Vick Is No Match for Outdated Strategy

Dan Reeves and Wade Phillips, who coach Michael Vick’s team, the Atlanta Falcons, have always held that winning football is based on an effective running offense and an efficient running defense.

Thus Reeves, the Atlanta leader, and Phillips, his defensive coordinator, are stubbornly playing runball in a passball era.

Because Vick is their quarterback, though, the Falcons are 8-4-1. What’s more, they’re looking at 11-4-1 going into their last three games against Seattle today, then Detroit, then Cleveland.

But their progress in the playoffs next month will depend on whether the Falcons can modernize their game. They have a way to go. In a 34-10 loss last Sunday, it was Reeves, not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who routed Vick. As for Phillips, his defensive strategy led to Tampa Bay’s three touchdown passes in the second quarter, putting Vick in a hole so deep he couldn’t climb out. Strategically, the Falcons’ game was a disaster.

Wrong Defense

Tampa Bay passer Brad Johnson is the picture-perfect opposite of a mobile quarterback. Nor is Johnson’s offensive line well respected. The Buccaneers’ asset is Johnson’s arm. Near or far, he can throw a football straight. Yet, obviously, there are ways to attack good passers who can’t move and who play behind ordinary offensive linemen.

In Johnson’s case, the way to beat him, his smartest opponents say, is with a two-man blitz up the middle. They say it almost always works. That’s precisely what Atlanta didn’t do.

Phillips, the defensive coach in charge of stopping Johnson, lined up the Falcons in conventional defenses designed, in the NFL idiom, to stop the run and react to the pass. And stop the run they did, for as long as the score was close.

But Tampa’s running game was not the problem. The threat was passer Johnson -- who was left alone. That’s just the way he likes it. It’s the only way he can get off a pass.

Once in a while, Phillips blitzed him from the outside, but it is the multiple inside blitz that a statue masquerading as a passer can’t handle.

Wrong Offense

Good defensive football is an art requiring different approaches to different quarterbacks. Against a slow-footed passer like Johnson, a hard rush up the middle works best, flushing him outside, where he tends to be helpless. But against a running quarterback like Vick, defensive teams want him inside.

And when Vick was on the field, inside he was, but it took two teams to keep him there, the other team and his own. His conventional coach, Reeves, lost by playing conventional football with the most unconventional quarterback of our times.

The front four give the Buccaneers the league’s best defense, but they can be discouraged by quick, rather long passes thrown before they can get to the passer -- just the kind Vick throws so well.

The best formations for that kind of offense are those with four wide receivers -- just the kind that Reeves didn’t use.

He’s a Scrambler

For Reeves, it was orthodox football as usual. His play selection was as conventional as his strategy. And as detrimental to his quarterback’s style. Unlike others in 2002 football, Vick is both an alert passer and an extraordinary runner who scrambles for his big gainers.

But scrambles begin as pass plays -- opening up the field -- and the Falcons called few pass plays against Tampa until the second half, when, far behind, they had to pass, and the Buccaneers knew it. That is a wholly different problem. In terms of Vick’s future, only the first half was relevant. The second half -- in which a 22-year-old neophyte was playing catch-up against the league’s toughest and most mature defense -- doesn’t count.

At times, theoretically, Reeves could have used Vick as a designated runner in planned running plays out of the quarterback position; but fearing an injury, the Falcons frown on such plays, as most football people believe they should.

Anatomy of a Series

A second-quarter sequence was typical of Vick’s day a week ago. After his passes had moved the Falcons to the Tampa 15-yard line, Reeves killed the drive -- and his quarterback -- with two conventional calls. On first down and again on second and long, predictably, Atlanta ran the ball, not with Vick but with two others, totaling two yards.

That made it third and eight, when, again predictably, Reeves put Vick in shotgun formation as Tampa’s fast front four closed in on him while their seven teammates covered Vick’s receivers. Predictably, the pass fell incomplete, for, in that situation, good defensive players can easily handle either option, pass or run. Finally, on fourth down, Atlanta kicked a field goal.

That afternoon, the thing that made Vick’s life unbearable was the Falcons’ running-play mind-set: running to set up passing. To shut him down, the Buccaneers, good as they are defensively, needed precisely what Atlanta gave them.

