NFL Parity: No Bad Teams

The quote that will outlast the season came this week from a young man who plays defensive back for the surprising 9-2 Chicago Bears. He is Mike Brown, 23, of Scottsdale, Ariz., a second-year starter from Nebraska who said perceptively and validly:

“There are no bad teams in the NFL. The games go down to the last four minutes and whoever makes the plays wins.”

That precisely describes pro football 2001--except when, occasionally, the St. Louis Rams or other passing teams go on a touchdown rampage. Here are some truths:

* If you’re a starter on an NFL club, you’re one of the best football players in the world.

* But every Sunday, you’re playing other athletes that good.

* Thus, every Sunday during the NFL season, the world’s best are fighting one another at the absolute limit of their ability.

And as San Jose psychologist Bruce Ogilvie said: “You tend to make more errors when the threat is overwhelming and you’re fully extended over a period of time--great as you are.”

Confusing the NFL’s critics, that explains the parity, the fumbles, the big plays, the interceptions, the long kicks, the missed kicks, the miracles in the last four minutes, the game.

Rams’ Need

Of the many teams playing American football, the two best this season, I’d say, are the Rams and San Francisco 49ers, who will meet in St. Louis today in a game that the Rams can probably win only if their coach and quarterback, Mike Martz and Kurt Warner, start using the entire width of the field.

Except for one long touchdown strike, they avoided the sideline area again last Sunday. But that was in Atlanta, where they won easily, 35-6, while largely confining their passing game to the central areas of the field--as they’ve done everywhere else lately.

With the NFL’s most brilliant leaders, Martz and Warner, the Rams were even more effective in the days when, in addition to slant-ins and various kinds of post patterns and the like, they were also running square-outs and, for example, deep-sideline routes.

If the Rams seemed open to interceptions on those plays--provoking a change of strategy--they’re even more vulnerable in the middle, where in recent weeks they’ve been exploited by Tampa Bay interceptors among others.

Throughout the Martz-Warner era, the Rams, when using the whole field, have looked all but invincible.

Best Rounded

The 49ers are a different kind of passing team, but they’ve matched the 2001 Ram record, 9-2, with some personnel that matches up. The 49ers’ answer to Warner is the NFL’s most improved quarterback, Steve Garcia. They don’t have Marshall Faulk to run the ball, but they have Garrison Hearst. At wide receiver, there is, instead of Isaac Bruce, Terrell Owens.

And although the Rams have more players who can run fast, the 49ers are defensively tougher now that the Ram defense has lost safety Adam Archuleta and three or four others. Indeed, defensive injuries have become the most ominous thing about the Ram club.

As for top-two NFL membership at this stage of the long season, there are many 49er doubters, and they may be right. The two AFC Central powers, Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, are both, along with the 49ers, early-December Super Bowl contenders, as are the Green Bay Packers. But of them all except the Rams--when the Rams are at full strength--the 49ers are best rounded in the three critical respects, passing, running and playing defense.

Like Magic

Ram leader Warner remains the season’s most likely candidate for all-time all-pro at any position. His edge over Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre is that under pressure in big games, he makes fewer unforgivable mistakes, takes fewer foolish chances. His edge over Oakland’s Rich Gannon is the way he zips the longball. His edge over Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning--the greatest young quarterback in many years though his coaches are doing what they can to hold him back--is the ability to throw properly when off-balance, when the pass rush keeps him from setting up. The quick, accurate, backing-up or off-balance pass is the hardest of all for most quarterbacks and also the most valuable. The frequent blitzing and the speed with which the NFL’s big defensive linemen charge these days make it a necessity, really, and it’s Warner’s specialty. Under a blitz, Warner can still fake short and then hit long because he doesn’t have to set his feet ideally before unloading.

Although it won’t be a major upset if the steadily improving 49ers win today, Warner is football’s finest off-balance thrower since Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh, and, what’s more, he has the quickest release since Hall of Famer Joe Namath. A Warner play is like magic.

Stumble Play

The series that defined Warner and Martz and the Rams as the magical passing team of this era was the one with which they opened the second half in Atlanta. In an instant that time, or less, they went 82 yards in three plays, all passes, to change the score from a tight 14-6 to 21-6 and a sure victory over a team that had just lost its underrated quarterback, Chris Chandler, to injury.

