Denver Is Clearly the Team to Beat

The St. Louis Rams, America’s best football team, may no longer have the nerve to play the fast-break game that sets them above the crowd in the NFL.

Their hallmark under Coach Mike Martz has been furious first-down passing, a strategy they revived only sparingly this summer after abandoning it in the playoffs last winter.

Accordingly, as the league’s 82nd season begins with 14 games next Sunday, look for the Denver Broncos to emerge as a champion again--in Super Bowl VI Jan. 27 at New Orleans--for the third time in five winters.

Denver has the leaders and resources, defensive as well as offensive, to beat anyone--except the Rams when they’re playing their game.

The Bronco leadership is all-encompassing from Coach Mike Shanahan and quarterback Brian Griese to new defensive coach Ray Rhodes, among others.

But the Rams have shown that as a team, they’re basically unstoppable--by all opponents including Denver--when their play-caller, Martz, is parlaying first-down passes by quarterback Kurt Warner, their fast-thinking fast thrower.

Martz, in his first two St. Louis seasons, has begun more than one game with a dozen or more consecutive pass-play calls to send the Rams swooping swiftly, almost magically, down the field on Warner’s big plays.

As one consequence, this is the first football team ever to exceed 500 points in successive regular seasons--with 526 points in 1999 and then an astounding 540 in 2000, when every defense in the league was predictably shooting at a defending Super Bowl champion.

The cumulative pressures on a passing coach, however, seem to be unnerving--as even two-time Super Bowl champion Shanahan has learned in Denver, where he’s built a running team that seems safer.

In any case, in the playoffs last winter, Martz unilaterally disarmed, calling for runner Marshall Faulk instead of passer Warner on the lengthy sequence of first-down Ram plays that New Orleans stuffed to achieve an upset, ending the Ram season.

The NFL question of the new year is, therefore, will Martz stop Martz again?

Nobody else can.

Five Rivals

The great strength of the AFC is still a fact of life in the 21st century in a league once dominated by the NFC.

This year, Denver’s conference competition will come from as many as five talented, determined Super Bowl contenders, namely:

* The Baltimore Ravens, last year’s winner.

* The Tennessee Titans, who, with the NFL’s most gifted personnel, could have won last year if they hadn’t lost their quarterback to a deliberate late hit by a Baltimore player.

* The Oakland Raiders, who could outlast the Broncos this year in the competitive AFC West, whose other members will also trouble Denver.

* And perhaps the Indianapolis Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars, who both, along with their numerous Super Bowl-caliber players, may have some leadership problems.

The league-wide combination of salary-cap turmoil, free-agent availability, injury insecurity, and scarcity of old-time roster depth is such that few football fans will be stunned if any member of the AFC’s top five or six makes it to New Orleans and wins there.

The injury possibilities alone--in both conferences, of course--suggest that those gambling on a dark horse’s year in the NFL may hit it.

NFC Weaker

The NFC’s contention is, by contrast, only three teams deep at most and possibly but two deep--with only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a sure bet to press the Rams in that conference.

Tampa Bay has the very thing the Rams lack: the NFL’s model defense as constructed and directed by widely admired and imitated defensive philosopher Tony Dungy, the team’s head coach.

The Rams, hoping to match him, have brought in a Dungy-trained assistant as defensive coordinator this year, Lovie Smith, although it isn’t clear that anyone but Dungy can get Dungy’s results.

The difference between the NFC’s two top teams is that on offense, the Rams like to pass and Dungy wants to run, even though he is two-deep in good quarterbacks with veteran Shaun King and newcomer Brad Johnson.

For two reasons, the Buccaneers’ low-scoring, take-no-chances offense can be costly in the final minutes of close games this season:

* When overmatched opponents are allowed to hang close to the better team in the fourth quarter, the game can be lost on a lucky late-afternoon play by inferior players.

* When the Buccaneers fall behind a good team, they can’t rely on intensively rehearsed pass offense to bring them back because they don’t practice passing that much and because their quarterback won’t have thrown often enough to acquire a full measure of self-confidence--a Dungy-induced problem that afflicted Shaun King last year and brought in Brad Johnson, perhaps unnecessarily.

The third NFC contender--if there is one--could be the New Orleans Saints, who are my pick as the Super Bowl longshot winner of the year.

