Green Keeps Vikings on Super Pace

The longshot with the best chance to reach the Super Bowl this winter could be the Minnesota Vikings. They are playing mostly sound football on defense, and on offense are scoring timely touchdowns for Brad Johnson and Brian Billick, who are, respectively, the best new NFL quarterback and a creative offensive coordinator.

Times columnist Mike Downey suggested the other day that the Vikings belong in Los Angeles, not Minnesota, whose political leaders have lost interest in both football and baseball.

And here are some of the reasons why Downey could be onto something and why the Vikings seem to have a champion’s chance:

* Dennis Green, the pugnacious, outspoken Viking coach who is one of football’s most aggressive leaders since Woody Hayes, has never had a losing season and has led Minnesota into the playoffs five times in six years.

* Green keeps winning in the most troublesome ownership environment any NFL coach has. There are 10 Viking owners, who make things 10 times hotter than any one owner can.

* Like any NFL contender, Minnesota is stocked with mostly no-name players plus a gifted nucleus. The most gifted Viking is defensive tackle John Randle, who is probably the NFL’s best defensive player except for Dallas cornerback Deion Sanders.

* With a 6-foot-5 quarterback, Johnson, throwing to a pair of 6-foot-3 receivers, Cris Carter and Jake Reed, the Vikings attack productively in Billick’s version of the West Coast offense, which he has developed into the NFL’s most versatile.

The Vikings’ one serious problem is that running back Robert Smith, their version of the great back required by any contender, has been prone to injury.

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Quick hitter: In running back Garrison Hearst, San Francisco now has the balance the West Coast offense demands. It has been considered a pass offense, which it certainly is. But it’s based on a balanced run-pass threat, particularly on first down, and the 49ers have achieved that with Hearst and Steve Young.

As a ballcarrier, Hearst is quick into the hole, cuts at the right time, has a wiggle and runs hard, as a former 49er named Ricky Watters once did. In Philadelphia Monday night, it will be Hearst and Young vs. Watters and whomever.

Everyone saw Hearst as an embarrassment during his days in Arizona and Cincinnati. Instead, again, it was ownership that embarrassed.

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Jaw breakers: If today is Sunday, the NFL must be about to have another concussion. The headhunters are getting bolder. One of them, Donnell Woolford, a Pittsburgh defensive back, even went after a Kansas City tight end the other night, sprinting up to floor Ted Popson, head to jaw.

As the tight end lay there quivering, after which he was motionless for many minutes, there must have been some in the NFL who asked, “Is this our first televised fatality?”

It wasn’t, thankfully. But without sterner NFL action and control, it will happen eventually. And because one cause of the concussions is that some players are obviously being coached to smash people illegally, here’s what the league could do:

* First, fine every player who hits anyone in the head.

* Second, fine the head coach each time one of his headhunters is fined.

* Third, set up a fine schedule like this:

Ten percent of the player’s annual salary for the first violation, double that for the second.

Five percent of the coach’s salary the first time any of his players is punished, doubling again and again for subsequent infractions.

That would stop the viciousness that knocked out San Diego quarterback Stan Humphries last Sunday when a speeding Cincinnati linebacker, Reinard Wilson, lowered his head and, with the crown of his helmet, pounded Humphries in the jaw.

The league’s paltry-fine policy isn’t working.

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Wrecking gangs: The West Coast offense has in recent years transformed pro ball into an an attractive and competitive game that a few selfish groups keep trying to wreck.

In one group are the headhunters and those who coach them.

In other groups are the defensive backs who interfere with receivers--routinely--and the receivers who routinely push off on defensive backs.

At San Francisco last Sunday, on the fourth-quarter play that cost Dallas the game, 49er cornerback Rod Woodson might have been interfering with Cowboy receiver Michael Irvin.

But earlier, whenever Irvin expected the ball, he was regularly pushing off on Woodson.

Both players are clever veterans, and in that game, both were repeatedly guilty of illegal contact. Some folks have been saying, “That’s football.” But it isn’t. The rules, which forbid pushing and holding, should in the NFL’s best interests be enforced.

A major reason for the present crisis is that they are not enforced. That was obvious last week when Redskin cornerback Cris Dishman grabbed Bear receiver Curtis Conway’s arm, and held it for a moment, preventing a touchdown catch, on a play that unwound directly in front of one of the NFL’s good young officials, field judge Don Carey of Riverside.

When Carey stood there eight yards away, doing nothing, Conway bumped him and was ejected.

That didn’t hurt Conway’s team--the Redskin lead was already 24-0 en route to 31-8--but it should have sent a message to NFL officials: Let’s start deterring those football crimes.