Young, Moon Are Not Old in NFL Years

Steve Young and Warren Moon, two aging NFL quarterbacks, won their first football championships years ago as college players in the era before personal computers, if not light bulbs.

But as the pros reckon time, they aren’t that old.

In their league, there are NFL years as well as chronological years. And if an athlete is sitting on a bench somewhere, or playing in Canada or the World Football League, he isn’t taking the lumps and concussions that shorten NFL careers.

The Seattle quarterback, Moon, 41, can look back on six years in the Canadian Football League.

The San Francisco quarterback, Young, 36, spent nearly that long sitting behind Joe Montana or making his first fortune in the World Football League.

Thus in NFL years, Moon and Young are about 35 and 30, respectively. What counts for them and for other NFL quarterbacks is not the number of birthday candles they light annually but the hits they take weekly.

You can throw a football accurately in your 50s. A man of 48 once threw NFL touchdown passes. But that season, George Blanda was a kicker, mostly, having outlasted full-time quarterbacks by a decade or more.

It is the cumulative effect of the pounding they take, not their chronological aging, that ends it all for NFL quarterbacks.

That or a concussion.

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On turnovers: Football coaches, both college and pro, keep saying, “Turnovers beat us,” by which they mean, “I coached these bums right, but their fumbles and interceptions killed me.”

A turnover on the NFL level is, however, as likely to be a symptom of coaching inadequacy as player bumbling.

There was a case in point last week when, with 1 minute 20 seconds left, the New York Jets lost a 24-17 game on an interception thrown by their new quarterback, Glenn Foley. Rolling wide right, Foley threw for a Jet receiver on the goal line but instead hit a Miami safety, George Teague. On such plays, safeties are coached to stay in center field, and Teague did, intercepting.

Even though most fans blamed Foley for the turnover, it wasn’t, fundamentally, his fault. He had been incompletely briefed by Jet Coach Bill Parcells and his staff.

Moreover, in Foley’s first start of the season, he might have been too inexperienced to be on the field at all at that juncture of a close, long game. He had in recent weeks pulled the Jets out twice, but there is a difference between hitting a target or two as a fireman and rallying tired troops at the end of an emotionally draining day.

The more experienced Jet quarterback is Neil O’Donnell. Ironically, Parcells had in recent fourth quarters sent in Foley for O’Donnell. This time, he didn’t give O’Donnell a chance to rescue Foley.

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Comparing coaches, here’s one way to look at Parcells and Pittsburgh’s Bill Cowher: Not long ago, Cowher got to the Super Bowl with O’Donnell, the quarterback who, Parcells has concluded, isn’t an NFL starter.

As 1997 coaches, Parcells and Cowher both belong in the NFL’s top 10. Truth is, the AFC has finally caught the NFC in leadership with five potential NFL champions now or later: Mike Shanahan of Denver, Tom Coughlin of Jacksonville, Jimmy Johnson of Miami, Cowher and Parcells.

But for all of them, first-rate players have plainly contributed. On the Jets, for example, Parcells has two quarterbacks, five good receivers, a great back and a good defense. He is simply in error when he says: “Everyone knows [the Jets] aren’t that talented.”

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Speed kills: A major officiating problem this year is that without an instant-replay backup, NFL games are again unwinding too fast for anyone to judge every fumble with 100% accuracy.

Last week, that was obvious once more when a Jet receiver, Wayne Chrebet, lost the ball either just before or just after his knee hit the ground as he stretched for an extra yard. On a bang-bang play, Chrebet was either juggling the ball as he went down or he wasn’t.

The officials, lacking access to TV, can hardly be expected to rule on every such play correctly.

Nonetheless, after watching five or six reruns, there were fans who announced--with an air of absolute certainty--that the downfield judges blew it.

That sort of second-guess is simply unfair. Most officials have been as effective again this season as most players, coaches and viewers.

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They’re 9-1 but . . . In their last two starts, the San Francisco 49ers have had trouble offensively against good defensive teams, first Dallas and then Philadelphia.

Only in the opening minutes of the second half of the Dallas game did quarterback Young operate the 49ers’ West Coast offense in the customary old style. On a characteristically quick, familiar 77-yard drive that time, he caught the Cowboys, 7-7, after which the San Francisco offense relapsed to win unimpressively from Dallas, 17-10, and then Philadelphia, 24-12.

The 49ers’ new coach, Steve Mariucci, seems to be saving Young for the playoffs, which, considering their regular-season schedule, seems a good idea. It is in the record, what’s more, that Mariucci has so far met the first test of every NFL coach, new or old: His team has won the games it should have won.