Keep Your Eyes on Colts-Jaguars Winner

Every now and again during the pro football season, one matchup seems to transcend time, causing sports fans to decide that after this, nothing this year will ever be quite the same.

Such an event is coming up Monday night, when the Jacksonville Jaguars will be in Indianapolis for the NFL’s Game of the Month.

More critics have predicted a Super Bowl future for these two teams this year than for any two others.

Primarily, that’s because the Colts attack with a pair of gifted individuals, quarterback Peyton Manning and running back Edgerrin James--who are often jointly identified as No. 1 among young NFL players--and because the Jaguars usually win with Mark Brunell, their more experienced passer-runner.

The winning team this time will in any case emerge as the AFC’s Super Bowl favorite in that intensely competitive conference, which will doubtless lose its only undefeated member tonight when the 3-0 New York Jets play at Tampa Bay.

In the other conference, the Buccaneers are also 3-0.

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SHANAHAN AGAIN: For those who each spring treat the NFL draft seriously as a near-exact science, there are still disconcerting surprises every fall.

A year ago, the surprise was Kurt Warner, the quarterback who came out of nowhere to take the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl championship.

This season, it’s running back Mike Anderson, the Denver Bronco brought up by Coach Mike Shanahan, who has discovered, in all, three All-Pro ballcarrying types in three years.

The first two, Terrell Davis and Orlandis Gary, are both now injured.

At 6-0 and 235 pounds, Anderson, who plowed through Oakland for 187 yards last Sunday, is built like most of the game’s other good runners--among them Jamal Anderson of Atlanta, who is 5-11 and 235.

Against Kansas City today, Denver Mike, a 27-year-old rookie who runs like the Marine tough guy he used to be, can become the first to gain 100 yards in each of his first three NFL games.

It won’t help that quarterback Brian Griese is also now injured.

Griese when well is much like Anderson: a bright but not quite brilliant performer, short-statured, hard-fighting, fiercely resolved.

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MARTZ’S DISCOVERY: Winning coaches have a knack for finding winning players wherever they are--not only in the sixth round, where Shanahan picked up Terrell Davis and then Anderson, but even on neighboring NFL teams.

Marshall Faulk, for instance, was a famously underappreciated running back when Ram Coach Mike Martz “discovered” him in the tapes and films of 1998 Indianapolis games.

Although Faulk had been the Colts’ first draft choice in 1994--actually, he was the second player selected overall in the NFL draft that year--new Colt Coach Jim Mora didn’t think much of him in 1998, when he let him go to the Rams in trade for a second draft choice and a lowly fifth.

Whereas Faulk, who is now only 27, and Warner, 29, have since torn up the league, the Colts were obliged to use another first draft choice last year to get their present running back, James.

Had Mora kept Faulk and worked him into Manning’s fast-break offense, the Colts could have used that top 1999 choice to draft a player they really need, another impact defensive player.

The Faulk trade is one reason some people say that Mora, even with Manning on his side, will never win a Super Bowl.

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RAM WASTRELS: After three difficult games against Denver, Seattle and San Francisco, the 3-0 Rams may well continue to struggle--even in Atlanta today--but two things can truly be said about them now:

o Their penny-pinching front office caused nothing but trouble when it wasted the offseason, failing to improve a defensive team that was a known liability last year and is dangerously faulty this year. The Ram defense may yet keep Warner out of his second Super Bowl unless he keeps playing spectacularly, week in and out.

o The world has never before seen an offense like Warner’s, which, as designed by Martz, is a strictly passing-only offense unless the other team drops so many linebackers into the secondary that Faulk can sail through on a few surprise running plays, as he did again against the 49ers Sunday, gaining 134 yards.

Most good passing teams--the Colts, for example--will run the ball if, as the coaches say, you “give” them the run.

By contrast, Martz’s team, instead of giving in to the defensive coaches, gives them hell.

That is, the Rams keep throwing and completing passes against their opponents’ best pass defenses.

This is the first good NFL coach who in the last 100 years has ever done that, who has ever, with any game on the line, thrown on nearly every play.

Martz’s defensive platoon, however, is so weak that for football fans, a Ram game, regardless of which side has the ball, is the greatest show on earth.

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HOW MARTZ WINS: During a recent interview, the coach of the Rams recalled how they won the Super Bowl game from the Tennessee Titans in the final two minutes last January, 23-16, with a long pass to receiver Isaac Bruce that the defense-oriented Titans didn’t seem to expect.

“We had enough verticals going downfield to pull the safety (away),” he explained, meaning that on that play, Martz used two other fast receivers--the NFL’s fastest--as downfield decoys.

Warner won his third straight last Sunday, 41-24, with a similar bomb to Bruce on a similar first-down Martz play that chilled another opponent after quarterback Jeff Garcia had put winless San Francisco ahead in the second quarter, 17-10, with a well-managed drive.

The Rams were OF COURSE taking an 0-2 opponent lightly that day, trying to win in stride, without much emotional output, against an inexperienced doormat.

It’s a proved fact that no NFL power can get emotionally up for every doormat.

But significantly, after the Warner/Bruce bomb, the 49ers never threatened again.

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MORE ANSWERS: Other Martz comments during that interview:

Person you’d most like to meet: “Abraham Lincoln.”

Most inspirational player you’ve coached: “Isaac Bruce.”

Best athlete: “Marshall Faulk.”

