Witness for the Defense Finds New Rules Offensive

Richard Dent knew something was terribly wrong the first time he tried to rush Raider quarterback Jeff Hostetler.

“It looked like there were four blocking running backs in the backfield,” he said.

Tim McDonald knew something was terribly wrong when he watched Raider receivers streaking past him and all he could do was stand, remembering his coach’s instructions.

“All summer long they’ve been saying, ‘Don’t touch the guy! Don’t touch the guy!’ ” McDonald said. “What could I do? You have to let him go.”

We knew there was something terribly wrong Monday morning when we picked up the newspaper and found this in a game summary:

RECEIVING: New England -- Coates 8-161. Could this be the same Ben Coates who had caught passes for fewer yards last year than 44 other NFL receivers?

The Ben Coates who’d averaged 4.1 yards a game?

This, this, tight end? “This league is a whole different thing now,” said Rickey Jackson, who, like Dent and McDonald, is an embittered All-Pro defender for the San Francisco 49ers.

“The owners wanted to make the game better for the fans, make it more entertaining,” Jackson said. “And that’s what has happened. We players are just here to put on a show.”

Those owners, hoping to sprinkle a tad more offense into the game, unwittingly saturated it this spring with too many offense-friendly rules.

The results make it spicy for quarterbacks and receivers, but represent heartburn for defenders and purists.

A glance at Week 1 in the new National Get-Out-of-That-Guy’s-

Way-and-Let-Him-Score League:

--Eight teams scored 30 or more points. Seven quarterbacks threw for 300 or more yards. In six games, each team scored 20 or more points.

None of the above happened even once last year.

--In the 14 openers, teams combined for an average of 46.6 points a game.

During the 1993 season, teams averaged nearly a touchdown and a field goal less, 37.4 points a game.

--With three of the best defensive backs in the game, guys averaging $1.7-million salaries a year, the New England Patriot defense gave up the most passing yardage in the club’s 35-yard history.

Maurice Hurst, Myron Guyton and Ricky Reynolds were no match for Dan Marino’s 473 yards for the Miami Dolphins--even though this was Marino’s first game since Achilles’ tendon surgery.

--Of 138 kickoffs, 121 were returned, or 87.7%.

Last year in week one, of 140 kickoffs, 81 were returned, or 57.9%.

And for the first time in five years, the average return yardage increased more than two yards from the previous year, from 18.2 to 20.8.

Why all the freaky numbers? Know your new rule book:

--With referees under a mandate to enforce a no-chucking rule beyond five yards from the line of scrimmage, receivers are able to run uninhibited to their proper spots.

If they tell a quarterback they are going to be somewhere, they are almost assured of getting there.

“With all the timing patterns that guys use today, it’s a perfect rule for the offense,” McDonald said. “You can’t even slow a guy down.”

--With offensive linemen allowed to line up eight more inches off the line of scrimmage--at the center’s waistline--the quarterback’s pocket begins forming even before the snap.

“They might as well put a running back’s jersey on some of these linemen,” said Neil Smith, defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs. “The pocket is now huge.”

--With kickoffs pushed back five yards to the 30, only a return man with cramps will not give his team good field position.

“Do you see where some of those teams are starting from?” Dent said. “With that kind of field position, it’s a lot easier to score.”

Will the outburst continue? Our guess is, sort of.

Referees will probably back off on the no-chucking rule as their attention span wanes, but quarterbacks will still have more time and teams will still seemingly start each drive somewhere around the 35-yard line.

And somewhere, even offensive guru Sid Gillman will wince.

“Some of this stuff is crazy,” Gillman said. “You talk about all these records that will be set. Well, they are going to have to put parentheses after those records and mention the rules that helped caused them.”

We agree. And we wonder, when will this league learn to leave well enough alone?

A tad more scoring can make the average game great. A lot more scoring only makes it cheap.

ROOKIE WATCH

Those who saw the Indianapolis Colts’ Marshall Faulk run for about 500 yards and 10 touchdowns last Sunday--that’s how many we counted after three highlight shows--are convinced he will be this year’s best first-round draft choice.

But those who watched Dan (Big Daddy) Wilkinson of the Cincinnati Bengals chasing terrified Cleveland Browns out of the backfield are convinced he will be the best.

Then there were those who saw New York Jet cornerback Aaron Glenn help hold the Buffalo Bills to 173 yards passing. And those who saw Cleveland cornerback Antonio Langham make a game-saving interception.

Ask player personnel directors after just one game, and they all still love their first picks.

We aren’t among them.

An early rating of the first-rounders, seven gems and four bombs.

1-Faulk: Experts say truly great NFL running backs are great from the first moment they step onto the field. Makes sense here.

2-Wilkinson: He made one tackle where it appeared he began the play in the backfield.

3-Glenn: In the kid’s physical duel with Andre Reed, Reed blinked first.

