Quarterbacks Finally Get Some Protection

For the most part this season, the NFL has managed to eliminate the late hits and the other cheap shots that in recent years have knocked out so many pro football quarterbacks.

Thus, Kurt Warner of the Rams and Aaron Brooks of the Saints, among others, are alive and well going into Monday night’s critical St. Louis-New Orleans game in St. Louis.

This reflects the kind of Hall of Fame direction the NFL gets from the boss, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who stepped in between seasons with a reminder to his referees that they “should always call roughing the passer” when “in doubt about a roughing call.”

League rules state exactly that.

And since opening day, Tagliabue’s enforcers have been fining cheap-shot specialists the better part of a game’s salary for every transgression.

Too often, Monday’s headlines used to read “Four More QBs Go Down” or “New Quarterback Carnage.” No more.

Changing History

The NFL watcher is hard put to remember the last time a season advanced into December with so many starting quarterbacks still in place, still firing away. And only one of them, Peyton Manning, is playing with a broken jaw.

True, as the leaders of every team, quarterbacks remain vulnerable. There are some defensive players out there capable of reasoning that a heavy fine for a cheap shot is a cheap trade for a Super Bowl shot--particularly if the odds are that you’ll get away with it. But that’s what’s changed. This year the odds are that you won’t. The members of the NFL’s Competition Committee and the commissioner have changed history.

Instructively, the more intense defensive players of college ball are still battering quarterbacks long after they throw their passes. And college referees still don’t seem to mind--setting up another problem for the pros, who, before promoting an amateur referee, must retrain him.

Yet, surely, to keep NFL games competitive and interesting and important, the league’s priority should be--as it is--calling gratuitous roughness every time it’s there and then following through with a meaningful fine. That, pretty much, is the 2001 norm, suggesting that Tagliabue, who has been nominated for Canton this year, continues to give his league Hall of Fame leadership.

Wait for Vermeil

The Kansas City Chiefs are in danger of losing for the 10th time in 13 weeks when favored Denver reports to Arrowhead Stadium today. But does their 3-9 won-lost record after last week’s Oakland trip mean the Chiefs guessed wrong on their new coach, Dick Vermeil? To examine Vermeil’s pre-Kansas City performance chart as a head coach is to conclude that, for him, a first-year 3-9 doesn’t mean a thing. He’s a sound football man who always starts slowly, builds solidly, and wins big within three years--having done just that in three places.

In such a time frame, Vermeil won a Rose Bowl game for UCLA and a Super Bowl game for the St. Louis Rams, and, in his only other billet as a head coach, got the Philadelphia Eagles into the Super Bowl.

Although football fans everywhere are impatient, the reality is that with rare exceptions, no new head coach would be a new head coach unless something needed fixing. For one thing in Vermeil’s case, though his top priority has always been team speed, he’s trapped this year on the NFL’s slowest team.

He’ll fix that. He’ll win in Kansas City--within three years.

Shootout Possible

For the Rams, the New Orleans game Monday represents the season’s major roadblock to their home-field playoff status and, hence, membership in the two-team Super Bowl Club at the Superdome Feb. 3

If the Rams have to play a postseason game at Green Bay in January, their Super Bowl shot will be gone with the freezing win

And though their 10-2 start this year seems more impressive than the Saints’ 7-5, the fact is that the Saints have the resources to win a spectacular shootout if only they choose to play Ram football. Under Coach Jim Haslett, the Saints are one of many NFL clubs with that capability.

Haslett just hasn’t wanted to.

Against St. Louis this year, most of the Rams’ conservative opponents have junked their usual game plans at least part-time and tried to keep up with Warner and Ram Coach Mike Martz. That indeed has often been Haslett’s strategy, and it’s worked

And if he opts to throw from the outset this time, the Saints will be a handful because they’re one of the few NFL teams with two starting quarterbacks, two starting running backs, and such Ram-type receivers as Joe Horn.

To the dismay of most football fans--not those, of course, in St. Louis--Haslett would as a rule much rather run than throw. What he decides to do this week could decide the Ram season.

