Is It a Legal Nudge, Bump or an Uncalled Illegal Play?

In every NFL game today, pass interference, though it prevents a completion, will go unseen by any official, or at least uncalled.

That violation has become one of the most common in pro football. And one of the most harmful.

It doesn’t take much to disrupt a magnificent pass play. Nudging the receiver can do it. A little tug at the guy’s shirt. A timely bump 10 yards down the field.

Some officials call that incidental contact but it’s really illegal contact. It can interrupt the most artistic 1997 offense because pass plays are so closely timed.

The whole process--the pass, the pattern, the extraordinary timing--is a precise undertaking.

A man trying to throw a ball to one of many moving targets--all of them speeding around a cluttered secondary--is invariably attacked by hordes of large, angry pass rushers.

And for every NFL passer, the final problem is the most critical: The target can be made to disappear with a defensive nudge, a tug, a little bump.

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The scary thing to most Denver opponents last Monday night was that the Broncos could beat New England so easily while their quarterback, John Elway, was having an off night.

But maybe Elway wasn’t off by as much as it seemed. On most Denver plays, the New England defense appeared to be obstructing his receivers.

What’s more, when the Patriots were on offense, their quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, was disrupted, too. For this is now a league in which, unless the foul is flagrant, interference isn’t regularly called.

In recent years, on the other hand, rule changes have given NFL quarterbacks one edge they shouldn’t have: When rushed out of the pocket, they can avoid a sack by legally throwing the ball away--as Elway and Bledsoe repeatedly did.

What kind of crazy rule is that?

If the pass rushers force you to flee, they’ve won that fight, and the defense should have its reward--a sack or a grounding penalty.

In rebuttal, quarterbacks plead that they could get most passes off if the defensive backs would cease holding their receivers.

So this is something that can be fixed:

* Enforce the rules against pass interference and defensive holding.

* Penalize passers for intentional grounding.

* Fine pass rushers for hitting passers illegally or unnecessarily.

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Deion did it: The player who has recently changed the game the most, defensively, is Deion Sanders of Dallas, the league’s model cornerback.

Sanders routinely puts his hands on receivers whenever he has noted that the official on his side is out of position to see him.

Other defensive players, studying Sanders on the tapes, have simply been following suit, or trying to. Some aren’t as good at it. Either their vision is less acute than his or they aren’t as quick or athletic. But they try. And sometimes they even pay for it, when a penalty is called.

Since Sanders’ days in Atlanta long ago, I have thought of him as the NFL’s best defensive player and the country’s best active athlete. He is so good at all he does that, for him, holding is hardly necessary.

But it’s always helpful.

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Cagey generation: It seems worth noting that NFL officiating, though often criticized, has been generally first rate again this year--except for the lapses on pass defense.

The problem is that everything happens so fast. The players all seem to be faster than ever, and, as the Sanders case indicates, cagier.

By contrast, umpiring big league baseball seems almost a snap. On a close play at the plate, only one player is moving. And for a balls-and-strikes umpire, only the ball is moving.

In football, everything but the field moves. There are three officials in every NFL crew--back judge, side judge and field judge--whose duties include watching for pass interference. But it may be that to catch the most cunning of the cornerbacks, the league should put another downfield man on the officiating crew. Call him the Sanders judge.

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The athletic ability required to play pro football in the 1990s was illustrated again last week when a new Green Bay ballcarrier made the play that beat the better team, Tampa Bay.

The ballcarrier was a defensive end, Gabe Wilkins, who stands 6-feet-5 and weighs 305 pounds. First, Wilkins fooled Tampa Bay quarterback Trent Dilfer by climbing off the ground to intercept Dilfer’s screen pass. Then, as Dilfer went to tackle him, Wilkins hurdled the diving quarterback, and, accelerating like a veteran fullback, raced 77 yards to a touchdown.