL is following Saturday’s Louisiana elections with more than usual curiosity:

--The problem: the league often plays Super Bowl games in New Orleans.

--The underlying problem: a candidate for governor of Louisiana, David Duke, has been linked to past racist and pro-Nazi causes.

--The former problem: a state-wide vote in Arizona against a Martin Luther King holiday led the NFL to pull a Super Bowl game out of Phoenix.

Would Duke’s election keep future Super Bowls out of New Orleans?

Said NFL Vice President Joe Browne: “Our position is that we are concentrating on the (NFL’s) divisional race in New Orleans, not the gubernatorial race.”

Nonetheless, Tom Benson, the Republican businessman who owns the Saints, is reportedly supporting Duke’s opponent, Democrat Edwin W. Edwards.

Moreover, there are worries there that Benson, a New Orleans native who has more holdings in Texas these days than Louisiana, could move the Saints to San Antonio, where they’re building a state-of-the-art dome.

A new NFL Super Bowl decision isn’t imminent. The next five games have been awarded to Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami and, conditionally, Phoenix.

New starter 3-0: By comparison with the political picture in New Orleans, the football picture is clearing up.

The Saints opened a four-game lead in the NFC West Sunday as No. 2 quarterback Steve Walsh brought them in again, extending his record as a starter to 3-0 as the club rose to 9-1.

Walsh has actually been the winning pitcher in four New Orleans games this fall, including the one he won from the Philadelphia Eagles when No. 1 Bobby Hebert was hurt.

“Steve doesn’t have Bobby’s arm, but he has a big-play knack,” New Orleans President Jim Finks said.

One big play was Walsh’s only good throw in Philadelphia, a pass that beat the Eagles, 13-6.

Another was his only good throw Sunday--for the only touchdown of a 10-3 game against the San Francisco 49ers.

The NFC focus this year has been on the flying Washington Redskins. But in the race for the home-field edge in the playoffs, the Saints are only one game back.

New rule needed: If the NFL’s coaches keep playing for field goals this year instead of touchdowns, they’ll set a record that all kickers can be proud of.

The coaches, who call most plays and all kicks, are on a pace that would make field goals account for 24.4% of all 1991 scoring, according to league statistics.

Only once previously has it been remotely that high, in 1973, when field goals were 23% of the game.

Three months after the ’73 season, the NFL, alarmed, moved the goal posts to the end lines--10 yards farther away from the kickers.

This year, the coaches, secure in the knowledge that, now, the goal posts have no place to go, got a little crazy in the first 10 weeks of the season. Although their teams scored only 496 touchdowns in that period, they lined them up an even 500 times to attempt field goals.

Never before in any extended period in league history have there been more field-goal attempts than touchdowns.

In 140 games in 1980, by contrast, when there were 714 touchdowns, only 466 field goals were attempted.

Surprisingly, as a result of this year’s trend, there have been fewer touchdowns per game than in any other NFL season since 1938--half a century ago.

The trend is apparently related to job security for coaches. It’s safer to play for field goals than go for touchdowns.

It’s safer not to attack the NFL’s steadily improving defenses in the maze of the red zones--the last 20 yards--where, increasingly, the coaches think they’re playing Russian roulette.

Statistically, it is about 50-50 whether a ball thrown from the 15-yard line will be a touchdown pass or an interception--and nothing but rule changes would force some coaches to buck those odds.