Garcia Has 49ers on Roll

Jeff Garcia of San Francisco, pro football’s most improved quarterback this season, will take the NFC’s second-highest scoring team into Carolina today.

As a scoring machine, no team can match the St. Louis Rams, of course, but Garcia has the 49ers averaging more than 28 points a game.

Against the Carolina Panthers, Garcia, whose 19 touchdown passes lead the NFL, can win for the third time in his last five starts--a record that would be better if he had a better defense.

Neither team could halt the other in last Sunday’s game at Green Bay, where time ran out on the 49ers, 31-28.

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GARCIA’S RUN: Few NFL quarterbacks can match Garcia’s run in the last month, in which he is 2-2 following San Francisco’s 0-3 start, which had Bay Area critics demanding his head.

Garcia began the run against Dallas (41-24) and Arizona (27-20), after which he carried Oakland into overtime, where his special teams lost a battle of missed field goals (34-28).

Then last week, he carried Brett Favre into the last minute, when a Packer field goal broke a 28-28 tie.

Garcia, who like Joe Montana and Steve Young was Bill Walsh’s discovery, went toe to toe all afternoon with Favre, a three-time NFL MVP.

Yet in the end, he couldn’t overcome the contributions of the officials--who have publicly apologized for their errors--and his own defensive players, who have yet to confess.

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MONTANA COMPARISON: The 49ers’ third capable quarterback of the last 20 years, Garcia is actually doing more with less now than Montana and Young could do as comparably young pros.

And Montana had one great advantage:

He was there when Walsh’s West Coast offense was so new and so different that opponents couldn’t fathom what the 49ers were up to.

In those early years--remember?--Montana’s receivers were so typically open that fans and experts alike asked the same question: How is this happening?

Montana threw with marvelous accuracy, but he didn’t really need it to hit a receiver who, in the novel, defense-defying West Coast design, had separated himself by four or five yards from the nearest cornerback.

In all the years since then, NFL defensive coaches have gone to school on 49er films and tapes, and, though they can’t always stop the West Coast offense even now, today’s players know how to surround every West Coast receiver every week.

Thus, Garcia has been throwing to teammates who are invariably closely guarded.

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SAINTS’ RISING: The rise of the New Orleans Saints, who after six weeks rank second to the Rams in the NFC West, is the other story of the year in this five-team division.

Or so it seems.

Although there will be a clearer answer after the 3-3 Saints play Atlanta today and Arizona a week thereafter, Jim Haslett appears to be making a difference as their new coach.

A lifelong defensive player and coach, Haslett has naturally built a defense first in New Orleans, where his future, however, rests on how well he understands offense.

He has the running back, Ricky Williams, but in running up a 24-6 score on Carolina last Sunday, the Saints ran 47 times and threw only 24 passes.

In the Rams’ division, that isn’t the way to the top.

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GRUDEN CAUTIOUS: Of the AFC’s three 5-1 conference leaders, the Oakland Raiders are better balanced than the New York Jets and better offensively than the Miami Dolphins.

And in their next three starts, the Raiders can take their place as one of the NFL’s elite teams with an 8-1 record going into one of the great Monday night games of 2000: Oakland at Denver Nov. 13.

After Seattle plays at Oakland today, the Raiders will get the Chargers at San Diego and then the Kansas City Chiefs in a rematch of their well earned 20-17 decision at Kansas City last week.

The only thing worrying Raider fans is that the club isn’t showing all the offense it should have with a quarterback like Rich Gannon, a receiver like Tim Brown, runners like Napoleon Kaufman and Tyrone Wheatley, and a coach like Jon Gruden, who is versed in the West Coast offense.

Gruden, for some reason, has turned conservative, a strange development for a coach so young.

If he were exhibiting some of Ram Coach Mike Martz’s boldness, the Raiders wouldn’t have to struggle so hard to beat Kansas City by three, San Francisco by three, and even San Diego by three.

Gruden and Al Davis were also taking a chance this year on their comparatively inexperienced new defensive coordinator, Chuck Bresnahan.

But so far, Bresnahan’s platoon has outperformed Gruden’s.

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SYSTEM PLAYER: Fighting for the championship of Missouri, in a stadium where either side can win, undefeated St. Louis (6-0) will be at Kansas City (3-3) today with a running back who last Sunday gained 208 yards.

That’s Marshall Faulk, who, nonetheless, on the most illuminating play of the game, lost a yard, failing to convert on third and one at a key second-half moment, and forcing a Ram punt.

Third and one is a running down in pro football, meaning that NFL defenses stack against running backs.

For that reason, many of the league’s best ballcarriers falter there.

This year, accordingly, the Rams have only rarely called on any runner on third and one.

So how did the man get his 208 yards?

Count the ways.

As St. Louis won, 45-29, Faulk surprised Atlanta by carrying the ball:

* On passing downs.

* On the plays when Atlanta fielded a four-man line fronting seven teammates playing pass defense.

* Whenever the Falcons feared Kurt Warner’s arm more than Faulk’s runs, prompting them to drop into a variety of pass defenses.

* And whenever the Rams surmised that Atlanta was ready to double-cover Faulk on pass plays.

Faulk is a great back, true, but it’s the Ram system that enables him to do so much more than he did in Indianapolis, where the Colts kept running him on third and one.

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WHY PASS? Martz remains, after his first year and a half in St. Louis, football’s foremost offensive leader.

One explanation is that, as a summa cum laude college man, he’s realized that pass-defense mistakes are more serious than run-defense mistakes.

Football, as people keep saying, is a game of mistakes. But when a defensive player errs on a running play, he might cost his team seven or eight yards.

When a defensive back errs, it often costs a touchdown.

In football, muscle is dominant on most running plays, the mind on most pass plays.

And as Martz knows, pass defenses make more mistakes than run defenses because NFL pass offenses are more complex and more sophisticated than running-play offenses.

All this has prompted the Rams to throw on most first-down plays, most second-down plays, and most other plays.

This is the first NFL coach seeking continually to establish the pass instead of the run.

Martz keeps beating coaches who like to run on first down--Atlanta’s Dan Reeves, for example--because running teams can count on only a couple of yards on first down, thereafter leaving themselves only two downs to recover.

When you throw on three consecutive plays, the odds increase that, somewhere in the series, the pass defense will make a mistake.

The Rams are bright and tough and carefully prepared.

On offense.

Their great problem area is still their defense, which almost certainly will prevent a 16-0 Ram run in the regular season and which critically threatens another 3-0 playoff run.