PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : Cunningham’s Improvisations Will Challenge Cowboys

Can any of the four winners on wild-card weekend get to the Pasadena Super Bowl on Jan. 31?

The Philadelphia Eagles, who eliminated the New Orleans Saints in the last quarter Sunday, at least have some chance against the Cowboys in Dallas next Sunday for the same two reasons that they are still alive:

--Their quarterback, Randall Cunningham, is an unpredictable runner-passer who is the hardest kind of athlete for a smart conventional defensive team to handle. The fact that the Cowboys have the NFL’s top-rated defense doesn’t mean so much against such an athlete.

--The Eagles remain the league’s most highly motivated team, trying to win the championship for Jerome Brown, their most popular player, who died in an automobile accident last summer.

In team speed, Philadelphia yields to the Cowboys, who are the fastest of the 28 pro clubs, and who are therefore favored. It will be somewhat harder for the Eagles to run down Emmitt Smith than Ironhead Heyward.

But on defense, the Cowboys will have to catch the Philadelphia quarterback, and that can be tricky now that Coach Rich Kotite is once more allowing Cunningham to be Cunningham.

Of Kotite’s midseason attempt to mold him into a conventional pocket quarterback, Raider defensive end Howie Long said: “To (make) Randall sit in the pocket inhibits his ability to lead the team.”

Back in charge of his destiny again, Cunningham wasn’t inhibited in the Superdome, where, at a time when the Saints seemed dominant, he was seen in back-to-back plays that few others can make.

First, Cunningham scrambled for 15 yards, getting the Saints to worry about that, then threw a touchdown pass over their heads.

That’s what kept the Eagles in a game that they eventually won.

The NFC’s other wild-card winner, a surprising Washington Redskin team, is one of three NFC East entries still operating--a distinction it holds because it had too much big-game experience for the Minnesota Vikings on Saturday.

Sean Salisbury, Minnesota’s new quarterback, threw enough good passes to suggest that the Vikings don’t have to go out looking for another candidate at that position.

But it usually takes playoff experience to win playoff games, and the Redskins came at him with much more of that than he has had.

The game was memorable for the way that Washington Coach Joe Gibbs handled his feisty wide receiver, Gary Clark, on the sideline, where Clark complained loudly that he was being ignored in the pass offense.

On Gibbs’ busiest day of the season--while a game was going on--he took the time to walk along with a distraught player and talk things over with him reasonably.

A few minutes later, the Redskins threw Clark the turning-point pass.

To beat the 49ers in San Francisco on Saturday, Redskin quarterback Mark Rypien will have to come up with some bombs. The long pass is the Washington offense. Everything else is setting it up.

Against Minnesota, Rypien completed one and barely missed two others, by about two inches each. His receivers got their fingers on both. Against the 49ers, they will have to do better than that.

In the AFC’s first weekend game Saturday, the San Diego Chargers didn’t have much to beat, but they did it impressively with one of the hardest plays to execute in pro football--a long touchdown run down the middle.

The runner was Marion Butts, probably the most underrated back in the league, even on his own team. It wasn’t Butts’ 248-pound power that got the touchdown, it was his moves on a well-timed, well-blocked play.

The loser, Kansas City, the first playoff team shut out in six years, is still trying to win postseason games with defense, all but an impossibility in pro ball.

If the Chiefs had, say, a run-and-shoot offense to go with their superb defense, they would be a Super Bowl team, possibly a Super Bowl winner.

Picture a football club that could combine Houston’s run-and-shoot offense with Kansas City’s defense. Things would be different around Arrowhead Stadium.

How could the Buffalo Bills execute the NFL’s all-time turnaround with a second- string passer?

The principal explanation is that his teammates have almost as much confidence in backup passer Frank Reich as they have in Jim Kelly.

Football is a game that can’t be well played by athletes who lack confidence in their quarterback, as the Vikings demonstrated the day before when they performed tentatively for Salisbury.

However, Reich, an eight-year Buffalo veteran, has won before in relief of Kelly. The Bills think a lot of him, and that was shown in the way his offensive linemen kept fighting against the Houston Oilers Sunday. The Buffalo blockers never gave up even after Reich’s worst play, the pass he threw weakly for the interception that Houston turned into a touchdown and a 35-3 lead during the third quarter.

His offensive linemen gave Reich the pocket protection he needed to bring them all the way back.

Second, Reich and his coaches took advantage of the strange defensive alignment the Oilers decided to use against him during the second half--a kind of double-double defense in which their object was to get two defensive backs on each Buffalo receiver.

In other words, there were only two defensive backs in the Oilers’ deep secondary. And, starting their comeback, the Bills got away from them easily for two quick touchdowns--one along the near sideline, one in the middle.

Houston’s second-half defense offended the NFL’s conventional wisdom. After gaining a 30-point lead, a good pro club can always hold most of it with a three-deep zone defense. That forces the other quarterback to throw time-consuming short passes.

Reich might have gotten one or two touchdowns, but wouldn’t have time for to score four.

Reich took full advantage of Houston’s defenders, who didn’t often try even to change up on him.

Finally, the Bills won with the weekend’s smartest coaching contribution. Marv Levy aggressively called, among other things, two fancy onside kicks that had been carefully rehearsed. And later, at the most opportune time of the game, Levy went for it on fourth and five. And made it. He made it in large part because the Bills were ready with precisely the right pass, a Reich dart down the middle at a moment when the Houston defense was thinking outside.

There was probably some luck in that comeback, too, but on the whole, the Bills earned it.