ON THE DEFENSIVE

On first and goal in a recent game, Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre advanced the Packers only a couple of yards with a crisp short pass that would have yielded a touchdown not many seasons ago.

Next, Packer running back Dorsey Levens was also held to two yards. And on third down, Favre, hammered by blitzers, fumbled.

All season, NFL offenses have had that kind of trouble.

What is this? Great defense? Bad luck? Incompetent offense?

The league’s majority answer is that if offensive production is off this year, there are three reasons:

* Most defensive teams are much faster and more talented than they used to be.

* Most offensive teams are more predictable than they need be.

* This is a transition era for quarterbacks.

Few football people see a strong defensive trend in what’s happened in the 1999 NFL.

Most of them doubt that the game is heading into a defensive cycle like the last one, which brought a host of rule changes in the 1970s. Nobody today is pushing for new rules.

What’s happening instead, they say, is an extended run of young-quarterback problems.

To be sure, the new defenses are feared. They have won the respect of all offensive coordinators. And it’s also true that defensive teams are deeply appreciative of the league’s many predictable offenses. Even so, they insist, it’s the young passers who are principally hurting offense.

“The good old quarterbacks--the Steve Youngs, the John Elways, the Dan Marinos--are gone or going,” Baltimore Raven Coach Brian Billick said. “And most of the new ones are too young and inexperienced. That’s the biggest reason why the defenses seem to be getting the upper hand.”

No fewer than six rookie quarterbacks have started NFL games this fall: Cade McNown, Jeff Garcia, Akili Smith, Donovan McNabb, Tim Couch and Shaun King. And among the quarterbacks with less than a year’s experience as NFL starters who have been thrown in: Kurt Warner, Brian Griese, Charlie Batch, Jon Kitna, Jim Miller, Ray Lucas and Damon Huard.

Then there are those who, like Peyton Manning, aren’t rookies anymore, but are hardly veterans either.

Favre is almost the only 1999 quarterback blending youth with maturity--and Favre, in the early part of the season, was painfully hampered by a bad thumb.

“At Tampa Bay, [Coach] Tony Dungy illustrates the problem that most teams have,” Billick said. “Tony is doing everything right there--he’s brought in two great runners [Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott] and a great defense--but can’t get much production out of his quarterbacks [Trent Dilfer and Eric Zeier, both of whom now are injured and have been replaced by rookie Shaun King].”

George Young, an NFL senior vice president and former New York Giant general manager, says the departure of four exceptional veteran running backs--along with the absence of four exceptional veteran quarterbacks--has adversely affected the league’s 1999 offensive output statistically as well as artistically.

“For all or much of the year, we’ve been without Vinny Testaverde, Dan Marino, Steve Young, and John Elway,” Young said. “Then add up the running backs who are among the missing: Terrell Davis, Barry Sanders, Garrison Hearst and Jamal Anderson. With those eight guys out, it’s a different league.”

Yet, said NFL Senior Vice President Joe Browne, “There is still so much scoring on pass plays that average points per game are up within a reasonable range of last year.”

The precise young-passer problem, according to Seattle defensive line coach Larry Brooks, is that the league’s experienced defensive players love lining up against inexperienced kids.

“If there’s a young quarterback in there, the defenses come at him more aggressively than ever,” Brooks said. “Looking at these kids, I’m sure that, some day, most of them will be good NFL quarterbacks. But not yet.”

Sid Gillman, the Hall of Fame coach who during his career has watched the NFL expand from 10 franchises to 32, said he can’t remember when there were ever enough good quarterbacks to go around.

“There will soon be 32 NFL teams, but there sure aren’t 32 NFL quarterbacks,” Gillman said. “In the last two years, they’ve only found two new ones--Peyton Manning and Kurt Warner--and the clubs all need a No. 2 and No. 3 as well. Where do you find 90 NFL quarterbacks?”

The hunt is on.

Predictable Calls Slow Down Offenses

Long ago, before the coaches called the plays, they used to say, “It takes five or six years to make a good college passer into a pro quarterback.”

