PRO FOOTBALL / BILL PLASCHKE : The Year of the Boot? It’s All Moot

Nobody appreciates kickers.

Not then, not now, probably not ever.

Ask Tom Dempsey, who kicked that record 63-yard field goal for the New Orleans Saints in 1970.

The next week in practice he was playing third-string center, snapping the ball on passing and running drills.

“Yesterday’s news,” Dempsey said from New Orleans earlier this week.

Ask Roger Ruzek. He kicked a 30-yard, game-winning field goal with five seconds remaining for the Philadelphia Eagles against the Green Packers in Week 2 this season.

Not 10 days later, he was cut.

“The only person who really appreciates what a kicker can do is other (kickers),” said Dempsey, who said he is happy living in retirement and obscurity. “That’s too bad, because if you think kicking is easy, you should get out there and try it. But people aren’t going to change.”

That’s somewhat amazing, considering:

--After four weeks, kickers have made 165 field goals, the second-most at this stage of the season since 1978, even though the number of games, 48, is the lowest since then.

--Kickers have made 80.5% of their field-goal attempts, the most since 1978.

--Five teams have won games by scoring all of their points on field goals, equaling the number of games won in that manner during all of last season.

Few, except the kickers, are crediting the kickers.

Others are blaming the offenses.

Many say those offenses been been victimized by improved defenses inside the 20-yard line, accounting for more and shorter kicks.

“The defenses have just caught up with the offenses, especially when the field is shrunk,” said Gary Stevens, Miami Dolphin offensive coordinator. “They have better athletes. They can put eight guys on the line of scrimmage and still cover your receivers, or they can play zones and still stop your run.”

Another theory, perhaps the most realistic one, is that with so many players changing teams this summer, offenses have suffered from a lack of cohesion that will disappear by the middle of the season.

“We’re looking at a lot of teams that are not operating on all cylinders yet because they have such different personnel from a year ago,” said George Young, general manager of the New York Giants. “Before talking about how great the field-goal kickers are, we should look and see why a lot of these teams have not been scoring touchdowns. And are some of those things, like dropped passes and missed blocks, preventable?”

Young, a member of the NFL’s competition committee, thinks it’s ridiculous to start thinking about changing rules to limit the impact of the field goal.

He said that the only change he has heard discussed that would make even a bit of sense is the lengthening of the end zone, except that some stadiums could not accommodate it.

Many are talking about reducing the points for shorter field goals, but Young said that would not be fair.

“So you will penalize teams for penetrating farther than other teams?” he said. “A team that can only move to the 40-yard line does better than a team that can move to the 20? That’s not right.”

HE WON’T MIND IF HE NEVER SEES ANOTHER PAIR OF RAY-BANS

In the battle between the league’s two hottest quarterbacks this weekend at Giants Stadium, the best story may be reborn Boomer Esiason of the New York Jets with an NFL-leading 111.5 rating.

But the most exciting player on the field, and on any pro field right now, will be Randall Cunningham of the unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles.

And for that, Cunningham can thank Jim McMahon.

Earlier this week in a conference call, Cunningham admitted that by ridding themselves of a disruptive backup quarterback, the Eagles have helped him become one the game’s best players again.

“When you don’t have stable situations at quarterback, you see guys dividing,” said Cunningham, who has a 95.1 rating and several out-of-this-world plays to his credit. “One guy pulls for this guy. Another two guys pull for the starter. It is a bad thing.

“The way it is now with me and Bubby (Brister) is perfect. We both know our roles.”

McMahon, who backed up Cunningham for three years before signing with the Minnesota Vikings as a free agent, campaigned for other players’ support in ways that undermined Cunningham’s position, Cunningham said.

Once McMahon left town, the Eagles finished their remodeling by promoting Zeke Bratkowski to offensive coordinator, thus limiting Coach Rich Kotite’s influence on the offense.

“There was a lot of crazy stuff going on last year, but with Zeke, I now have a lot more leeway. . . . They let me be me,” said Cunningham, who is scrambling wildly and throwing crazy passes and winning games again.

LOOSENING OF THE JAW

The most compelling part of the saga of Bryan Cox--the Miami Dolphin linebacker who made rude gestures at Buffalo fans before last week’s game--is not that the NFL fined Cox $10,000 for those naughty fingers.

And it is not that the Bills have vowed revenge.

It is that Don Shula, who once released a player moments after he had raised his voice to a coach, took no disciplinary measures toward Cox and even supported Cox’s rips of the Bills and their town.

In other words, for perhaps the first time in 31 years of coaching, Shula has expanded his play book to include the taunt and the swagger.

Eager to return to the Super Bowl so he can then retire, Shula apparently has finally accepted the fact that bad boys can be great players who win championships.

Shula’s former players are thrilled.

“You’ve got to love Bryan Cox and love the spirit he instills in people,” Jim Kiick, former Dolphin running back, said with a laugh. “What that team needs, actually, is more players like him. Maybe now, we’ll see that.”