In a sport usually dominated by coaching, the second-year New Orleans leader, Jim Haslett, has surprisingly proved to be one of the NFL’s few coaches with a deep understanding of offense and defense.

Even more significantly, and more surprisingly, a Green Bay castoff, Aaron Brooks--who could have been the Packers’ quarterback of the future--looks like the Saints’ future in New Orleans, or maybe some day in Los Angeles, maybe in the NFL.

Some of us already think of Brooks as the best young quarterback to come into the league since Brett Favre.

In football, with a coach and a quarterback, you’re always already halfway to the top.

NFC West

The Rams and Saints can expect to be bothered at times this year by the San Francisco 49ers, whose quarterback, Jeff Garcia, a third-year pro from San Jose State, has to the surprise of many attained high-echelon NFL recognition with skill and pluck if not quite enough size.

Still, the 21st century 49ers, by comparison with the five-time 20th-century champions produced by Coach Bill Walsh and owner Ed DeBartolo in San Francisco, have a great deal to prove in three areas with their new owners, Denise and John York; their new general manager, Terry Donahue, and a fifth-year coach who in that organization wears all the signs of a scapegoat, Steve Mariucci.

As for the southern pair in this division, the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons--who a year hence will join New Orleans and Tampa Bay in a new NFL division--few expect either to be a factor in their last go-round in the NFC West. Or during their first decade or so in the NFL South.

NFC Central

The Tampa Bay defense is doubtless too much for any division rival, although the Green Bay Packers are fixing to make it a two-team race (ahead of last year’s winner, the Minnesota Vikings), with fourth and fifth reserved for the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears.

Under a new coach last year, Mike Sherman, the Packers won their last four games and nearly made it seven of their last eight--with an injured quarterback, Favre, who seems more powerful than ever this summer.

The Vikings are always a factor under Coach Dennis Green, whose offense, minus running back Robert Smith, might threaten more often than usual this year with quarterback Daunte Culpepper throwing more first-down passes to wide receiver Randy Moss.

The Lions will show what they can do with a new CEO, Matt Millen, and the Bears will show what they can do with new quarterbacks.

They’ll all have to contend with the Tampa defense, the NFL’s most revered for a compelling reason: Dungy has figured out a way to simultaneously rush the passer and stop the run dead.

He does this by aggressively slanting his defensive people into all the front-line gaps, leaving opposition ballcarriers no place to run, while, at the same time, the Buccaneers are neatly slanting into position for a robust pass rush.

All this can be done with defensive players who are smaller and less overpowering than the NFL norm, and therefore more agile and maneuverable--more serviceable, that is, for this kind of strategic planning.

Meanwhile, Dungy places his safeties far back in a stifling two-deep zone defense that is often mistakenly called a cover-two, which is another kind of defense, one that implies the use of two cornerbacks and two safeties against two wide receivers.

Actually, their coaches prefer to combine Tampa’s cornerbacks with their linebackers in a five-across short-zone defense.

In any case, with one thing and another, you can’t run on Dungy, and you can’t throw the long pass--and when you set out to attack the middle, there are five Buccaneers there.

NFC East

The defending-champion Philadelphia Eagles seem foremost again in this division despite a strange fact: They can’t beat their great Eastern rival, the New York Giants.

To succeed, the Eagles need injured ballcarrier Duce Staley back; and in all-out tests this summer, Staley seemed to be running as hard as ever in a backfield led by one of the league’s most effective young running quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb, whose passing keeps improving.

Similarly, the Giants need injured running back Tiki Barber back, and they expect to have him in a backfield led by a seven-year veteran quarterback, Kerry Collins, who is no McNabb although he plays on a team with a better defense.

The others in the East, Arizona, Dallas and Washington, are all under new management, but the Cardinals own the most experienced quarterback, Jake Plummer.

The Cowboys, having lost venerable Troy Aikman to retirement, are plugging in a new starter, a rookie, option quarterback Quincy Carter.

In the pros, they’ll find, there’s no future with the option.

AFC West

At Denver, the onetime coach of the Raiders, Shanahan, wins by managing a 21-man coaching staff. He assigns six coaches to offense--one each for backs, line, wide receivers and tight ends, plus coordinator and offensive assistant. In an adjoining wing at Denver, seven coaches are assigned to defense, one each for the line, linebackers, safeties, defensive backs and pass rush, plus coordinator and defensive assistant. There are two special-team coaches and three strength coaches in an organization that not long ago didn’t have one of either. And at the top: a head coach, assistant head coach, and head coach’s assistant.

