Tipping the Balance for Rams

The only certain way to win NFL games in this century is to blend a talented passer with a talented running back and a strong defense. At San Francisco today in a Week 9 revival of a rivalry, the Rams plan to hold first place in the NFC West with such a combination.

A week ago, the Rams ran 37 times, passed 37 times and won with clutch defense as rookie running back Arlen Harris scored three touchdowns and quarterback Marc Bulger added one by air.

Previously a wondrous passing team, the Rams won their fourth in a row the balanced way.

The 49ers, true, can play the same kind of football.

But the 49ers have lately been erratic, losing at Arizona last week, 16-13, in overtime (when the Rams won at Pittsburgh, 33-21). With Seattle losing the same week at Cincinnati, a Ram team that has been reborn this month as a leader in conventional football has moved into a first-place tie.

The emergence of Harris, a swift, 5-foot-10, 212-pound free agent from Hofstra, with the injuries to Marshall Faulk and Lamar Gordon has given Coach Mike Martz that opportunity.

Few pro clubs rise to the top now without a productive running back such as Harris complementing a superb passer such as Bulger. The idea on every snap is to give the defense two contradictory things to consider.

A Passer in Miami

On balance, the Miami Dolphins have been featuring a satisfactory defense this year and a satisfactory running back, Ricky Williams, but an unsatisfactory passer, Jay Fiedler. Unhappily for the San Diego Chargers, that situation changed Monday night when Fiedler, injured, was replaced by Brian Griese, formerly of the Denver Broncos.

For the first time in his tour as Miami’s offensive coordinator, Norval Turner, one of football’s finest play-callers, could get a quarterback to execute his offense.

Thus in the first 29 minutes, Griese threw three times for touchdowns. Eventually, in a Monday night game shifted from San Diego to Tempe, Ariz., because of the California wildfires, Griese completed 20 of 29 to pummel the Chargers, 26-10, and to serve notice that Miami will have a quarterback for as long as Griese can keep his game together.

The difference between Griese and Charger quarterback Drew Brees Monday night reflected a difference in coaching strategy:

* When the game was on the line, Turner had Griese throwing on running downs -- frequently first down.

* Brees, executing a characteristically conservative game plan by San Diego Coach Marty Schottenheimer, had to pass on passing downs -- frequently third and long -- against the strongest pass-defense alignments a good defense in the NFL can make.

Not surprisingly, Brees answered Griese’s three touchdowns with three interceptions, one on the third play of the game after Schottenheimer had tried to run LaDainian Tomlinson against an eight-man line on first down, (with Tomlinson gaining four or five yards) and again on second down (with Tomlinson getting one or two yards).

So that was one thing. The other was that the Chargers lost their home-field advantage. That factor was accentuated by putting the game in Arizona, where the fans, apparently turned off by the team from San Diego, let everyone know it. Loudly. All in all, just bad luck for a home team that wasn’t at home.

6 Defensive Coaches

NFL defensive improvement, which in recent years has been marked, has been fueled in large part by the dramatic increase in the size of the coaching staffs. Not so long ago, three defensive staffers were enough for any team -- line coach, linebacker coach and defensive-back coach.

In contrast, NFL defenses are directed today by six coaches, on average, with some teams at seven.

What’s more, there are all kinds of defensive designations that were once unheard of: defensive-end coach, defensive-tackle coach, defensive analyst, quality control, pass-rush coach, assistant defensive backs and the like. What this means, among other things, is more individual teaching along with six or seven heads on defensive game planning, instead of three, plus six or seven to consider game-time adjustments.

The most obvious result is that the good NFL defensive teams this season can be taken apart only by first-rate quarterbacks -- of whom, we calculated the other day, there are 24 or so at present in this 32-team league.

Journeyman quarterbacks don’t luck out anymore. Most pro games are battles between superior passers and superior defenses.

In such a world, competent quarterbacks can have their troubles, as Tampa Bay and Dallas proved in Week 8 when the Buccaneers scored the only touchdown in a 16-0 game.

Dallas Coach Bill Parcells, whose five-game winning streak crashed to a halt that day, probably has the quarterback to win such a game, Quincy Carter -- when Carter has had more experience -- but Parcells must see that he needs a more helpful running back than Troy Hambrick, who hit Tampa for 25 yards net on 11 carries.

If there are three legs in a winning troika (passer, runner, defense), Parcells seems to have two of the three but isn’t likely to do it with just the two.

Vikings Can’t Run

The New York Giants, who will take on the Jets for the unofficial Big Apple championship today, aren’t due as much credit as they’re getting this week for ending the Minnesota Vikings’ winning streak last Sunday, 29-17.

Although the Vikings went into the New York game 6-0, they don’t have the running power to complement the air power they can generate with quarterback Daunte Culpepper and wide receiver Randy Moss.

It is therefore relatively easy for an above-average team, or even an average team, to stop the Vikings, who in their first five victories caught Green Bay and San Francisco on off days and walloped Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta.

The Viking winning streak reached six when they caught Denver four days after quarterback Jake Plummer had broken his foot. Minnesota is fortunate to be leading the NFC North into November.

Now 6-1 and three games up on Green Bay going into the late-afternoon Packer-Viking headliner at Minneapolis today, the Vikings have only Green Bay to beat in their division. They may be a playoff team this season, but they don’t have the look of a conference power.

