49ers Had the Wrong Policy

The proud and long-dominant San Francisco 49ers lost a big football game last weekend because their longtime leader let them down.

Carmen Policy, who has finally left San Francisco, was the general manager who called the shots that left the 49ers without enough talent to stay on the field in Jacksonville in a 41-3 rout.

As athletes, most of the 49ers seemed obviously inferior to most of the Jaguars.

Poor personnel decisions, among them many poor drafts, have led the 49ers downhill since 1994, and the mistakes were all made on Policy’s watch.

Policy, however, is good with the press.

He was always a media darling in San Francisco, and that popularity led him to his new high-salaried billet in Cleveland, where his newest product was also clobbered last Sunday, 43-0.

Football is a strange sport in which one man can do wonders--remember Vince Lombardi? Bill Walsh?--and in which one man can kill you.

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The end? So the 49ers could be approaching the end of their long tour as the NFL’s team of the century.

They’ve had a never-matched 18-year run on top, winning an unheard-of 11 of every 15 regular-season NFL games plus five Super Bowls.

Walsh, the coach who made all that possible, returned this year as general manager, but there is no such thing as a quick fix these days in the salary-cap NFL.

If the 49ers are indeed collapsing--and with 15 games to go that is by no means yet sure--it will take longer to make the repairs this time than last time, when Walsh needed only three years.

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A good start: After the Miami Dolphins with veteran quarterback Dan Marino outscored the Denver Broncos with rookie quarterback Brian Griese on Monday night, 38-21, Denver Coach Mike Shanahan made the definitive evaluation.

“If every [Bronco] would have played like Brian Griese, we would have won,” he said.

In other words, in a game that was statistically even and in which there were four touchdown passes--one by Marino, three by Griese--it was the Bronco defense that blew it, not the offense.

And the defense only sagged in the clutch.

Marino and the others in the Miami offense made almost every clutch play.

If Griese performs similarly every week and if the defense improves, Denver will have a winning season.

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Two-way threats: In the game of the week, won in overtime by the Dallas Cowboys over the Washington Redskins, 41-35, there were 1,045 yards of total offense because the defensive teams couldn’t handle the offensive combinations, which were alike in the decisive component:

* For Dallas on every play, there was always a two-way threat from quarterback Troy Aikman and running back Emmitt Smith.

* And for Washington, there was always an identical threat from quarterback Brad Johnson and running back Stephen Davis.

The surprise was Davis, who has been with the Redskins for four years but has remained a well-kept secret, though he has always had the look of a perfect modern running back: very fast, very big (234), not too tall (6 feet), good hands.

All he needed was a first-rate quarterback like Johnson with whom to share the defensive pressure.

Johnson had been injured at Minnesota, prompting the Vikings to trade him off.

They may regret that.

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Fake run won: Aikman was the NFL’s quarterback of the week with five touchdown passes, most of them dispatched on plays that confused the Redskins, who never knew whether to attack the passer or the runner, Smith.

Smith had a 109-yard day, averaging 4.7.

The Cowboys that afternoon ran Smith twice on third and two, a passing down.

Accordingly, when they again came up to third and two in overtime, their opponents all headed for Smith, who again seemed to have the ball after Aikman faked a handoff.

At that moment the newest Dallas receiver, Rocket Ismail, who has had six mostly unhappy years in the NFL, was open by about 20 yards down the middle when Aikman reached him on the winning 76-yard pass play.

It may have looked like great blocking by the Dallas line--great protection for Aikman--but no.

It was great strategy--the only kind of strategy that can be expected to produce big passes or long runs anymore against these great new defenses.

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He’s learned: Brett Favre’s plucky comeback for the Green Bay Packers against the Oakland Raiders, accomplished with a painfully injured throwing hand, was the kind of performance he wasn’t capable of earlier in the decade when, as a quarterback, he was so good that he didn’t have to work from behind.

Even in 1998, after having led the Packers to the top in Super Bowl XXXI, Favre was still a little shaky in comeback situations.

What it takes to rally a football team from behind is experience in those situations.

What it takes to do anything well is, of course, experience, but comebacks are particularly nettlesome because of the intense pressure and because one slip can spoil everything.

So it can be said that Favre is a complete quarterback now.

It can’t be said, though, that the Packers had the look of a wonder team.

They showed off the three indispensables--Favre, running back Dorsey Levens, and an exceptional receiver, Antonio Freeman--but it seemed uncertain whether they’ll be ready for Minnesota a week from Sunday.

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Helpful schedule: Jacksonville is the team that might have started a long roll.

The Jaguars are also equipped with the indispensables--quarterback Mark Brunell, two super runners and a super receiver in Jimmy Smith--but they also have some awesome blockers and defensive players.

There is hardly a team that can touch them in the next six weeks, when they will play, in order, Carolina, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, the New York Jets without Vinny Testaverde, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

Pittsburgh may need running back Jerome Bettis in shape to put up a fight against the Jaguars in Three Rivers Stadium Oct. 3, but it’s more likely that they’ll get their next test in Atlanta Nov. 7.

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Pouring it on: Pittsburgh’s 43-0 victory in Cleveland last week was somewhat misleading.

Steeler Coach Bill Cowher had his team throwing the ball against a plainly overmatched and humbled opponent in the fourth quarter, pouring it on with 17 unnecessary points.

Pittsburgh scored twice on fourth-quarter touchdown passes.

That wasn’t very sporting of Cowher.

On the other hand, he’s never liked Cleveland, or anybody in Cleveland.

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Note department:

* Jet linebacker Bryan Cox on what it takes to win NFL games: “You need crazy guys, Christian guys, people who do it unselfishly, someone who’s good in the locker room.”

* Get used to the NFL’s hooded referees, who, when they duck under cover to check on instant replay, resemble a hooded convict about to face the firing squad.

* But instant replay saved Favre Sunday when a close call, correctly interpreted by the replay machinery, led to a last-quarter touchdown that cut Oakland’s lead from 24-14 to 24-21.