At Oakland, which will fight back with Al Davis, the Raiders have put together a team that can challenge Denver in a division that is tougher than any NFC division. Though the Broncos and Raiders are ostensibly West Coast Offense teams, both are actually running teams that pass a little. The difference is that Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon, who has two good runners to Denver’s three, can’t threaten with the longball as menacingly as Bronco quarterback Brian Griese does. In the Oakland lineup, as assembled by good young Coach Jon Gruden, a run-oriented, short-pass offense makes wily old-man receiver Jerry Rice a real threat with wily, old-man bookend receiver Tim Brown. The Broncos’ edge over Oakland on pass plays is that they can get deep.

Those who say Denver might not even win its division, let alone the league, point to the competition from Seattle as well as Oakland and note that, up there, another West Coast Offense advocate, Seahawk Coach Mike Holmgren, is still getting important mileage out of that offense with a promising new quarterback, Matt Hasselbeck, who the other night became the only passer this year, college or pro, to throw three first-quarter touchdown passes. On the other hand, Holmgren exudes a personality problem. In a recent ego conflict, he let go of a first-class receiver, Joey Galloway, in a move that would-be champions rarely if ever make.

The others in this division, San Diego and Kansas City, are at the moment more properly classed as comers than contenders.

At quarterback for San Diego now, Doug Flutie is one of football’s genuine winners, defining a quarterback winner as one who doesn’t always throw straight but who, as they say, finds a way to win.

At Kansas City, new Coach Dick Vermeil is extending a career in which, everywhere he goes, he sets the table the first year, sets the stage in his second year, and wins big the third year, providing Kansas City with something to look forward to in 2003. But with only 15 coaches, can Vermeil really ever catch Denver’s 21?

AFC Central

If the NFL’s best race this year isn’t in the AFC West with Denver and Oakland, or in the NFC West with the Rams and New Orleans, it’s in this division with the Baltimore Ravens and Tennessee Titans. At Nashville, the Titans have accumulated the best players in the league, both on offense and defense, but the world champion Ravens have a much more creative offense, which makes them even.

If Raven Coach Brian Billick throws aggressively with his new quarterback, Elvis Grbac, he can win another Super Bowl with that bullying defensive team.

If Titan Coach Jeff Fisher ever escapes his ultra-conservative mind-set and lets quarterback Steve McNair play football, it will be all over in Baltimore and everywhere else in the NFL because McNair combines, in one person, the best in passing and in running that the world has seen since Steve Young was a young man in San Francisco.

The Ravens have lost their runner, Jamal Lewis, whereas the Titans are getting theirs back, Eddie George, but that will only make a difference if the coaches decide to settle their differences on the ground. The coach who goes overhead wins.

All Tennessee opponents again this year will have to handle Fisher’s superbly conditioned team, which is always stronger in the fourth quarter.

At Jacksonville, this will be a crossroads year for Jaguar Coach Tom Coughlin, who has the players to contend with Baltimore and Tennessee but hasn’t mastered the art of getting them to play for him. His long-range challenge, in other words, is similar to Holmgren’s in Seattle.

Pittsburgh under Bill Cowher will be Pittsburgh--his Steelers never fall all the way down and he can never get them all the way up--while the Ohio gangs, Cleveland and Cincinnati, win a few and lose a few more.

AFC East

In the least important AFC division, quarterback Peyton Manning gives the edge to the Indianapolis Colts, who will get along better if they import a more creative coach than Jim Mora.

The Buffalo Bills have a new coach, Gregg Williams--and new offensive coordinator, Mike Sheppard, who learned the West Coast offense last year in Seattle--but it’s hard to play the West Coast with a quarterback who moves around as haltingly as Rob Johnson.

You never know whether any new guy is the next Vince Lombardi, and that mystery cloaks all of the new head coaches this year, including defensive expert Herman Edwards of the New York Jets, who has recently been contributing as Dungy’s right-hand man in Tampa and who has brought in an offensive coordinator with something to prove, Paul Hackett. If Hackett can make Vinny Testaverde into a West Coast Offense quarterback, the Jets will have that something.

At Miami last year, new Coach Dave Wannstedt won the division with former coach Jimmy Johnson’s players, but it will be uphill doing that again.

At New England, Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Drew Bledsoe are still trying.