Somehow, It Still Doesn’t All Add Up

Parity is one thing, but you’d have to say this is a league in trouble when its all-time greatest running back, scorer and offensive machine are taken out, on the same day, by a Cincinnati Bengal, a 41-year-old kicker from South Africa and Gunther Cunningham.

A man in prison colors and stripes now sits atop the NFL’s single-game rushing leaders list. No, not O.J. Simpson, although he’s close. Corey Dillon, who wears the penitentiary orange and black stripes of the Bengals, received a weekend pass to run all over the Denver Broncos, briefly freeing himself from the shackles that had chained him to the heaviest millstone this side of San Diego and sprinting past Walter Payton’s single-game record to a new one: 278 yards.

A son of a soccer player, a geezer who should be scrumming it with his rugby mates in South Africa, an old-timer who looks as if he just scrunched his head inside Joe Kapp’s old single-bar helmet, is today the greatest point producer in NFL history. Little Gary Anderson, born in Parys, South Africa, went north of George Blanda with a meaningful meaningless field goal near the end of the Minnesota Vikings’ 31-27 victory over the Buffalo Bills--leaving Anderson with 2,004 points, two more than Blanda.

An unhappy-looking man who had been so miserable he nearly quit his job seven weeks ago, Kansas City Chief Coach Cunningham is now the toast of the NFL after devising a scheme that toasted the Invincible Rams for 54 points at Arrowhead Stadium. Yes, the Chiefs routed the Invincible Rams, as they had been designated by every broadcaster and writer in the NFL for weeks.

(Did we miss something? Did Georgia up and move again? Is Invincible a St. Louis suburb? Can you find Invincible on any AAA road map? Do the Rams have to move back now that they have been thoroughly vinced, 54-34, by the Chiefs?)

A lot of inflated reputations hit the tire shredder in Kansas City.

So the Chiefs scored 54 points on the Rams. Can happen to anyone. But if Ram Coach Mike Martz is so smart, why didn’t he devise a scheme to score 55? And why is St. Louis superhero Kurt Warner taking himself out of the game before halftime because of a hurt pinky finger? And why didn’t Marshall Faulk just gather up the slack and run for 300 yards and be done with it?

I mean, Corey Dillon ran for 278.

Still can’t get over that one. Dillon is a fourth-year pro from the University of Washington, where running backs are used as props so the quarterback can occasionally run the play-action. Dillon now plays for the Bengals, who are behind so often and by so much, running backs never actually run with the ball unless they’re on the other end of a desperate third-and-26 screen play.

But take a look at the NFL’s new single-game rushing list:

1. Dillon, 278 yards.

2. Payton, 275 yards.

3. Simpson, 273 yards.

4. Simpson, 250 yards.

5. Willie Ellison, 247 yards.

6. Dillon, 246 yards.

Two of the six greatest single-day rushing performances in the history of the NFL belong to Dillon. Usually, the playing field in Cincinnati is nothing but a bleak wilderness for the home team. But every three years or so, it becomes Dillon’s Highway 61 Revisited.

All told, the Bengals rushed for 407 yards against Denver, the highest team total in one game in 50 years. (Did the Broncos spend the week studying Ram defensive films?) On the ground, the Bengals were unstoppable, with wide receiver Peter Warrick even breaking a reverse for 77 yards and a touchdown. And did you catch the lead blocker on that one? Quarterback Akili Smith, perhaps finding his true calling, hustling downfield and toying with Denver cornerback Terrell Buckley, pounding him once, twice, backing Buckley all the way into the end zone.

Most impressive of all, the Bengals defeated the Broncos, 31-21, for their first victory of the season. Funny what 400-plus yards rushing can do for a team, as the 1950 New York Giants can tell you. A week ago, the Bengals were 0-6 and reading about mathematics professors calculating their odds for a potential 0-16 season. Now they are 1-6 and half a game behind the Jacksonville Jaguars, Super Bowl XXXV favorites, in the AFC Central standings, Jacksonville at 2-6 after a 35-16 loss to the Washington Redskins.

Jaguar Coach Tom Coughlin, no walk through the tulips in the best of times, dropped back into shotgun formation during his post-mortem with the media, spraying birdshot in all directions.

The Jaguars’ offense, which had four turnovers, showed “callous disregard for the ball,” Coughlin fumed. Defensive lineman Tony Brackens, ejected for kicking Redskin guard Jay Leeuwenburg on the ground, was “an embarrassment to the franchise.” And Coughlin reserved a special fury for wide receiver R. Jay Soward, a rookie from USC who bobbled a pass into the arms of Redskin cornerback Deion Sanders, muffed a punt and dropped a sure touchdown pass in the back of the end zone.

“I tried to get him off the field, but we get people nicked up and he’s got to play,” Coughlin railed. “The guy is undisciplined. He had his hand involved in 21 points today.”

Undisciplined? Old R. Jay Solate for Practice? USC fans know the act. And they won’t be surprised by Soward’s reaction to his rough day against the Redskins: “If you make mistakes, you can’t go and mope about it, because that just causes you to make more mistakes. You can’t beat yourself up. You’ve got to stay confident within yourself. When I grasp and conquer that, I’m going to be a great player in this league.”

When Soward grasps and conquers that, Coughlin could be rubbing elbows with Vince Tobin, who is now rubbing elbows with Bruce Coslet as the second NFL coach to be replaced this season. Tobin was fired Monday, a day after his Arizona Cardinals lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 48-7--the club’s most lopsided defeat since it moved to Arizona. Tobin’s Cardinals, a playoff team in 1998, started 2000 at 2-5, had not scored a first-quarter touchdown in 23 games--and in two weeks, Arizona voters say yea or nay to a new football stadium that could determine whether the Cardinals remain in Arizona.

So Tobin became the odd man out in a cut-throat game of political football. Which is a shame.

Tobin would have liked Los Angeles.