Brutality Level in Pro Football Reaches Unacceptable Limits

One thing to admire about the NFL’s 30 club owners these days--regardless of what you think of them personally--is their consistency.

Although they have the authority to eliminate late hits on quarterbacks, they consistently refuse to do it.

Pointedly, in the same stadiums where blitzing defensive players have already knocked out half a dozen quarterbacks this season--for a game or two, or longer--NFL leaders proudly fly their new banner: Feel the Power.

The league is afflicted, seemingly, with a dual personality. It employs a judge, Gene Washington, to collect fines for dirty hits by NFL thugs who plainly feel the power.

The brutality level of pro football, which keeps rising, has climbed to unacceptable limits when speeding NFL pass rushers smash into passers after the pass has been thrown--at a time when they can’t defend themselves against attackers who make no effort to slow down.

Instantly, quarterbacks feel that. They feel the power.

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Broncos win: Denver Coach Mike Shanahan made a coach-of-the-year decision the other day when he rested quarterback John Elway at Green Bay and sent out an apprentice passer, Bill Musgrave.

The Packers, an NFC team playing for the home-field edge in the playoffs--against an AFC team that had already earned that--figured to win in any case, and did, 41-6.

The advantages for Shanahan:

--When, as expected, Denver and Green Bay meet again in the Super Bowl, the Packers will be at least somewhat overconfident. They’ll say they aren’t, but it’s hard for a football player to talk himself out of a feeling of overconfidence that is born of winning big.

--Worse, the Packers will get up on the morning of the game with no personal knowledge of just how good Elway is when, at last, he has a great team around him. They have seen him on tape, and read about him, but that’s different.

--A motivated effort in the Super Bowl will be no problem now for the Broncos, who must be at least a little worried by those 41 points

--Elway has lived to play again.

Anyhow, what did he have to prove?

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NFL’s best teams: Providing an early look at what’s ahead for Super Bowl viewers next month, the Denver-Green Bay game was one of the most absorbing of recent years until well into the third quarter, when Packer quarterback Brett Favre picked out a tight end and, on third and 21, somehow completed a 24-yard pass.

The score was only 13-6 when Favre shockingly threw that ball to Mark Chmura. And although the Broncos were fighting him with an inexperienced quarterback, they had been giving as good as they got.

That was because the two coaches, Shanahan and Green Bay’s Mike Holmgren, are both former 49er offensive coordinators who play football the way they learned it at Bill Walsh State.

For both, their priorities are Walsh’s:

First, play tough defense.

Second, throw short on first down.

Against good defenses--as Shanahan and Holmgren called all the plays themselves--completions came hard, even for Favre, until he threw that third-down pass to Chmura for the first down that got Green Bay rolling to 20-6 and more.

Up against what Green Bay does defensively, Musgrave, at present, can’t throw that pass, and the Broncos knew it. So they gave up, finally, as Green Bay poured it on in a 21-point fourth quarter.

After each of the three fourth-quarter touchdowns, Favre smiled broadly.

Will it be different next month?

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Panthers throw it: Of the many explanations for the sudden ascendancy of the Carolina Panthers, the strategic reason is that, offensively, they are the first pro club combining the theories of two Hall of Famers, Walsh and Sid Gillman.

It was Gillman who showed NFL coaches that to win, the ball should be thrown.

Walsh showed them that for best results against modern defenses, it should be thrown on first down.

With their second-year passer, Kerry Collins, the Panthers, who upset the 49ers last week, 30-24, have been effectively getting the ball downfield on first down--something 49er quarterback Steve Young couldn’t often do now, if he wanted to, behind his worn-out offensive line.

Three of San Francisco’s great old offensive linemen, Harris Barton, Steve Wallace and Jesse Sapolu, are near the end, and that’s what’s wrong with the 49ers today.