Rams Unprecedented

Speaking of strategy, Martz shifted gears last Sunday when, as the Rams took the offense against San Francisco, they came out using the whole field to win, 27-14

Some of quarterback Warner’s early throws were directed at tight ends or wide receivers running deep-out patterns. And there were other early sideline passes, near and far, mixed with slant-ins and other inside patterns as Warner struck for a first-quarter lead of 14-0.

This marked a salutary change for the Rams from some recent games in which their opponents, notably Tampa Bay, had successfully defensed Warner to somewhat predictably throw inside more often than outside, leading to some of his interceptions.

Martz has a team that perhaps has had no precedent anywhere as a whole-field offensive team. With Warner, runner-receiver Marshall Faulk, and four unusual wide receivers--Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Az-Zahir Hakim and Ricky Proehl--the Rams have the speed and talent to invade more areas of the field than any defensive team can continually patrol effectively.

Thus, their 14-0 touchdown pass, Warner to Proehl, developed solely because Martz’s outside-inside strategy had been so effective. Coming off the scrimmage line on that play, Proehl ran about 12 yards directly at the covering defensive back, who couldn’t decide whether to cut in or out as Proehl broke to the middle for the touchdown.

Playing on the Edge

Martz remains the most unusual coach of my time as a football student--which is a long time. The difference between the 21st-century Rams and every other team of this and the last century is that Martz has them playing everlastingly on the edge

They’re always throwing the ball, or looking to throw it, never as wildly as it often seems, always on well-conceived plays.

Whereas every other passer in the history of passing has been cautioned against throwing into a crowd, Warner always seems to be throwing into a crowd.

Whereas other teams make it a point to trade away or otherwise discard talented fumblers, Martz continues to use one of them, Hakim, as a punt runner and also on pass patterns.

Whereas other coaches love power plays, nearly every Faulk run is a draw play--that is, a fake pass.

For other offensive teams, fourth-and-inches is a power down, but the Rams don’t have power plays. So in the first quarter of the 49er game, when they twice came up to fourth-and-inches, they easily converted, both times, in other ways, once slipping Faulk outside.

The next time, Martz borrowed a Pittsburgh play used only the week before--a direct snap to a running back as the quarterback walks away.

Martz will borrow anything from anyone.

But so far, nobody has borrowed much from him.

Aeneas Wins It

Ram defensive back Aeneas Williams was the proud, no-nonsense professional who last week made the 49ers seem confused and often even inept after a big season that had brought them to St. Louis 9-2 and tied for first in the NFC West.

In a unique performance, Williams covered 49er receiver Terrell Owens man-to-man on most plays, taking him away from quarterback Jeff Garcia all afternoon.

Against every other defense this season, Owens has been regularly open and, on the big plays of most games, Garcia has hit him as he moved gracefully along.

But in the Ram game, after looking first for Owens and seeing Williams there too, Garcia typically found himself in trouble.

By the time he turned to find another receiver, the Ram defense had rushed him out of the pocket, often forcing him into bad throws.

Except for Williams--and the job Williams did on Owens--the 49ers seemed sound enough.

They’re as sound as any of the league’s other good teams this season, aside from the Rams, and they’re unquestionably better than they seemed in the first quarter.

With a limping quarterback, Jeff Garcia, they actually outscored the Rams in the last three quarters.

The difference in the end was made, first, by Ram defensive coach Lovie Smith--the man who assigned Williams to the most dangerous 49er and who had the rest of the defense madly ganging up on every 49er runner or passer--and, second, by the home team’s explosive start with Warner.

Warner is a one-of-a-kind quarterback. His first quarter last Sunday should be packaged somehow and sold to any aspiring young quarterback looking ahead to a formidable defensive team, one like the 49ers, one that doesn’t quit and is never overwhelmed.

A number of enthusiasts have made much this year of what they describe as Warner’s ability to hit a receiver in stride, and that, of course, is part of his game.

But only part.

Equally inspiring is what seems to be Warner’s inborn gift for swiftly unloading at the precise instant a receiver comes open in a small opening in a defensive zone.

Other Warner assets are his sense of timing, which on Ram pass plays is extraordinary, and the way he usually throws an easy-to-catch football chest-high.

He is lucky, to be sure, to have Martz nearby.

As lucky as Martz is to have Warner.