Buddy System : With Ryan in Control of the Defense, the Oilers Might Run and Shoot Their Way to the Super Bowl

With the opening of training camps this month, one of the most closely watched NFL teams figures to be Houston’s.

A new defensive expert, the flamboyant Buddy Ryan, may give the Oilers all they need to run and shoot their way into the Super Bowl this time--particularly now that Ryan has been reunited with the league’s 1992 linebacker of the year, Wilber Marshall.

But the question remains: Can Ryan coexist with the run-and-shoot?

Pugnacious, sharp-tongued and aggressively confident, Ryan was pro football’s most controversial coach during the years he led the Philadelphia Eagles into the playoffs three times, after having coordinated the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl-winning defense in 1985.

Out of the game for two years, he suddenly returned over the winter, joining the Oilers as both defensive coordinator and self-proclaimed candidate for another shot as an NFL head coach, sometime, somewhere, conceivably Houston.

At the time, of course, Houston already had a veteran head coach, Jack Pardee. And after making the playoffs in each of his three years in charge, Pardee doesn’t figure to be leaving anytime soon.

So what is Ryan up to?

First reports described him as Pardee’s successor, sooner or later. The story was that Oiler President Bud Adams hired Ryan with Pardee’s approval--but not at Pardee’s instigation--and that a change would be made when Adams got around to it, maybe in the next year or two.

That notion was strengthened when Ryan barged in, suggesting that he might shortly bring a different kind of player to Houston, along with some different coaching.

Around the league, as a result, the Oilers advanced to the top of the list of conversation topics.

Then reality caught up.

In separate interviews, Pardee and Ryan announced that they have formed a partnership. Their joint objective, each declared, is merely to succeed in Houston.

“I’m not here to take anyone’s job,” Ryan said. “If (the Oilers) win, it will make everybody look good. If we lose, we’re probably all out of a job anyway.”

Pardee agreed.

Then, asked about Ryan, Pardee said: “I wouldn’t have an assistant coach who didn’t someday want to be a head coach.”

What of Ryan’s impression of the way Houston plays offensive football? “Talk about basketball on cleats,” he used to say of the run-and-shoot. “You win in football by bloodying people’s noses.”

After reviewing the tapes of Pardee’s three-year offensive performance in Houston, Ryan also changed that tune.

“With our kind of defense, we can win with the (run-and-shoot),” he said. “We’ll create more turnovers than they’ve had here.”

That is precisely why Ryan’s return has raised Houston’s stock as a Super Bowl contender.

The Oilers have proved that their run-and-shoot is powerful enough, for example, to run up a 28-3 halftime lead in Buffalo, as they did last season. And now, presumably, Houston’s defense will be able to hold such a lead--unlike last winter, when they disintegrated in the second half against the Bills in the playoffs.

Houston’s defense had broken that ground a year earlier, disintegrating in the AFC title game after having led at Denver, 21-6, and putting the Broncos in the Super Bowl.

Perhaps if the Oilers had hired Ryan when they first had the chance--on the day that the Eagles fired him in 1991--they would have made the Super Bowl both times, displacing Denver in 1992, and Buffalo last winter.

For, at both Philadelphia and Chicago in his last two NFL tours, Ryan demonstrated that his approach to defense fits effectively with any wide-open approach to offense.

In the wide-open run-and-shoot, offensive players don’t aim to spend a lot of time on the field. Their goal is simply to fire up the scoreboard and sit down, hoping they will soon get another chance to fire again.

What they need is a defense that will take charge of the other team and get them repeated scoring chances.

Ryan football.

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Ryan’s return coincides with a year of NFL change. Free-agency departures, which happened league-wide, could seriously disturb many organizations, Houston’s among them.

In such a fluid time, strong leadership will be a plus for any club that has it. And in that respect, the Oilers now seem particularly well positioned with three all-but-autonomous coaches: Pardee, Ryan, and Kevin Gilbride, the offensive coordinator.

They are extraordinarily different types.

Pardee is a unique NFL coach in that he apparently was born without an ego. He not only tolerates media glorification of Ryan, Gilbride and others, he actively seeks it, reasoning that he will have a better team if everyone is noticed and, accordingly, tries harder.

At the same time, Pardee, a cool, hands-off former Ram linebacker, steadies the club on all three levels: offense, defense and kicking. He is a Bear Bryant disciple, with all of Bryant’s toughness, which he consciously conceals in Houston, believing that teachers and lovers accomplish more than fighters and haters.

Gilbride is the NFL’s formost run-and-shoot expert now that Mouse Davis has gone back to Canada. He is both the architect and the leader of the offense that most NFL defensive players fear the most.

There are reports that the organization will force him to keep a tight end this year, in which case Gilbride plans to use him in his base offense, on occasion, as an inside receiver in the four-receiver run-and-shoot.

Said Pardee: “We aren’t going to put in two or three offenses like (Detroit).”

Quarterback Warren Moon said: “There’s just no reason for a tight end in this offense.”

It’s still in doubt.

And then there is Ryan. No other new coach would have given the Oilers more. As his players have noted for years, Ryan, who wears three hats, is unusually gifted in three of football’s four most significant areas:

--He is one of the game’s great talent scouts, rivaling Jimmy Johnson.

--He is the designer of one of the NFL’s great defensive schemes.

--He is an uncommon inspirational force to all who play for him. Most recently, Chicago linebacker Mike Singletary, in one last gesture of respect for his old coach, flew Ryan to the Pro Bowl in Honolulu.

Ryan made him what he is, Singletary said, adding: “I wanted him to see me in my last game.”

As an offensive leader, Ryan has had less experience, and less success, than he has had as defensive coach, motivator and talent scout. What’s worse, he is widely known for one crippling flaw: He is one of the most abrasive people in the business.

But in a new organization--getting a new chance--if Ryan continues to work smoothly with the others there, the Oilers, by September, can be something special.