PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : All of Sudden, Tough Team Emerges

After consecutive starts against physically superior NFC teams in the two most recent Super Bowls, the Buffalo Bills have developed an NFC-type defense of their own.

That is the biggest change in the Bills in the last three years.

And although they will be favored to lose again in the Super Bowl in Pasadena on Jan. 31, the Bills, this time, will at least be as tough as the NFC champions.

That seemed to be the lesson of the AFC title game Sunday, when the Buffalo wild cards stuffed the Miami Dolphins, 29-10, on a day when Miami showed up with a passer, Dan Marino, and nothing else.

The thing it takes to produce a great defensive team, coaches say, is two superstars, plus seven or eight others who play good team defense. And that’s what Buffalo has.

The superstars are defensive end Bruce Smith and inside linebacker Cornelius Bennett, who combined to limit Marino on Sunday.

In Buffalo’s first two Super Bowl performances, Smith and Bennett weren’t that effective. Their coaches weren’t able to decide whether Bennett was an inside or outside linebacker. And last season, Smith was injured.

This season Smith is well and he’s a load again. Is he ever!

Bennett has become the running-game enforcer in the Bills’ defense, as well as the leader in a disciplined machine that has two bright new parts--defensive end Phil Hansen and strong safety Henry Jones, who were at North Dakota State and Illinois, respectively, two winters ago when the Bills began their long Super Bowl run.

Bennett, lining up in the middle, moves easily from side to side and hits anything that comes through carrying a football.

“We simply couldn’t run,” Miami Coach Don Shula said, uttering the four words that explained the mismatch in the AFC title game.

The irony is that the Bills are finally defensively powerful enough to beat any NFC Super Bowl team, except the one they will have to beat.

Theoretically, big-game pressure could get to the Dallas Cowboys in Pasadena, but it probably won’t. The Cowboys are the better team.

One trouble with the AFC is that it has a lot of wimp teams. The AFC’s leading 1990s representatives--except Buffalo--all seem to lack NFC toughness.

The Denver Broncos have been the most obvious wimp example in the AFC, but the Dolphins aren’t far behind.

Against the Bills on Sunday, what Marino needed most was a field full of bodyguards--but he had none. And when he couldn’t do it alone, his coach, Shula, ended his 23rd season at Miami with another defeat.

The weather should have aided the Marino air force. After two weeks of rain, it turned sunny in Miami, which was nicely cooled by a gentle Southern breeze. Moreover, the Dolphins got a couple of first half turnovers. But when they lined up on offense, nothing happened.

They were never in it.

Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly’s fans might have trouble believing it, but he has become his team’s weakness.

Two years ago, in the Bills’ first Super Bowl, their quarterback was about all they had. Going into their third Super Bowl, they have almost everything else.

Although Kelly is a charismatic leader, who operates the Bills’ fast-striking, no-huddle offense with great skill--and although he came back with great courage from his recent injury--his passing Sunday was, as usual, hit or miss.

And so against a defense as stout as the one from Dallas, the Buffalo question is whether Kelly can be consistent enough to sustain long drives.

In their other departments, the Bills showed a balance of strengths against Miami:

--Their experienced offensive line made plenty of time for Kelly.

--Their spark plug, halfback Thurman Thomas, who has been injured, could go at full capacity when he was in there because his substitute, Kenneth Davis, is good and faster.

--Their receivers, Andre Reed, James Lofton and Don Beebe, are game-breakers.

--And so is their defense.

But Kelly is only a part-time game-breaker. The truth is that his backup, Frank Reich, would have been a better bet to complete the passes that Kelly threw for interceptions to keep a rout from looking like a rout on the scoreboard.

Kelly’s first interception was an underthrow, the second an overthrow. If he had put the ball in front of Reed instead of behind him, the Bills would have had two early touchdowns instead of one.

And, shortly thereafter, if Kelly had thrown the ball far enough to reach Beebe, they would have had three first half touchdowns instead of one.

The Bills chose to use screen passes as their primary weapon in this game, and Kelly excels as a screen-pass quarterback. He looks deep at just the right time, and just long enough, to open up the track for Thomas and Buffalo’s other screen-pass threats.

It isn’t easy to believe, however, that an NFC champion as carefully coached as the Cowboys can be beaten with screen passes.

In San Francisco on Sunday, the 49ers’ pass defense, their problem department all season, let them down again and opened the Super Bowl gates to Dallas.

After a 93-yard touchdown drive, the 49ers were still in it in the fourth quarter when, on the next play, the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator, Norv Turner, made the game’s turning-point call--a pass that surprised everyone.

Turner was taking advantage of the psychology of the moment. The 49ers, lining up and charging on first down, and behind by only four points, had geared themselves to stop running back Emmitt Smith.

The way Smith had been punishing the 49ers, a safe ball-control drive seemed the obvious thing--to the San Francisco pass defense, that is, not the Dallas offense.

Turner caught the 49ers off balance with the call of the season, a short pass, Troy Aikman to wide receiver Alvin Harper, who ran 70 yards to set up the decisive touchdown.

The 49er secondary had forgotten, again, that its prime responsibility was the pass, not the run.

All around, it was a most forgetful game for 49er defensive players, who repeatedly failed to account for Smith in their pass defenses. Time after time, the 49ers forgot to cover him, and time after time he was open to catch the short Aikman passes that sustained Dallas’ drives.

The 49er way wasn’t the way to the Super Bowl.