Best Passing Team

Quarterback Rich Gannon of the Oakland Raiders will lead the world’s greatest passing team into Miami today for the game of the week against the smart, tough Dolphin defense. Just a year ago, as coached by Jon Gruden, the Raiders were only potentially the finest. For Gruden wanted to run the ball -- as he still does in Tampa, where he was persuaded to throw it last week only by the kind of defense Atlanta showed him.

In Oakland, by contrast, the new coach this year, Bill Callahan, 45, prefers passes instead of runs, regardless of down, distance, or field position. And his quarterback, Gannon, 36, has been cooperating magnificently.

In San Diego last week, Gannon threw the ball on nearly every snap to build a 20-7 lead that rose in the end to a surprisingly lopsided 27-7.

So doing, the Raiders succeeded the Rams and New England Patriots -- last winter’s Super Bowl pair -- as the NFL’s great passing machine. The Rams have lost their quarterbacks and most of their offensive line. The Patriots still have the know-how and the required passer, Tom Brady, but not Gannon’s kind of receivers.

Because of Callahan, Gannon and Oakland owner Al Davis -- a longtime proponent of the thrown ball -- the Raiders this year are keeping alive the passball revolution that former San Francisco Coach Bill Walsh started in the 1980s. And not only that. The Raiders’ 9-4 is best in the AFC.

Gannon MVP?

The Chargers were the victim of Gannon’s short-pass, ball-control offense, which resembles the offense that Walsh and his quarterback, Joe Montana, introduced 20 years ago. Since their day, passing teams have won most of the pro championships.

Gannon, a leading MVP candidate, has perfected the quarterback’s role in such an offense, the other indispensable parts being good blockers up front and good runners for change-of-pace draw plays and the like.

Ideally, one of the runners, Walsh always said, must double as super in the passing game. At Oakland, that’s Charlie Garner. Together with wide receivers Jerry Rice, Tim Brown and Jerry Porter and a tight end -- frequently the big new tight end, Doug Jolley -- Garner gives Gannon five first-class short-pass targets. Since one of the five is open on virtually every play, the Raiders keep passing. And driving. And winning.

This year, unlike last year under Gruden, the Raiders don’t bother to set up their pass offense with running plays. They simply come out passing. The Chargers, with one of the NFL’s best defenses, spent last Sunday trying to do something about it, but the truth is that few opponents can.

One Oakland bonus is that it’s easier to protect a small lead in the fourth quarter with small-ball passing than any other way. On a recent Monday night, for example, the New York Jets were only six points behind the Raiders with six minutes remaining but couldn’t regain possession in time to win. Instead, Gannon simply kept passing. And driving. And ... you know.

Deep-Red Zone

As coach of the Raiders, Callahan continues to show off one of the league’s great red-zone offenses -- except, in his case, it’s more of a deep-red-zone offense. The Raiders aren’t automatic touchdown makers from an opponent’s 20-yard line in. Nor is any team. But in the final 10 yards this fall, the Raiders have been devastating.

Down there, they shift to a running offense, abandoning the pass offense that carries them down the field. The Gannon pass threat is always present, to be sure, but the Raiders have learned to run in the deep-red zone. Thus at San Diego, on another 300-yard passing day for Gannon, they scored all three touchdowns with running plays.

Strangest of all, Callahan has been using three running backs. At the 10-yard line, the Raiders rely on Garner. When they get to the five-yard line, they run Tyrone Wheatley. At the one-yard line, they call on Zack Crockett.

Five Guesses

* Oakland to win by one or two points over favored Miami at Pro Player Stadium. This is a must-win for both teams.

* San Francisco by a field goal over Green Bay on Candlestick Point. The Packers have Brett Favre. The 49ers have Jeff Garcia and Terrell Owens.

* Kansas City by one or two points over favored Denver on Invesco Field at Mile High. If the Broncos are going to win every time at home, so be it. But the Chiefs are better now.

* San Diego by one or two over favored Buffalo at Ralph Wilson Stadium. The Chargers don’t figure. What does figure is that their luck will change soon.

* New England by a field goal Monday night over favored Tennessee at Nashville Coliseum. On a neutral field, Patriot quarterback Tom Brady, the Super Bowl MVP, would outplay the Titans’ Steve McNair.