McNown’s Way Is Right Way

When UCLA’s most recent quarterback winner, Chicago rookie Cade McNown, makes his first appearance as an NFL starter today, he will be better prepared for the most difficult role in football than the average quarterback going from college ball to the pros in the 1990s.

That’s because McNown’s new coach, Dick Jauron, has been breaking him in gradually, making sure that whether the Bears were winning or losing, his rookie passer got one series of plays in each of Chicago’s first three games and two series in each of the next two.

Most NFL coaches use one of two errant techniques. They either throw them in as starters or sit them down with little or no playing time.

Jauron’s way, reminiscent of Bear Bryant’s at Alabama, seems more intelligent.

Indeed, the really smart way is to give a promising rookie quarterback regular but limited employment indefinitely--though never as a starter--which was Jauron’s plan until the veteran journeyman, Shane Matthews, was injured.

That doesn’t guarantee a big game for McNown today against Philadelphia, but he is at least getting his best chance.

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Tough call: In a league that changes a large percentage of coaches every year, you never know whether one of the new ones is the next Knute Rockne or is just along for the ride.

When Vince Lombardi arrived in Green Bay in 1959 after a long career as an assistant elsewhere, there was nothing to suggest that he would become one of the greatest coaches of all time.

Twenty years later, when Bill Walsh arrived in San Francisco, there was nothing to suggest that he would revolutionize football with a new way of passing.

Thus, today, it’s still out of the question to predict that the Bears finally have another winning coach in Richard Manuel Jauron.

It’s uncertain for many reasons, beginning with these two:

* Jauron might have guessed wrong in the draft, where he welcomed McNown in the first round.

* The 3-2 Bears might have simply played in good luck for the last couple of weeks when they came from behind to beat New Orleans, 14-10, and Minnesota, 24-22.

But if there’s nothing to suggest that Jauron is or ever will be in Lombardi’s class, or Walsh’s, neither is there anything to suggest that he won’t.

As a 1970s Ivy League running back, Jauron, son of a high school football coach, led Yale in rushing with a yardage total that still stands as a school record. And later, as a defensive coach for Mike Holmgren and Tom Coughlin, he learned defense under modern masters.

In any case, as the seventh coach of the Bears since George Halas, Jauron bears watching.

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Similar stars: Even though Kurt Warner threw five touchdown passes for St. Louis--five more than Jeff Garcia threw for San Francisco--the NFL’s hottest pair of new quarterbacks seemed reasonably similar in ability last Sunday as the Rams outscored the 49ers in St. Louis, 42-20.

The wide receivers and running backs also seemed about even on a day when the Rams’ Isaac Bruce caught four touchdown passes and the 49ers’ Charlie Garner led both sides in ground gaining.

The difference in a game between traditional rivals was almost entirely in the other positions, at cornerback, for instance, and in the front line, where the Rams for several years have quietly strengthened their club.

At the same time, in contrast, the 49ers have been quietly going backward, until this year, when new management made about as many hurried repairs as any pro leaders could in the difficult salary-cap era.

So the Rams are visibly more powerful now than the 49ers, except at wide receiver and in the offensive backfield. On Sunday, this meant that the 49ers couldn’t rush Warner, couldn’t protect Garcia, and couldn’t win.

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No troubles: In pro football, adversity is said to be the great teacher, but that’s one professor the Rams haven’t had this season.

Last year, they had everything but an effective quarterback. This year, Warner has dispatched so many first-quarter touchdown passes that he and his teammates remain untested and curiously untroubled.

Sooner or later, though, most clubs fall a touchdown or two behind--and when adversity of that or any other kind comes to the Rams, Warner can expect to be measured by what happens then.

Strange as it seems, though, the Rams would be favored this week over everyone else on the rest of their schedule, including Atlanta today--in Atlanta.

They are on course for a 16-0 season against the teams that have been lined up for them in the next three months--Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, the New York Giants, and the bunch in the NFC West.

The Rams don’t figure to go 16-0, to be sure, but it will be fun to see how close they get.

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He’s learned a lot: Nothing describes the present passing era in pro football more certainly than the way Ram Coach Dick Vermeil has been coping this season.

When Vermeil first came to prominence as the 1976-82 leader of the Philadelphia Eagles, he was a solid ground-game coach.

In 1980, the Eagles got to the Super Bowl with a team that ran the ball to set up a few passes.

Vermeil’s new team, which could hardly be more different, came out passing, as usual, Sunday against the 49ers, who were overwhelmed in a 21-3 first quarter when Warner, throwing on almost every down, completed nine for nine.

The Rams’ three first-quarter touchdown passes all resulted from first-down calls.

In his seven years at Philadelphia, Vermeil almost never allowed his quarterbacks to throw on first down.

He’s had to change or quit, and he didn’t want to quit.

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They must blitz: The NFL defenses that are interrupting the good passers this year are those with strength, if not size, in the defensive backfield. But that’s the area where the 49ers are so weak this season that their cornerbacks couldn’t cover any Ram receiver last week, let alone Isaac Bruce.

Surprisingly, San Francisco’s coaches never understood that they should have been using their cornerbacks to blitz the passer.

If you can’t keep up with Bruce on pass routes, why not blitz Warner?

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More than Elway: After watching rookie quarterback Brian Griese pull one out for Denver over Oakland last Sunday, 16-13, I’m tempted to conclude that even John Elway would be 1-4 with this team.

Or at best, 2-3.

It isn’t simply Elway’s retirement that sent the Broncos into a tailspin, it’s that and many other things.

For instance, defensive play against the pass seems to be improving somewhat almost everywhere in the league.

Thus, every pro club is struggling now except the Rams, who, in the football cliche, have been sneaking up on people against a schedule full of opponents who are obviously less talented than most of those on Denver’s schedule.

Griese seems plainly good enough to win with the Broncos if they were like Elway’s team last year--that is, injury-free and, before the NFL’s defensive adjustments of 1999, well ahead of the class in pass-offense design.

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Selected short subjects:

* One measure of any new quarterback is how he reacts after the first hit he takes from a 300-pound defensive linemen. The NFL’s newest passers, Kurt Warner and Jeff Garcia, have yet to learn how that feels.

* The best NFL uniform of all time, in the collective opinion of pro football’s 36 Hall of Fame selectors, is the one Green Bay’s players wear. Second: San Francisco’s. Third: the uniforms worn in the 1960s by the Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Chargers.

* Suppose Los Angeles had been voted an NFL expansion team and the owners had hired someone like Carmen Policy to run it. After running down the 49ers earlier in the 1990s, Policy has put together an expansion loser in Cleveland, which couldn’t even beat previously winless Cincinnati on the day the Bengals started a rookie quarterback, Akili Smith.