Armed Again

With a quarterback named Jake Delhomme, the unbeaten Carolina Panthers (5-0) will play a preseason Super Bowl favorite today, the Tennessee Titans (4-2), whose passer, Steve McNair, proved again last week that he’s an all-pro candidate.

With backup quarterbacks, Gus Frerotte and Steve Beuerlein, the Minnesota Vikings and Denver Broncos have also advanced to 5-0 and 5-1, respectively, to set up the Game of Week 7. The Denver issue at Minnesota today is whether Jake Plummer’s new injury, a broken foot, will prove one too many.

At Kansas City, however, Trent Green, who is one of several St. Louis castoff quarterbacks, continues to make the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs seem best of class. They’re 6-0 going into Monday’s night game at Oakland (2-4), whose quarterback is a Super Bowl veteran, Rich Gannon.

What’s going on in professional football?

The best answer is that there are good quarterbacks all over the league now, although not long ago, their scarcity was the NFL’s most pressing problem. The change is dramatic. Most pro clubs this year -- I’d say 24 of the 32 -- have quarterbacks whose capability ranges from acceptable to excellent.

Good-Teams Parity

Many football fans can remember when the best-informed NFL scouts, discussing good quarterbacks, said there were about six -- and sometimes that was stretching it.

Then suddenly in college football, coaches developed an interest in passing and began polishing their quarterbacks as industriously as they once polished blockers and tacklers.

And the revolution was on. Good passers appeared. And as they matured, the best of them moved into the NFL, where they joined the best of football’s blockers and tacklers to create what the pros have today, an extremely competitive league that is better than ever.

Formerly, it was politically correct to say that NFL parity suggested a balance of mediocrity. Critics used to complain that steady expansion had so diluted the available personnel that the teams were mostly all weak.

To the contrary, it’s clear that they are mostly all strong. When you can see that the NFL is rife with good quarterbacks -- and when you know the quarterbacks are products of a college system in which highly polished players are developed in all other positions -- you realize that the pro league today is crowded with the best of the best, with mostly all good football players and good teams. The NFL, whatever it used to be, has become a balance of the powerful.

AFC’s Top 11

As the quarterbacks keep making big plays, many games go down to the wire, to be won and lost in the final few seconds, often on the final play.

For this state of affairs, the NFL’s balance of quarterback strength provides one clear explanation. Here and there, individual passing ratings have tumbled this fall, but that can happen when teams with good passers -- and good defenses -- face each other every week.

Eleven of the top 24 passers are in the younger conference:

* The AFC West has three excellent quarterbacks, Jake Plummer, Trent Green and Rich Gannon -- plus another one, Drew Brees, who is acceptable now and would be much better if surrounded by the kind of help the leaders have.

* Two quarterbacks approach greatness in the AFC South, Peyton Manning and McNair. As for the others in that division, David Carr seems acceptable at expansion Houston. At rebuilding Jacksonville, the acceptable veteran is Mark Brunell, backed by seemingly promising rookie Byron Leftwich.

* The AFC North is still looking for a few good quarterbacks.

* But the AFC East has three with Super Bowl quality, present, past or future, Tom Brady, Drew Bledsoe and, though injured now, Chad Pennington.

NFC’s Top 13

In the senior conference, 13 of the 16 teams have hired or developed quality quarterbacks:

* In the NFC West, there are four on three clubs, Marc Bulger and three who’ve had some injuries this fall, Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia and Matt Hasselbeck.

* The NFC South has produced three past or potential Super Bowl quarterbacks, Brad Johnson, Aaron Brooks and injured Michael Vick.

* In the NFC North, there are three more, Brett Favre, Daunte Culpepper and, at Detroit, Joey Harrington, when and if he gets more help.

* The NFL East seems as well off at quarterback as any division in football with Donovan McNabb, Kerry Collins, and the two new ones, Quincy Carter and Patrick Ramsey -- the two who have lucked onto teams with coaches (Bill Parcells and Steve Spurrier) that Jeff Blake and Kordell Stewart and many other NFL quarterbacks would die for.

In a hard-hitting sport, injuries, from time to time, affect all quarterbacks -- except Favre -- but the good ones keep coming back for more.

Defensive Parity

NFL defensive teams are also stronger and faster than ever this season. The explanation for the league’s defensive excellence also starts with college football. If the colleges are turning out more good quarterbacks than ever, it’s likely that they’re doing the same for defensive people.

And in the pros, they get even more intensive coaching from experienced, well paid teachers.

Today’s NFL defensive clubs have become so powerful that pro football’s critics would be seeking rule changes penalizing defenses again -- as they did in the low-scoring days of the 1970s and at other times -- if the quarterbacks weren’t so dominant in the close, big games.

College teams in the 1970s weren’t producing many great pro quarterbacks. They didn’t have to. The most successful college coaches were winning with wishbone-formation running plays and the quarterback option.

The passing revolution that began at San Francisco in the early 1980s with Coach Bill Walsh’s 49er teams -- which won an unprecedented five Super Bowls with short ball-control passes by Joe Montana and Steve Young -- was embraced in time at most colleges.

The seeds were dropped for what you see today -- wide-open college passing. The skill to throw ball-control passes accurately and routinely -- along with a bomb or two and a selection of mid-range beauties -- has changed football completely because there are so many quarterbacks who can do that now, if properly coached and playing in a league that values such football.

The only real problem that any NFL quarterback has is the great power of the opposing defense. Every week.

Eight Not Yet

It’s easier naming the eight teams that have good defenses this year but -- not yet outstanding quarterbacks -- than picking pro winners.

In the NFC, despite Kordell Stewart’s promise, Chicago seems wanting at quarterback, as does Arizona with Jeff Blake. Mainly, Blake and Stewart have been unlucky to spend their pro careers in sub-par offensive systems. Nor can it be said that Delhomme is the answer at Carolina, which wins with running power and defense

Three AFC teams also lack first-rate quarterbacks: Miami with Jay Fiedler, Baltimore with Kyle Boller, and Cincinnati with Jon Kitna -- even though, in more successful offenses, all three could at least match Delhomme’s achievements so far.

Two other AFC teams are led by question-mark quarterbacks. At Pittsburgh, Tommy Maddox seemed the answer last year. This year, for whatever reason, has been different. At Cleveland, Tim Couch wasn’t the answer last year. This year is different

The Browns’ other starting quarterback, Kelly Holcomb, who in brief appearances has looked like a Super Bowl quarterback, was injured beating San Francisco last month, and for whatever reason, he’s not playing him now.

Injuries are pro football’s one terrible flaw, an inescapable flaw, unhappily. Ultimately, they decide every Super Bowl pairing. But wherever the injury incidence is low, the NFL today has an indisputable parity of excellence.

Ram Thrill Is Gone

NFL schedules are drawn up long in advance. So when the Atlanta Falcons were billed into St. Louis for a Ram game on an October Monday night, it looked like a football classic -- the league’s most exciting player, Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick, versus the league’s most exciting team.

It didn’t turn out that way. During the exhibition season, Vick broke a leg. And the Rams, in Mike Martz’s third year as their coach, have lost their excitement.

They overwhelmed Atlanta with great ease, 36-0, only because the Falcons didn’t put up a fight and because the Rams still have a few great players -- three in particular, quarterback Marc Bulger and wide receivers Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt. But they looked like what they are, a plodding 3-2 team. Unhappily for Ram fans, the thrill is gone.

When Atlanta didn’t bother to sign a competent backup for Vick, this game was irretrievably lost to the Falcons. And their players played as if they understood, on both sides of the ball. This night, the Falcons were just going through the motions.