COMMENTARY / BOB OATES : One of Ryan’s Problems Is That He Knows Little About Offense

During what will probably be Buddy Ryan’s last month in Houston, it might be well to consider one of his great failings:

When it comes to offensive football, Ryan, the defensive coordinator of the Oilers, is a know-nothing.

His sideline fight earlier this month with a fellow assistant coach was simply another manifestation of that.

The other assistant is Kevin Gilbride, the offensive coordinator Ryan punched because he was upset by Gilbride calls.

As if Ryan could tell the difference between good and bad offensive calls.

His whole career is a demonstration of the truism that offensive inadequacies will eventually ruin any coach.

Four years ago, for example, Ryan’s simplistic notions of offense cost him a good job as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. And as recently as this week, he showed again that he hasn’t learned a thing.

“(Gilbride has) a third-down offense, not a pro offense,” Ryan said, berating his team’s offensive leader again in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Gilbride’s offense is based on throwing a lot of passes on first and second downs, most of them short. That is also the style of the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, and it is no coincidence that those three teams are all strongly in the running for the Super Bowl.

Theirs are the most effective offensive styles in modern football.

Yet Ryan still prefers smash-mouth football--a smash run on first down, a smash run on second down, and then a prayer pass into the teeth of defenses that are prepared for third-down passing.

The Ryan way was most noticeably on view at Philadelphia in 1988, ’89 and ’90. Three times his defense--the league’s best--pushed the Eagles into the playoffs, where, all three times, his offense pushed them quickly out.

The year he had perhaps his best shot at the Super Bowl, he blew it when he impulsively benched his quarterback, Randall Cunningham.

At the height of a still-undecided playoff game, he pulled Cunningham, even though the offensive team’s problems were Ryan’s, clearly, not Cunningham’s.

In an earlier era in Chicago, where Ryan was the Bears’ defensive coordinator, he criticized the Coach Mike Ditka’s offense.

As a strategist, Ditka may never be confused with Bill Walsh, but he was an offensive player in his time who played tight end so well that he’s in the Hall of Fame. And as a coach, he once led the Bears into the Super Bowl, where the Chicago offense was overwhelmingly superior, scoring touchdowns in bunches and needing little help from Ryan’s defense to win a blowout.

Ditka’s big play that day was an Al Davis-like long pass to Willie Gault, now a Raider. An aging advocate of old-fashioned football, Ryan didn’t think much of that call.

The tragedy of Ryan is that a role as the best defensive coach of his time doesn’t make him happy.

Neither does his role as one of the best talent scouts since Walsh.

Ryan is a master of two of the only three things that matter in football: offense, defense, and personnel evaluation.

His judgment on young offensive candidates is, ironically, excellent. He just can’t coach them, lacking the knowledge of the nuances of offense that he shows on defense.

This year, for one of the few times in his career, Ryan is on a team with a superb offense, Gilbride’s offense.

It is this good:

In its last game last January, in the playoffs, it held a 35-3 lead--in the third quarter, on a cold day in Buffalo--over a Super Bowl-bound team that pulled it out to win.

The Oilers’ defense, in other words, lost a game that their run-and-shoot offense had seemingly safely won with a four-wide receiver attack that made the Bills ill.

Yet even though Ryan owes his job with the Oilers to the fact that their defense couldn’t hold a 32-point lead in a big game, he still maintains that the run-and-shoot lost the day in Buffalo.

When immediately after that game the Oilers hired him, it seemed probable that they would finally reach the Super Bowl this winter. Their repaired team would be unstoppable with Ryan’s defense and the same explosive offense--or so it appeared then.

And it appeared so this season for much of the year--even when the Oilers started 1-4 last September. It simply took them awhile to learn Ryan’s complex defense. Since they learned it, his players and Houston’s run-and-shoot players have combined to win 11 in a row--the league’s longest streak this year--pretty much as expected.

Yet Ryan can’t stand it. He is still miserable. His offensive admonitions, flawed as they are, aren’t being followed--and he can’t take it.

All season, he has criticized the AFC team that has the best chance to win the Super Bowl in a decade--his own team.

It has that chance because of Ryan--who has given the Oilers the tough-guy NFC-style defense that no other AFC contender has fielded lately--and also because it still has Gilbride’s offense.

If Ryan’s tirades have ended that chance, he has thrown away his future as well. No NFL owner is likely to trust him again.

What it means, finally, is that at ease on his farm, he will have plenty of time to read up on offense.