PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : With Home Field, Favorites Should Win Going Away

Four superb football teams have made it to the NFL’s conference championship games, which will be played Sunday at Buffalo and Washington.

Each of the four won impressively over the weekend. They are seemingly closely matched.

Thus, on neutral, good-weather fields, these might be even games that either side could pull out.

But there will be nothing neutral about either setting this week. The NFL deliberately loads the dice against visiting teams in its winter playoffs. The phrase for it is home-field advantage-- which is awarded on regular-season performance--and it is enormous.

And so the Denver Broncos have no more than a slim chance against the Buffalo Bills--even if Bronco quarterback John Elway is again at his magical best.

Nor do the Detroit Lions have much chance against the Washington Redskins--even though young Lion quarterback Erik Kramer is the toast of Michigan this week after dismantling the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

With two mismatches likely, the betting lines at Buffalo and Washington are both in two digits: 11 or 12 points, or up, and rising.

If it’s a contest you want, there is very little reason to watch either game:

--The sole interest in Washington is whether the Lions can somehow make it a little closer with running back Barry Sanders than they could without him four months ago, when, on the same field, they were clobbered by the Redskins, 45-0.

--The only good reason to watch the Buffalo game is to see if Elway can somehow perform another miracle against Jim Kelly’s team, which almost never loses in front of its 80,000 screaming admirers.

Miracles are fun. Still, for today’s fans, they are so rare that there’s really not much point in staying home to wait for one this week if you get a better offer: a movie date, a day at the beach, a walk in the park.

With more imagination, the NFL could easily schedule its title games at neutral sites. It will refuse to do so however, no doubt, until mismatches bring on the ratings slump they deserve.

Mental toughness: The run-and-shoot Lions will be playing for the NFC title at Washington because Coach Wayne Fontes and offensive coordinator Dave Levy had the inner strength to keep throwing the ball with Kramer Sunday--instead of running it with Sanders--when the Dallas Cowboys lined up to shut off running plays on every down.

In the first half of a game they won, 38-6, the Lions called but four runs--only one in the decisive first quarter. And, remarkably, they called only three running plays in the second half until their lead had grown to 31-6.

That was an unprecedented NFL tribute to the thrown ball.

The temptation to hand it to a runner as talented as Sanders is nearly irresistible. Indeed, the Lions lost more than once this season when they couldn’t resist the Sanders temptation, notably in Chicago.

Kramer didn’t just burst forth in Sunday’s game as a competent passer. All year he has kept Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware on the bench. And that day in Soldier Field, Kramer had the Bears down when Sanders, Fontes and Levy gave it back in the second half.

In the Silverdome this time, when the Cowboys committed six tacklers to Sanders on every snap, Kramer simply threw the ball over them--delivering the ball as accurately as he had thrown it in Chicago on Nov. 3, or against Buffalo on Dec. 22, when he completed five in a row and won in overtime.

That is the strength of the run-and-shoot--and there isn’t a better run-and-shoot quarterback in football today, not even in Houston. Kramer would be even money to beat the Redskins in Detroit or Minneapolis, possibly, but never in Washington.

Rypien unripped: The Redskins have advanced to the title game because they’re the most complete team in the league, proving it again Saturday when they eliminated the run-and-shoot Atlanta Falcons, 24-7.

In their one-back offense, for one thing, the Redskins could and did rotate two first-class running backs, Earnest Byner and Rickey Ervins, a rookie from USC.

By comparison, when the Falcons lost Mike Rozier to injury before the game, they had no one to run the ball, and, in a playoff game, that is usually a decisive weakness.

For the Redskins, Mark Rypien, in his fourth NFL year, has escaped from Coach Joe Gibbs’ doghouse to play strong football on every down. He doesn’t rattle, he throws straight, and he is seldom sacked. The decisive plays of the game were Rypien’s passes.

When a run-and-shoot team loses on a bad field, it is always popular to blame the system, but the Falcons failed this time for other reasons:

--Rozier’s injury left them with half an offense. In Detroit, Kramer could throw because Sanders can run. In Washington, Falcon quarterback Chris Miller, lacking a ground threat, was easily bottled up.

--Coach Jerry Glanville strangely put the Falcons in a three-man defensive line, which in a rainstorm is seldom effective. The idea on a bad field is to rush the passer, who has trouble moving and planting to throw on a muddy stage. The Falcons let Rypien off without a rip.

Drops nip Oilers: Denver quarterback Elway stole the big trip to Buffalo from Houston Oiler quarterback Warren Moon when he single-handedly beat the run-and-shoot Saturday, 26-24, after Moon led from the fourth play of the first quarter to the last 16 seconds.

Elway won by playing Superman again with no fewer than three fourth-down plays in the fourth quarter:

--On fourth and four, Elway passed for 26 yards to Michael Young on the play that led to the points closing Houston’s lead from 24-16 to 24-23.

--During the winning field-goal drive, he converted with a seven-yard scramble on fourth and six and with a 44-yard pass to Vance Johnson on fourth and 10.

Impossible? How about this: On one drive, Elway fumbled, picked the ball up on the first bounce and completed a pass.

The Denver defense never stopped Moon’s run-and-shoot attack. A Houston receiver, Haywood Jeffires, did most of the stopping. At the end of Moon’s two most formidable drives in the second half, Jeffires dropped third-down passes inside Denver’s 10-yard line, twice forcing the Oilers into field-goal formation.

With touchdowns there, Houston would have led, 35-16, putting Superman out of business.

Houston’s defense collapsed in the second quarter when its one dominating player, lineman Ray Childress, left with an injury. The Oilers were ahead at the time, 21-6, but couldn’t handle Elway without him.

Quarterbacks’ weekend: Now that nose tackle Jeff Wright is back in the lineup, the Buffalo Bills will be able to fire most of their big guns at Elway Sunday. Defensive end Bruce Smith still has a knee problem, but if Wright plays as he did Sunday, when the Bills routed the Kansas City Chiefs, 37-14, they might as well rest Smith for the Super Bowl.

The Chiefs were in it for a while. They played confidently even after the Bills got a 7-0 lead toward the close of the first quarter. But Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly ended all resistance 10 minutes before halftime with a reading play that most quarterbacks can’t make.

A Kansas City linebacker tipped a blitz that time, and Kelly read it. Kelly knew, moreover, that Buffalo safety Deron Cherry would be compelled to hang around the scrimmage line to cover for the blitzing linebacker. And that meant single coverage on Buffalo’s slowest but finest wide receiver, Andre Reed.

When Kelly went deep to Reed, getting a touchdown on a 53-yard pass play, the Bills had a 14-0 lead that a play-action power team like Kansas City has trouble overcoming against a high-powered team like the Bills.

The Chiefs, who play this way all the time, aren’t the first lifeless running team to get this far, they’re just the latest example. In the 1990s, however, if the goal is the Super Bowl, there isn’t much point in putting together such an organization. It takes too many breaks for a running team to win any playoff game.

And when you’re up against Jim Kelly, it can’t be done. On a quarterbacks’ weekend--in which Rypien, Moon, Elway and Kramer all played big games--Kelly stood out .