PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : First-Round Losses by Raiders and Bears Were Predictable

Offense is played in two very different ways today in the NFL.

There is an old-fashioned way, as played with two-back backfields by the Chicago Bears and, too often, the Raiders, among many others.

And there is a new game with three or four wide receivers and a more modern offensive philosophy.

In first-round competition over the weekend, the Bears and Raiders unsuccessfully attacked their opponents with predictable, old-fashioned goal-line running plays, and so doing, fell out of the playoffs.

By contrast, five of the eight teams still alive and heading for the second round next weekend specialize in multiple-receiver formations. Thus they are less predictable. They can do more things.

The five are the Atlanta Falcons, who won Saturday; the Houston Oilers, who won Sunday; and three division champions, the Washington Redskins, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions.

This is a league with only three run-and-shoot teams--Atlanta, Houston and Detroit--and all three are still in the playoffs.

The Raiders could be a new-wave team, too, with their talented new quarterback Todd Marinovich--but they aren’t. Although the rookie is taking the heat for a four-interception defeat in Kansas City, his coaches lost the game, not Marinovich.

Every interception was more their fault than his. And the goal-line calls were also theirs.

Six consecutive runs?

Next time, four consecutive penalties?

And the heat’s on the kid? C’mon.

Bears Out: The Dallas Cowboys upset Mike Ditka’s team Sunday, 17-13, with just enough good football. They made and cashed in two big early breaks to break in front, 10-0, then got a typically steady game from quarterback Steve Beuerlein.

But the Cowboys couldn’t have won it if Ditka’s goal-line calls had matched his midfield strategy.

Chicago quarterback Jim Harbaugh kept the Dallas defense engaged--and the Dallas offense off the field--with a series of time-consuming passes that moved the Bears into easy scoring position four times.

Then they gave it away on the goal line. Although the Bears couldn’t run the ball at midfield, they twice tried to run it inside the Dallas five and failed, in a miserable effort that was strikingly similar to that of the Raiders.

Next, strangely forsaking the run after another long drive, the Bears set out to pass it home with five consecutive passes and failed again.

By the time they finally hit Tom Waddle for a fourth-quarter touchdown, it was too late.

The missing link in the Chicago offense was a goal-line mix of runs and passes--the very thing missing in the Raider performance.

That--an offensive mix--is what football has been all about for at least 50 years. But not to the old pros, not always, not to such as Ditka and Raider Coach Art Shell. To the old Hall of Famers, it’s a man’s game. They’re committed to macho football. They will fall or rise on bashing the ball in. And this weekend they fell.

Jets Out: In an unusual playoff weekend with four close games, three of the four were decided on goal-line plays. But when the Houston Oilers eliminated the New York Jets in the second game Sunday, 17-10, the Jets’ goal-line calls, when compared against those by the Bears and Raiders, seemed imaginative enough.

The Oilers merely whipped them with big defensive plays to end the Jets’ two longest drives: a diving interception by safety Bubba McDowell and a flying tackle by the other safety, Bo Orlando.

“It was a defensive victory,” Houston’s run-and-shoot quarterback, Warren Moon, said.

In the end, Moon, who is as tough as Harbaugh, had to scramble up the middle to save it.

The Oilers, for two reasons, have been obliged to work hard lately to make the run-and-shoot work:

--They don’t get many cheap touchdowns. Strong-armed passer Moon, who throws the ball on a line, rather than lofting it, rarely completes a bomb.

--The Oilers don’t integrate runs with Moon’s passes as often as they should, meaning that they have trouble sustaining drives.

They might not be long for the playoffs--but never give up on Moon.

Saints Out: When the Atlanta Falcons won their first-round game Saturday, eliminating the New Orleans Saints, 27-20, they did it with run-and-shoot plays, exclusively.

Although Atlanta Coach Jerry Glanville calls it the Red Gun formation, his approach is pure run-and-shoot: four wide receivers, one runner, no tight end and a quarterback who on every play drops back rolling slightly left or right.

And that’s why Glanville’s team is still playing.

He had alternated the Red Gun with a standard NFL power formation until October, when the Falcons, 3-3, rebelled.

As wide receiver Andre Rison told him: “When we’re in the (power set), they come up and stop our run. When we’re in the (run-and-shoot), they drop back and stop the pass.”

Thinking it over, Glanville trashed the Falcons’ power stuff, along with their tight end and second back. And in a playoff payoff Saturday, their run-and-shoot quarterback, Chris Miller, threw three touchdown passes, one to Rison and two to the NFL’s fastest receiver, Michael Haynes.

As offensive coordinator June Jones, a run-and-shoot expert, called the plays, Miller passed six times to Haynes, a seventh-round draft choice from Northern Arizona who has been clocked at 40 yards by track coaches in 4.294.

The Saints led much of the way and would have won but for two mishaps:

--Injuries have taken out the two cornerbacks that made their defense the NFL’s best for half the season.

--Driving toward a 14-0 New Orleans lead in the first quarter, quarterback Bobby Hebert had reached the Atlanta three when cornerback Deion Sanders intercepted, the turning point play of the game.

Raiders Out: As the Kansas City Chiefs won the playoff opener Saturday, 10-6, the game turned on two series of goal-line plays--one by the Chiefs, who scored, and one by the Raiders, who didn’t.

The whole difference at Arrowhead Stadium was that the Chiefs were ready with a good touchdown play when they got down there, and the Raiders weren’t. The story:

--In the second quarter, after a break gave the Chiefs the ball at the Raider 11, Kansas City didn’t try to pound it in with its big backs. Instead, the Chiefs called a first-down pass--first faking a handoff, thus drawing in the Raider defense, then throwing over them to score.

--In the third quarter, after a series of strong running plays by rookie Nick Bell gave the Raiders a shot at a touchdown inside the Kansas City 10-yard line, they kept going to Bell. And going to Bell. On every down.

At last, the Chiefs stunted into the hole that Bell had been barging through--putting an end to his parade. That forced the Raiders into the field goal that wasn’t enough.

Otherwise, the Raiders kept giving a veteran Kansas City defensive back, Deron Cherry, simple third-down chances to intercept Marinovich’s passes.

Or, when Marinovich got the Raiders close, they kept making the kind of mistakes that a well-disciplined team knows how to avoid at clutch times--offside, holding and the like.

The truth is that the Raiders aren’t a very well-disciplined team, and in Kansas City, they paid for it.