A difference today is that every pro quarterback, though relieved of play calling, and regardless of the level of his NFL experience, must contend with sophisticated blitzes and waves of situation substitutions.

His play-calling predecessors never had so much trouble.

Thus, it still takes up to five years to break in most new quarterbacks, even though new passers are evaluated instantly.

In the year of the young quarterback, that’s one thing that has led to what football fans have been calling a strange season.

But another thing may be just as influential.

The way the coaches are calling the plays is also slowing things down.

Increasingly, the problem is being laid to conservative coaches and their predictable play-calling.

Most coaches, for example, repeatedly call running plays on first down and shotgun passes on third.

“Somewhere, somehow, they’ve gotten the idea that you can’t win unless you can run,” Gillman said. “They have that just backward. The fact is, you can’t win unless you can pass.”

Seattle’s Brooks said, “The offensive coaches feel they can’t fool the defenses anymore. They believe their best chance on first down is to put their players in a running-play formation and run the ball without trying to out-think the defense. On third down, when they pass the ball in a shotgun set, their young quarterbacks don’t have to try to figure out what the defense is doing, they can just execute.”

Or get executed.

Still, most offensive coordinators believe they have few options, in part because, according to offensive coach Mike Martz of the St. Louis Rams, “Most teams are playing without a premier running back.”

Altogether, he said, three things are conspiring to make offensive coaches more predictable: “The defenses get more complex all the time, the quarterbacks are inexperienced, and the running backs aren’t [what running backs used to be].”

Nonetheless, considering how St. Louis players keep scoring touchdowns on Warner’s passes, the Rams are hardly predictable. And in the view of San Francisco General Manager Bill Walsh, today’s rampant offensive predictability elsewhere isn’t as necessary as it might seem.

“The average offensive team this year would accomplish more with more balance,” said Walsh, whose offense, in the days when the 49ers were winning five Super Bowls, was the league’s best balanced and most unpredictable. “In effect, most teams are now using two offenses: On first and second down, they come out in the I-formation or other running sets and run the ball. On third down, they line up in the shotgun formation and throw it.”

The defenses simply adjust.

“They gang up on the runner on first down,” Walsh said. “Then they rush the passer on third down. And the result is, the quarterbacks are taking a terrible beating.”

What they need, he believes, is more protection.

They aren’t getting it because “the offenses are trying to win with pass patterns instead of pass protection,” he said. “Extra receivers mean more targets, but less protection, and that leaves the passer more vulnerable to the rush.”

What’s the answer?

“One answer is throwing 50% of the time on nearly every down,” Walsh said.

Or as Clark Shaughnessy, the coach who took football into the modern passing era, once said: “The object of the game isn’t to run over defensive teams with tough backs or to thrill spectators with pass plays. The idea is to advance the ball--and the best way is to surprise the other team on every play. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it’s different.”

Apparently, that principle hasn’t been easy to grasp.

Two or Three Steps Faster

As football grew, the two things that changed it the most were Shaughnessy’s T-formation and free substitution.

Responding to those stimuli, the game’s most imaginative offensive strategists have usually made football better and more interesting.

But over time, the NFL’s defensive coaches and teams have adapted to most changes. And the question now is whether they’re catching up again.

“There hasn’t been a statistical analysis that shows that,” said defensive coordinator Joe Pascale of San Diego. “If the defenses seem to be catching up, the major [influence] is the scarcity of good quarterbacks.”

It all comes back to quarterbacks.

“Teams with good pass offenses and good passers are still playing good offensive football,” Ram Coach Dick Vermeil said, citing Washington, Indianapolis, his team and others. “The defenses haven’t caught up to those teams. Defensive coaches can keep you from grinding it out now, but you can still throw the ball.”

Yet, clearly, it isn’t as easy to pass effectively as it was when Joe Montana was throwing touchdown passes for the 49ers.

Vermeil and others mentioned these differences:

* Defensive players were bigger and slower in the 1980s, the first decade of the West Coast offense, when they geared up to stop the power-running offenses best personified by the 1970s Miami fullback, Larry Csonka.