4-Langham: Redeemed himself after allowing touchdown pass to Darnay Scott. By adding him to Don Griffin, Eric Turner and Stevon Moore, the Browns might have created one of best secondaries in football.

5-Bernard Williams, tackle, Philadelphia Eagles: Of the five sacks his line allowed to the New York Giants, none were his fault.

6-Dwayne Washington, cornerback, Minnesota Vikings: Almost decapitated the Green Bay Packers’ Sterling Sharpe on one play. Our opinion of him soared.

7-Todd Steussie, tackle, Vikings: Suffered only one breakdown during the loss to the Packers.

Now for the bombs.

1-Henry Ford, defensive end, Houston Oilers: The only sound first-round pick who didn’t even suit up Sunday. A real Edsel.

2-Wayne Gandy, tackle, Rams: The only sound first-round pick beaten out by somebody named Clarence Jones.

3-Trent Dilfer, quarterback, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Misses summer workouts, holds out during most of training camp, forces team to lose with Craig Erickson.

4-Derrick Alexander, receiver, Browns: One of only two first-round picks who suited up but did not play Sunday. The other was Dallas defensive end Shante Carver, who watched Charles Haley rack up four sacks.

Alexander had no such excuse.

A NEW SINGLE-GAME RECORD FOR SELFISHNESS

Fuzzy Thurston, a guard for the Packers during their glory years and now a popular bar owner in Green Bay, was in his car last Saturday morning when the news came over the radio.

Receiver Sterling Sharpe had left the Packer camp and was not going to play in Sunday’s season opener against the Vikings unless the team renegotiated a contract he had already signed through the year 2000.

“I could have wrung his neck,” Thurston said. “I was amazed that he could have let his team down like that.”

He was speaking for all of Green Bay, a hard-working, conservative town that would have forced the Packers to trade Sharpe if he had not changed his mind and actually played.

“Yeah, they would have had to trade him if he didn’t show up,” Thurston said. “Nobody in this town would have ever forgiven him.”

Thurston said folks in his bar were hoping Saturday that Sharpe would actually stay away.

“They all said, ‘The hell with him. Who is he? We don’t need him!’ ” Thurston said. “But then he comes back and, well, you know. On the field, the guy is a heck of a player.”

The Packers insist that Sharpe, whose $1.9-million salary this season is less than four of his teammates including tackle Ken Ruettgers, received no extra money to return. Apparently he was just given some future salary in advance.

Sharpe rewarded the Packers with a touchdown catch. But three days later in practice, he was back to his old tricks, failing to pick up an errant pass even though he was the only player within 25 yards of the ball.

As Sharpe returned to the line of scrimmage, a water boy ran 55 yards and retrieved the ball before the next play.

QUICK HITTERS * TRUTH BE TOLD: If Steve Young had known Joe Montana would play so long after having back surgery in 1986, he never would have agreed to be traded from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the San Francisco 49ers in 1987, according to agent Leigh Steinberg.

Instead of facing Montana in football’s ranking blood feud this weekend in Kansas City, Young would have been playing for the Green Bay Packers or Arizona Cardinals, according to Steinberg.

“Bill Walsh told us he thought Joe would not properly recover from the back surgery,” Steinberg said. “We believed him. The last thing we wanted to do was to walk into a quarterback controversy. Joe just surprised people.”

What a surprise.

* WHAT TIMING! On Monday night, Young passed Montana to become the all-time passing ratings leader with a 93.433 rating. Montana has a 93.328 rating.

* EVERETT VS. MILLER, CHAPTER ONE: After one week, former Ram quarterback Jim Everett has more than twice the passer rating, 92.8, of his replacement, Chris Miller, 41.4.

Everett threw for 326 yards, more than all but four other passers in the league. Miller completed six passes, fewer than every other starting quarterback in the league.

Stay tuned, Ram fans. It will get worse before it gets better.

* YOU SEE, THIS LABOR AGREEMENT IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING: In the five days after the NFL’s opening weekend, only five players were waived or released. Last year during that same period, with no salary cap, 12 players were waived or released.

The more-than-50% drop can be attributed mostly to teams not wanting to mess up their arrangement under the cap.

“I think that has something to do with it,” said Bob Ackles, Arizona assistant general manager. “If you put a guy on waivers and he is claimed, his bonus accelerates into this year’s cap. And if you release a guy, you’ve got to replace him with something better.”

Meaning something costlier, which few teams can afford, once their salaries are arranged like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

* SIGN OF THE TIMES: Receiver Rob Moore of the New York Jets set off the airport metal detectors in Buffalo last week. What was it, his keys? His coins?

Try a screw that had been inserted into his broken left wrist, and an electronic stimulator that had been attached to the joint.

“Yeah, I had to get frisked,” Moore told reporters. “For some reason, I tried to walk through. I told them, ‘It’s a long story, and I don’t have enough time to explain.’ ”