NFL Coaches Prefer to Run and Hide

Jimmy Johnson, who coaches the Miami Dolphins, has been trying to coast his way into the Super Bowl this season with the NFL’s fastest and most formidable defensive team.

Offensively, his objective is to run safe plays that won’t put his defense in a hole.

It’s a conservative philosophy that will get a tough test if Johnson continues with it today against one of the league’s rising teams, the Indianapolis Colts, who have the league’s rising quarterback, Peyton Manning.

The Colts, by balancing Manning’s passes with runs by Edgerrin James, have won seven in a row, succeeding every week since Miami beat them on an official’s controversial call Oct. 10, 34-31.

You never know whether the next Colt play will be a Manning pass or a James run.

You nearly always know that the next Miami play will be a run--unless it’s third down.

The 1999 question for Johnson: Can you win a big game that way?

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Timid coaches: NFL coaches now average more than $1 million in annual salary, and that’s one more thing leading them to call plays predictably and conservatively.

Fearing loss of job income, they seem more timid this year than in any recent season.

In most NFL games, both sides have come out trying to execute simple game plans with a run on first down, another run on second down, a pass from shotgun formation on third down--and more of the same the next time it’s first and 10.

With such calls, Johnson and Dallas Coach Chan Gailey dulled up Thanksgiving Day for most viewers through a scoreless first half.

Both defenses, heartened by the predictability of the offenses, rushed the rushers on first down and blitzed the passers on third down.

That’s what defensive teams are doing this year against the league’s many timid signal-callers.

The Dallas-Miami game was going to be won by whoever ran back an interception for a touchdown.

As it turned out, that was Dallas.

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Flutie tipped run: The coaches in last Sunday’s Buffalo-New England game, Wade Phillips and Pete Carroll, borrowed the Dallas-Miami game plan in almost every simple particular.

That made for another farce until, nicely placed by a pass-interference penalty, the Bills landed at the Patriot three-yard line late in the first quarter after running plays failed them on first and second down.

On third and goal, for the only time all game on third down, the Buffalo coaches lined up quarterback Doug Flutie under center instead of in a shotgun stance.

As the world knows, Flutie when under center in that situation typically runs a bootleg sweep.

When he ran it that time, the Patriots nailed him instantly.

It was the most predictable result of a predictable day.

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Wrong discipline: In any team sport, the worst way to discipline any athlete for any kind of infraction is to bench him.

That disciplines the whole team.

New England’s second-best player is wide receiver Terry Glenn, who spent the first quarter on the bench meditating a misdemeanor last week as Buffalo opened a 3-0 lead that grew to 10-0 at the half and 17-7 at the end.

The last 7 was contributed by Glenn, who by then had been pardoned.

In the Patriots’ only impressive offensive thrust, he scored on a 45-yard fourth-quarter pass play.

In any final result, first-quarter touchdowns count for as much as fourth-quarter touchdowns, but only if you’re on the field to score them.

The lesson is that as a disciplinary tool, a suspension is counterproductive.

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Rams different: When their offensive team is on the field this year, the St. Louis Rams are making the kinds of plays that no other teams are even attempting.

And that’s one reason why they’re winning most of the time.

At a critical moment last Sunday, for example, the Rams’ two key players, quarterback Kurt Warner and running back Marshall Faulk, combined to score on the New Orleans Saints with a new kind of draw play.

On first and goal at the New Orleans six-yard line, Warner, football in hand, raised his arm high to throw a slant pass, seemingly, then pulled it down and slipped the ball to Faulk, who slithered easily into the end zone.

It was a complete draw-play fake.

And at the time, the Rams seemed to need it, leading only 15-12. They went on to win, 43-12, for the ninth time in 11 starts.

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Misdirection pays: During the mid-century years after former Ram coach Clark Shaughnessy had invented the modern T formation, his running game was based on two-back deception.

On most plays, by design, Shaughnessy’s quarterback faked a handoff to the fullback before handing off to a halfback.

Or he handed off first and then faked.

By contrast in recent years, most NFL coaches have focused increasingly on one featured running back, usually an I-formation tailback running with Spartan simplicity behind a blocking fullback.

This year the Rams have brought back Shaughnessy’s two-back artistry, and that’s another explanation for their success.

On offense, they keep attacking aggressively with misdirection plays involving Faulk and underrated fullback Robert Holcombe.

For instance, as the Saints chased Faulk after fake handoffs or pitches Sunday, Holcombe ran for several first downs and a touchdown, proving again that deception in football can be more powerful than a power play.

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Ram defense bends: Surprising the league, the Rams have started so fast, and have generally scored so handily, that every opponent has been devising new blitzes and defensive schemes to slow them down.

Thus, in the last two weeks against strategically well-prepared San Francisco and New Orleans, the Rams made little headway in either first half.

Warner only seemed to be experiencing an off-game last Sunday, when the problem originated in the Saints’ consummate blitzing defenses, not Ram imperfections.

By the second half, Ram offensive coordinator Mike Martz had figured it all out, and the rest was effortless with all those weapons he has, Warner, Faulk, Holcombe, receivers Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce and, among others, the club’s many undervalued blockers.

The Rams’ trouble area this year is their defense, which would have been in real trouble this time if the Saints, on one long drive after another, could have scored touchdowns instead of four meaningless field goals.

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Inexcusable Turnovers: The NFL is a league in which the passers keep taking the blame for other people’s errors, as Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon did again last Sunday when Kansas City came from 14 points behind in the fourth quarter to win, 37-34.

Kansas City scored the two decisive second-half touchdowns on long runbacks by cornerback Cris Dishman, who went 47 yards with an intercepted pass and 40 yards after a fumble recovery.

This is what happened:

* Oakland running back Tyrone Wheatley wasn’t fighting hard enough for the pass that Dishman intercepted. If Wheatley had kept going for the ball, Dishman couldn’t have made that play. But the big fellow--Wheatley weighs 235--didn’t seem to want to keep going.

* If Oakland tight end Derrick Walker had carried the ball properly--instead of carelessly with one hand on the fat part of the ball--he wouldn’t have dropped it in front of Dishman. It was probably the most inexcusable turnover of the month.

Even though Jon Gruden has made the Raiders one of the NFL’s best-coached teams this year, good teams don’t as a rule lose like that.

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Selected Short Subjects:

* Wide receiver Terrence Wilkins, whose catches kept Indianapolis en route to the winning points Sunday, has scored this year on a punt, kickoff and fumble as well as on Manning’s passes. Only three other NFL players have ever scored four different ways in one calendar year: Terry Metcalf, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson and Brian Mitchell.

* Although the Chicago Bears went home thinking they lost the game in the second half at Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, they actually lost it in the first quarter. With an improved pass offense, they kept trying to run the ball, anyway, in those opening minutes--wasting their best chance to throw it. In any first quarter, defensive linemen are fresh, determined and unbeaten, meaning it’s harder to run early than late in an NFL game.

* The three best quotes in NFL history as determined by pro football’s Hall of Fame selectors: Joe Namath’s “I guarantee it”; Vince Lombardi’s “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,” and former coach John McKay’s comment on his team’s execution: “I’m in favor of it.”