PURPLE PEOPLE-EATERS WITH RED FACES

Hoary football cliche, presumed to have been slain by St. Louis and his Rams last season but resurrected and rearing its ugly head this postseason: Offense wins games, but defense wins championships. If true, where does that leave the Vikings, owners of the top-ranked offense left in the playoffs--No. 5 overall--and the league’s 28th-best defense?

On shaky ground, if last week’s wild-card results are any kind of barometer. Gone are the league’s top three passing offenses--St. Louis, Indianapolis and Denver--having been dispatched by the league’s eighth-, sixth-, and second-rated defensive units, belonging, in order, to New Orleans, Miami and Baltimore.

The Saints clamped down hard on the Ram offense for 3 1/2 quarters--leading, 31-7, before Kurt Warner and the Greater St. Louis Track Club could get out of the blocks. In less than eight minutes, the Rams pulled within 31-28 before losing at the tape. The Vikings are a mirror image of the Rams on both sides of the line of scrimmage but, unlike St. Louis, they open their playoff campaign in the midst of an 0-3 December-ending slump.

“It’s a new season,” Viking Coach Dennis Green said bravely. “We don’t bring our [defensive] ranking with us.” Neither did the three teams with defenses ranked lower than Minnesota’s--because San Francisco, Arizona and Seattle were eliminated from playoff contention in November.

The line: Minnesota by 8.

MANY EAGLE FANS, HOWEVER, DO HAVE PRESS CREDENTIALS

With far too much time on his hands during the bye week, Giant Vice President John Mara watched the Eagles put away Tampa Bay last Sunday and got to thinking: What would be the best way to enhance our second-round home-field advantage while shafting as many Eagle fans as possible at the same time?

Light bulb flickers: Why not ask Ticketmaster if there’s a way to inform football fans phoning from Philadelphia and other hot pockets of Eagle support that no tickets for the game will be made available in those areas? So Mara did, and Ticketmaster said “no problem.” Anyone calling from south of Trenton, N.J., was told “sorry, nothing available in your area,” giving Giant fans enough time to buy the remaining 5,000 tickets in a late-Sunday 20-minute run.

Giant Coach Jim Fassel called the ploy “genius.” Eagle Coach Andy Reid, in a conference call with Giant beat writers, jokingly suggested that the Eagles “could send our ticket guy up there to fight your ticket guy and the winner gets the tickets. Our ticket guy is 6-foot-8.”

Reid, an equal-opportunity needler, then took a jab at the Philadelphia press corps: “I was hoping to see a lot of green at Giants Stadium, but it’s their home and they can do what they want. I’m sure our media will drown out their fans.”

The line: Giants by 4.

AFC GAMES / AND IF THE DOLPHINS ARE THROWING, THEY’RE PROBABLY LOSING

Then there is the Oakland Raider playoff ticket scheme, which is to deprive Raider fans entry to their team’s first postseason game since 1993. In fairness, that wasn’t precisely how the Raiders’ ticket managers mapped it out, but when it comes to the playoffs, everyone in the organization is a little rusty.

According to published reports, nearly 300 Raider ticket holders were mailed duplicate tickets for Saturday’s game against the Dolphins and hundreds more called the team’s offices to complain that their tickets hadn’t arrived as of Wednesday.

Duplicate tickets for a sold-out Raider home game?

Meaning, theoretically, that nearly 300 Raider fans could show up at Network Associates Coliseum, find someone sitting in their seats and vent their frustration in ways previously unexplored? Is the NFL--to say nothing of the Bay Area--ready for that?

As the Raiders’ ticket agency scrambles to clean up the mess, Dolphin players have amused themselves with old war stories of past pleasure trips to Oakland. Sample byplay: What is the worst thing that’s ever been thrown at you by a Raider fan? For wide receiver Leslie Shepherd, it was batteries. For defensive tackle Daryl Gardener, a whiskey bottle.

“I’ll take those batteries,” Shepherd said. “If they’re throwing stuff, that means we’re scoring.”

The line: Oakland by 9.

BRACING FOR THE LONGEST DAY

Baltimore has the best defensive football team in the land, as they are fond of saying in Baltimore, but in Tennessee, a dissenting voice suggests: Don’t believe the hype, read the fine print.

Because in spite of the Ravens’ much-publicized NFL record for fewest points allowed in a 16-game season, 165, their total-defense numbers check in only at No. 2 in the league this season, behind Tennessee, because the Titans held the Dallas Cowboys to 95 yards on the final Monday night game of 2000.

“We wanted to be No. 1 and it [ticks] me off,” says Raven defensive tackle Tony Siragusa. “We put ourselves in the record book but we didn’t get No. 1. The Titans have a good defense, but Dallas went out on Monday night and played scab players and . . . Tennessee got the No. 1 defense.”

The Ravens take this defensive stuff seriously, because, well, we’ve all seen their offense and let’s get serious. After shutting down Denver, 21-3, in last week’s wild-card game, the Ravens immediately began calling out the Titans. “We could play them tomorrow,” safety Rod Woodson said. “We could play them in the parking lot. We know how good we are.”

Finally, Sunday, they will decide who’s No. 1--on the grass field at Adelphia Stadium, not the parking lot.

The line: Tennessee by 6.