Broncos Can’t Pass

The Denver Broncos are also making this season’s case for the necessity of strength in three places -- at quarterback, at running back and on defense -- for any team wanting to become an NFL power.

The Broncos have the defense to get there and, with Clinton Portis, the running back. But they’ve lost their quarterback, Jake Plummer, whose broken foot may be more serious than they have acknowledged.

Foot problems have long hindered NFL passers. The career of one of the great ones, Phil Simms, who won a Super Bowl for Parcells, ended prematurely with a foot injury that kept him from regaining 100% condition.

In a 26-6 loss, the Broncos, minus a satisfactory quarterback, couldn’t even win at Baltimore last week against a team with a rookie quarterback, Kyle Boller. Then again, Boller has had seven weeks more experience as an NFL starter this fall than new Denver starter Danny Kanell.

It was a game in which the performance of both teams pressed home the point that in pro ball, quarterbacks have a lot to do with the success of their ballcarriers and vice versa. When the Ravens were on offense, Boller did just enough to keep the Denver defense from concentrating wholly on Raven running back, Jamal Lewis, who slipped away for 134 yards in 32 carries.

For Denver, Portis, in 22 carries, was limited to 86 yards because the Baltimore defense, focusing on that one Bronco, expended so little time and energy worrying about Kanell.

Extending a long career, Kanell has finally advanced from Arena League football to Denver’s third team. Earlier this fall, when Plummer was luring the attention of opposing defenses, Portis was the best running back in the league.

Portis can’t do that by himself. Against a strong defense, no running back can, not Lewis and, as he has shown, not Carolina’s Stephen Davis.

Gimmicks Help

Surprise plays have a place in pro football that’s more prominent than some conservative observers acknowledge. With the larger coaching staffs these days (offensive as well as defensive staffs have doubled in size) there are more heads to ponder surprise plays.

And there are more heads to calculate how long it has been since any pro club dusted off, say, the flea-flicker play -- on which a running back fakes a run before lateraling back to his passer. Two teams brought that play back last week

Most tellingly, Tampa Bay needed a flea-flicker pass by quarterback Brad Johnson to get rid of the pesky Cowboys.

The score was 3-0 when Tampa Coach Jon Gruden, surprising Dallas Coach Parcells with the game-changing decision, called for one of football’s great gimmick plays to set up the only touchdown of a game the Cowboys might have won if they had scored the game’s allotted one touchdown or if Parcells had been ready for such a gimmick.

To beat Philadelphia on Oct. 12, Parcells was ready for the Eagles’ gimmick play that opened the game -- a surprise onside kickoff the Cowboys returned for a 7-0 lead in the first three seconds, after which they held on to win by two points, 23-21. But the real beauty of gimmick plays is that it’s difficult to be ready all the time.

Years ago I asked Vince Lombardi, the Green Bay coach who won the first two Super Bowls, why he avoided the use of all surprise plays except an occasional third-and-one pass. Replying correctly, perhaps, for his era -- the run-oriented, low-scoring 1960s -- Lombardi, a perfectionist who at coaching clinics could lecture for eight hours on one offensive play, said: “We believe in keeping the offense simple. We know that souped-up offenses may beat us once in a while, but mistakes decide most football games, and the team with the simplest offense and defense makes the fewest mistakes.”

In the more wide-open 21st century, many of the NFL’s most conservative coaches are still trying to win with the simplest-possible game plans executed by players who make the fewest-possible mistakes. But what Lombardi called souped-up offenses -- by which he mainly meant pass offenses as well as occasional gimmick plays -- are more necessary in a free-scoring era. If he were in action today, Lombardi would doubtless be playing West Coast football or some sort of pass-oriented football.

The year before the Ice Bowl, as the 1967 NFL championship game was called because of temperatures below zero, Lombardi converted the Packers into a passing team to outscore Coach Tom Landry’s pass-happy Dallas Cowboys, 34-27, in the 1996 NFL title match. It was one of the biggest football games ever played. Certainly it was bigger and better than the Ice Bowl, which, in 1967, Lombardi won on sort of a fluke, a quarterback sneak on an icy Wisconsin field by Bart Starr.

In 1966, Starr had beaten Dallas with four touchdown passes on a warm New Year’s Day in Texas. In this century, most of the NFL’s winning teams are going to be those that can launch scoring passes and make some surprise plays.

Jauron’s Discovery

The Chicago Bears bested the Detroit Lions last week -- with a place in the cellar as first (or second) prize -- in a 24-16 game that was more interesting than either team has played this season. The reason is both defenses are a cut below the NFL average.

That state of affairs gave Detroit quarterback Joey Harrington two chances at eight-point touchdowns with a pair of two-point conversion passes. He connected on each and could have sent the game into overtime with another touchdown had the Lions recovered an onside kickoff.

Chicago’s Chris Chandler likewise looked like all the quarterback you need to be a .500 team, or even considerably more. It was Chicago Coach Dick Jauron who personally discovered him -- making the personnel find of the year for the Bears.

Chandler kept Chicago ahead all game with a 20-for-31 passing performance that roughly equaled the output of Harrington and exceeded him in one major respect: fewer interceptions, none to Harrington’s two.

As a 16-year pro, Chandler has wasted most of his NFL life handing off to running backs for two conservative coaches, Dan Reeves and the ultra-conservative Jauron. At the right place, under the right coach, Chandler would have won more than one NFL title. He’s a better quarterback than the one for defending NFL champion Tampa Bay, Brad Johnson.