Before that quick drive, there had been a lot of talk around the country, some of it from Martz himself, that the Rams “should be running the ball more often with Marshall Faulk.” And in the first half, when nothing but their crippled defense kept them in the game, they tried to.

But as the second half opened, Martz suddenly gave up on all the running-play nonsense with Faulk and called three consecutive passes:

* On first and 15, Warner hit wide receiver Torry Holt for 18 yards. o On first and 10 he hit Bruce for 19.

* On first and 10 he hit Holt for 45 and the touchdown.

That’s Ram football. There’s nothing like it in the world. For the touchdown, for example, Holt executed a so-called slant-and-go pattern. Everybody including the Rams runs slants this year; but this time, Holt faked the slant and took off as the nearest Falcon defensive back stumbled in confusion.

The stumble wasn’t in the Rams’ game plan, but it didn’t surprise them.

Five Receivers

There are times when Faulk belongs in the backfield as a ballcarrier for the Rams; but throughout the Martz era, they’ve been more successful in the opening quarters of most games when Faulk is catching passes out of the backfield--or at least tying up a defensive back or two--in a four-receiver lineup with Bruce, Holt, Az-Zahir Hakim and Ricky Proehl.

Because the defense has to reckon with the swiftness of Faulk, that’s a five-receiver lineup--the first in the history of the planet. No defense has five cornerbacks who can run with Faulk, Holt, Hakim, Bruce and Proehl.

In such a lineup, there’s no room for a fullback, as the Rams have shown. But their fullbacks are primarily on the field to block a linebacker for Faulk--and when the Rams replace the fullback with a receiver, their opponents take out the linebacker, anyway, and replace him with a smaller defensive back.

The net gain is the Rams’.

As Faulk demonstrated again in Atlanta, he can outrun , linebackers, safeties, corners, whatever.

Although the Rams’ top priority is protecting Warner, their magician is more help to his own cause than most quarterbacks. Against a blitz, no other passer is as quick and accurate as Warner with a no-step drop--or even a one-step drop.

He’s shown that all year.

But here come the 49ers.

Bad Attitude

There is one other way to play pro football in this era, and if you saw the Miami Dolphins last Sunday, you saw how most pro clubs do it. The Dolphins this year have been as successful in the won-lost columns as the Rams, but their attitude toward football couldn’t be more different

On a nice fall day in Miami, with the Denver Broncos ahead at halftime, 3-0, Dolphin Coach Dave Wannstedt beamed and told an interviewer: “We play these type of games all the time.”

A question for the league’s 31 owners might be this: Will NFL football continue as the top-rated sport in America if their coaches continue to be proud of 3-0 games?

Wannstedt is among the league’s overwhelming majority of coaches, at least 25 of the 31, who play not to lose. They play to just hold on by “running the ball tough and playing the run tough”--as they all say--and then win in the fourth quarter somehow, one way or another, any old way

And this season, the Dolphins have done exactly that. They did it again against Denver, coming from behind--on three big breaks, of course--to win in the last 13 of the 60 minutes, 21-10.

In the first three quarters, the Dolphins had scored not so much as a point. They went nowhere running the ball, totaling 42 ground yards for the day.

Let me ask again: Will this remain the top-rated sport among American viewers if Wannstedt and 24 other coaches continue to prefer three quarters of actionless football if they can only pull it out somehow in the fourth quarter?

In a sport that consumes all afternoon for 60 minutes of football, what is there for a spectator to enjoy about a game that matches running backs heading headfirst repeatedly into walls of 300-pound bodies that hardly budge for 45 minutes?

Because of the league’s many parity-inducing rules, America’s most talented players are pretty well distributed among the NFL’s 31 teams. Accordingly, most coaches have the talent to play Ram football. What’s different is the attitude in places like Miami.

Most NFL coaches would rather play safe despite the plain fact that, as Martz has shown in St. Louis, it’s as easy to win football games with passes as with runs--easier, in fact.

And it’s a lot easier on football crowds.

Hometown fans are of course happy with any way the home team wins. Dolphin fans were ecstatic last week--not during but after. As it happens, though, the NFL game has been constructed and financed--with huge salaries for the coaches and players--to appeal to the football fans of all 50 states.

And that appeal is what people like Wannstedt endanger.

As Chicago player Mike Brown noted, there are in the NFL no bad teams.

But there are clearly some bad attitudes.