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

Does anybody else think that . . .

--Despite the criticism heaped on the likes of Jerry Glanville and Joe Bugel, no coach is in over his head more than Dave Shula of the Cincinnati Bengals?

Last week Shula let his players talk him out of punting on fourth down. The play failed to get the required yardage and led to the clinching field goal by the Seattle Seahawks.

This week, he is talking about making Jay Schroeder the starting quarterback.

--The two best coaches in the NFL after four games will meet at Anaheim Stadium on Sunday? Jim Mora is proving he can adjust to fit his talent. Chuck Knox has been doing that for years.

--There are only three fewer games than usual on these early-season Sundays, but it seems like 30 fewer? The TV executives who caused the double-bye weeks by stretching the season to 18 weeks really blew it.

--By playing the Seahawks twice in the first five weeks, the San Diego Chargers have been cut a huge scheduling break?

As fast as quarterback Rick Mirer is improving, nobody is going to want to play him in the season’s last five weeks, during which the Kansas City Chiefs face him twice and the Raiders once.

--Sean LaChapelle of the Rams set a new standard for nerve the other day when he stood behind quarterback Jim Everett in the locker room and publicly urged him to “boycott the media?”

Imagine how this third-string rookie will behave once he actually catches his first pass.

GO FIGURE

The Indianapolis Colts are 7-1 over the last eight regular-season games, tying them with San Diego, Philadelphia and New Orleans for the NFL’s best mark during that span. . . . A fifth-place schedule is supposed to help a weak team get stronger, but the Phoenix Cardinals have lost their last eight games to fifth-place teams, including last Sunday’s in Detroit.

After four games, Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers still hasn’t thrown for 300 yards. . . . After two games, Buffalo’s Jim Kelly still hasn’t thrown for 200 yards.

Ricky Watters of the 49ers had more yards rushing last Sunday, 135, than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had in three games, 106. . . . Jim Harbaugh of the Chicago Bears has rushed for more touchdowns, two, than the Buccaneers, Falcons, Vikings or Cardinals. . . . Jim McMahon is 2-0 against the NFC Central Division, making him 21-2 in his career against division rivals.

QUICK KICKS

* WE JUST KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN: While receiving psychological counseling for his nervous habit of vomiting on the field, Denver Bronco nose tackle Darren Drozdov has been distracted.

Offensive linemen Gary Zimmerman and Brian Habib have offered Drozdov an undisclosed sum of money to throw up Sunday on Indianapolis center Kirk Lowdermilk, their former Viking teammate.

* BEST HANDS IN THE LEAGUE: Quinn Early, New Orleans wide receiver, is the only NFL player who also painted the cover of the team’s media guide.

Early, whose artwork also appears on the back of Saint schedule cards, painted a montage that includes owner Tom Benson, Coach Jim Mora, the Superdome, a couple of jazz musicians, a Saint helmet and a Saint player scoring a touchdown.

That player, in fact, looks very much like. . . .

“We didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell us,” said Greg Suit, director of marketing. “But it probably is him. Give him credit for having the good taste to obscure his number.”

* NEXT THING YOU KNOW, ANSWERING MACHINES IN HELMETS: Leigh Steinberg, the agent who has helped the league’s best players afford the best toys, realized a problem he created when he tried to call client Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Steinberg left a message on Thomas’ home phone. He left a message on Thomas’ car phone. He left a message on Thomas’ portable phone. He beeped Thomas’ sky pager. Finally, he called the Chiefs’ office.

The real battle among the league’s top quarterbacks this year is apparently over who can become the first player with the capability of receiving faxes in his car.

* WIN A GAME, EARN MILLIONS: If Rick Mirer raises his fists and jumps into the arms of his Seattle Seahawk teammates upon defeating the San Diego Chargers on Sunday, try to understand.

Mirer will have just earned a $3-million bonus.

A victory would give the Seahawks one more victory, three, than during all of last season. That is one of the 59 incentives in Mirer’s $15.7-million contract.

* WOULD JOE MONTANA HAVE STOOD FOR THIS? Tom Rathman, sidelined because of a separated shoulder but still one of the most inspirational of the San Francisco 49ers, was conspicuously absent from the sidelines in New Orleans last week.

Reason? There was no room for him on the team plane. Corporate sponsors, car salesmen and such, filled the usually empty seats.

* GULIFORD’S TRAVELS: Mike Morris, the Minnesota Vikings’ long snapper, claims he had a vision while looking into the Metrodome stands at halftime of the Vikings’ game against the Green Bay Packers last Sunday.

“I glanced into the front row and sitting between a couple people with Cheddar on their heads was the ghost of Rod Serling,” Morris told reporters. “He kind of winked at me and then started to whistle the theme from ‘The Twilight Zone.’ All that was to be decided after that was how we would win.”

How they won was with a field goal moments after a desperation 45-yard pass from Jim McMahon to Eric Guliford, who was on the field for a play from scrimmage for the first time in his pro career.