Toughest: “Kurt Warner.”

Toughest coach you’ve faced: “(Tampa’s) Tony Dungy.”

Player who’d make a great head coach: “(Ram backup quarterback) Trent Green.”

One thing that should never be changed about pro football: “The forward pass.”

(That’s a reference to the rules that have made possible great passing.)

Most overrated aspect of football: “The run-pass ratio.”

(That’s a reference to conventional NFL coaching strategy: the attempt to balance numbers of runs or running yards with numbers of passes or passing yards.)

Martz doesn’t much like to run the ball.

And that attitude has, in the view of some of us, made him the game’s great entertainer as well as a champion

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GOOD ENOUGH: Although the winless 49ers are face to face with another disaster in Dallas today, they could win there if they get behind young quarterback Garcia, who is good enough to win much of thetime.

His Bay Area doubters--in the media as well as in the wider football public--are simply like sports fans everywhere.

That is, when a new quarterback takes over a struggling team that can’t seem to win, he is always judged prematurely.

The 49ers are in trouble not on account of Garcia but because their former management, in combination with present ownership, left the ship without enough good hands this year to keep it from sinking.

Garcia is paying the price for that.

His Bay Area critics expect him to win because he’s the best the 49ers have--though the most uniformed of his critics doubt even that--and because Joe Montana and Steve Young won.

What Garcia needs is what he isn’t going to get immediately: more help.

The reality is that he has the talent of a gifted backup.

Above any other NFL backup, I’d take young Jeff Garcia, but only as a backup to keep us winning when our starter goes down--assuming the starter has an exceptional supporting cast, as Montana did, and as Young, for awhile, did.

The 49ers can run with Charlie Garner, and pass with Garcia, but they can’t this year do much of anything else right yet.

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RAIN EQUALIZER: After their defeat last Sunday in a Miami rainstorm, look for the Baltimore Ravens to rebound today and a week later against the two toothless Ohio teams and take a 4-1 record into Jacksonville for their Oct.8 rematch.

A pro club that wins on a rainy field, as the Dolphins did this time, 19-6, is often showing itself to be not the better team but the better team in the rain.

Thus, it’s a little early to give up on Raven quarterback Tony Banks.

At the same time, it is probably true that if Raven Coach Brian Billick has a major weakness, it’s at quarterback.

Everything else in Baltimore seems solid enough.

And Banks could be.

As for the 2-1 Dolphins, they can win at home, demonstrably, but they lack the ammunition to do much of that on the road.

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BUNYAN-TYPE: After today’s schedule, in which the two New York entries, both 3-0 now, will both lose, there will be only three undefeated teams in pro football, the Rams and the co-leaders of the NFC Central, Minnesota and Tampa Bay.

It will be easiest for Minnesota, for which this is a bye week.

Their 3-0 start has seemingly pushed the Vikings into the league’s elite class--partly because their defense hasn’t been seriously tested, but also because they’re led by, apparently, a great new running-passing quarterback, 250-pound Daunte Culpepper, whose talent is unusual.

Also uniquely for a rookie quarterback, Culpepper has been willing not to run but to throw the ball if at all possible.

He has, however, a genuine knack for running plus a physique that brings to mind Paul Bunyan, the legendary American strongman of long ago.

The Viking quarterback shakes off pass rushers the way Bunyan might also have done it had he been asked to throw footballs instead of trees.

The more recent image Culpepper calls up is that of Roman Gabriel, the Ram player who was the largest and strongest quarterback of his day on Coach George Allen’s winning teams in Los Angeles.

Gabriel, like Bunyan, was always as hard to chop down as a Redwood tree.

Or so it seemed.

No other quarterback today is remotely as big and apparently as strong as Culpepper, who, nevertheless, continues to make his finest impression as a passer.

Last Sunday his pass-throwing artistry enabled Minnesota to go into Foxboro and push past the New England Patriots, 21-13.

The Culpepper throw from which the Patriots couldn’t recover was delivered to the far sideline on a line to wide receiver Matthew Hatchette on a 39-yard touchdown play.

Hatchette, who made a difficult professional catch that time and gave the ball a heads-up ride, doesn’t get much attention in Minnesota--the other receivers, Cris Carter and Randy Moss, are far more celebrated--but in talent, Hatchette doesn’t yield much to any teammate.

In fact, if they were all three on the St. Louis team--instead of familiar Rams Bruce, Torry Holt and Az-Zahir Hakim--they would all be in there on most plays and doing as well, no doubt, as the present Ram receivers.

You can look at Minnesota’s statistics each week and learn what makes Minnesota an unnecessarily low-scoring team.

Viking fullbacks and tight ends, for example, caught six of Culpepper’s 19 completed passes in Foxboro.

That’s at least six plays when, evidently, Hatchette wasn’t in there to go for a few more touchdowns.

Moreover, when he’s on the field, Hatchette, just by being in the game, makes Carter and Moss much more valuable.

The Vikings have a foil for Culpepper in the running back they need, Robert Smith, but in throwing so often to fullbacks and tight ends--instead of Moss, Carter, and Hatchette--they significantly cutdown their chances to be the big-play winner they ought to be in this league.

Most strikingly, Culpepper is finding it hard to throw to constantly double-covered receivers Carter and Moss, who, when Hatchette is in there, can’t be double-covered by defensive backs in a standard four-back NFL secondary.