* The quickness of the West Coast offense, which Walsh introduced in 1979-80, caught the NFL’s defensive coaches off guard. When they continued to use big players to stop the ponderous Csonka types, the quick Jerry Rice types ran right by their players.

* In the 1990s, passing teams using West Coast principles--quick, short pass plays, first-down throws, everything closely timed--won three consecutive Super Bowls.

This season, though, defensive teams seem to be doing a better job against the West Coast. What took them so long?

Said Gillman, “The coaches had to change two things, their thinking and their players, and that takes time. It takes awhile to overhaul a football team and convert to smaller, quicker, faster players.”

Said Ram defensive coach Peter Giunta, “Defensive team speed is the big difference now. Without speed, you can’t handle all the things the offensive teams can do. Plays out of the West Coast offense attack a specific part of the field--and downfield passers attack the whole field--and that’s a large order for even the fastest defensive backs.”

Brooks of Seattle said, “You can’t do it today with what you might think of as a more normal defense. You’ve got to call the defensive plays aggressively, and your players have to [attack] the offense aggressively on every down. That’s what’s slowed down these offenses.”

Walsh, comparing 1999 defenses with that in the 1980s when Montana was young and the West Coast offense was new, said, “Defensive players are two or three steps faster now than even the good defensive players were then. And these days, defensive coaches are willing to play more high-risk football with zone blitzes and all these other blitzes. You can still throw, but only if your passer can move, and only if there is a constant run-pass threat.”

From Baltimore, Billick said, “Football in the next few years depends on how these young quarterbacks play after they all grow up. The receivers will get open against any defense. If the new passers can read it all and hit the right guys, you won’t hear much about defensive teams catching up.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Counterpoints

Defensive scoring is up this season compared to the last two, especially interception returns, a sign of inexperienced quarterbacks. A look at fumbles and interceptions returned for touchdowns, and safeties:

Year: 1999

Fum.: 25

Int.: 46

Saf.: 20

*

Year: 1998

Fum.: 19

Int.: 38

Saf.: 12

*

Year: 1997

Fum.: 25

Int.: 30

Saf.: 6

Note: Numbers through Week 13 of each season.

NFL The Stretch Drive

Going into the final four weeks of the season, a look at the trends shaping the NFL this season:

MOST IMPROVED TEAMS

*--*

Team 1999 1998 + Indianapolis 10-2 2-10 +8 St. Louis 10-2 3-9 +7

*--*

*

BIGGEST DECLINES

*--*

Team 1999 1998 - Denver 4-8 12-0 -8 Atlanta 3-9 10-2 -7

*--*

PLAYOFF-BOUND

If the playoffs started today, these teams would make it:

NFC division champions

St. Louis, Detroit, Washington

NFC wild cards

Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Minnesota

AFC division champions

Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Seattle

AFC wild cards

Tennessee, Buffalo, Miami

THEN AND NOW

The four quarterbacks who led

the NFL in passer rating after Week 13 last season:

Randall Cunningham, Minnesota

2,565 yards, 23 TDs, 109.2 rating

Vinny Testaverde, N.Y. Jets

2,243 yards, 20 TDs, 104.0 rating

Steve Young, San Francisco

3,320 yards, 29 TDs, 101.6 rating

John Elway, Denver

1,737 yards, 16 TDs, 98.9 rating

Top four quarterbacks this season:

Kurt Warner, St. Louis

3,213 yards, 32 TDs, 111.2 rating

Jeff George, Minnesota

1,637 yards, 17 TDs, 105.4 rating

Gus Frerotte, Detroit

1,538 yards, 8 TDs, 97.5 rating

Peyton Manning, Indianapolis

3,212 yards, 22 TDs, 91.6 rating

The three running backs who led the NFL in rushing after Week 13 last season:

Terrell Davis, Denver

1,566 yards, 17 TDs

Jamal Anderson, Atlanta

1,326 yards, 11 TDs

Barry Sanders, Detroit

1,225 yards, 4 TDs

Top three running backs this season:

Edgerrin James, Indianapolis

1,210 yards, 9 TDs

Stephen Davis, Washington

1,146 yards, 16 TDs

Duce Staley, Philadelphia

1,058 yards, 4 TDs