Raiders Need to Up the Risk Quotient

The 7-0 Kansas City Chiefs went through the entire game at Oakland Monday night without taking any chances. And that’s one good way for the better team to play it.

The 2-5 Raiders, though, should have been looking for places to gamble, to be bold, even risky. When they didn’t -- when in the fourth quarter they missed a splendid chance to take a chance -- their timidity beat them, 17-10.

Their backup quarterback, Marques Tuiasosopo, a surprisingly good one, had driven the Raiders to the Kansas City nine early in that fourth quarter when his coaches crept meekly into a shell.

Losing, 10-0, they called two running plays there, and then, on third and too long, they tried the pass they’d needed on first down.

Against the Chiefs’ first-down run-play defense, an unexpected Tuiasosopo pass, which might have seemed risky with that new quarterback, would have been the Raiders’ best bet.

Against a defense predictably anticipating a third-down pass, Tuiasosopo missed his end-zone target, but just barely, whereupon the Raiders kicked the field goal that wasn’t enough.

For, in a wild finish, Tuiasosopo moved the Raiders twice more with beautiful passes -- nearly the length of the field both times. He drove them once to a touchdown and once into position for the field goal that would have been sufficient had his coaches played for seven points instead of three that first time at the Kansas City 10.

Instead, as time ran out, Tuiasosopo, needing a touchdown at the end of a 73-yard drive, fell 36 inches short. One yard.

Curse of Elway

The Denver Broncos are in Baltimore today with a team that continues to be plagued by “The Curse of John Elway,” which is may take its place next to baseball’s curses of the Bambino and the Billygoat.

When Elway departed after directing Denver to Super Bowl triumphs in 1998-99, his friends said it would be a cold day before the Broncos ever got back. And sure enough, the Broncos have since then had one mishap after another.

In a chilling calamity, quarterback Jake Plummer ended up with a broken foot four days before they lost at Minnesota last Sunday -- on two strange plays -- 28-20.

That day, Plummer’s backup, Steve Beuerlein, broke a finger on his pitching hand, empowering third quarterback Danny Kanell as No. 1 even though Kanell had been out of the league two years.

Earlier, in the first four years of Elway’s retirement, Brian Griese often seemed to be what Coach Mike Shanahan reasoned he was -- the quarterback answer -- but Griese mysteriously disappointed. Technically proficient, a good passer, he made more and more incomprehensible plays, apparently forgetting, among other things, that on a broken play, the ball can be thrown away.

At Denver, in other respects, Shanahan has usually had one of the NFL’s great teams, sometimes the best of them all. He has produced one great running back after another along with spectacular receivers, good offensive lines and sound defenses.

And this year, Plummer, who is something of a cross between Joe Montana and John Elway, seemed to be the one thing Shanahan had lacked in this century -- a Super Bowl quarterback -- until the Elway curse intervened.

Viking Luck

The Minnesota Vikings, the NFC’s only unbeaten team after six weeks, are this year’s example of the heights that can be reached by pro athletes when they enjoy the luck of the schedule. Today, for example, the Vikings get to play the NFC East’s worst team, the 2-4 New York Giants.

Last week, true, Minnesota had to play what was probably the NFL’s best team, Denver, but when Denver quarterback Plummer was scratched because of a broken foot, the Broncos were reduced to a nothing team, making a tough day simple for the Vikings -- nearly as simple as their first five starts this year against opponents that were a combined 9-24 going into this week’s games.

The best you can say for Minnesota at this point is that when a not-bad pro club gets on a roll, lucky or not, it sometimes keeps rolling.

Happily for the Vikings last week, it was Plummer’s replacement in the Denver backfield, Beuerlein, who threw three interceptions and, otherwise, stood around five times until he was sacked. These eight errors, among many others, suggested that Beuerlein, a 13-year NFL veteran, has forgotten how to read defenses.

Either that or, under the influence of the Elway curse, he has come down with Griese’s disease -- forgetting how to throw the ball away.

Accenting the obvious, the Broncos, a day or two later, put Beuerlein on injured reserve for the season.

In any case, against even an ordinary Denver quarterback, the Vikings probably couldn’t have kept their undefeated status through Week 7. Strong on defense, the Broncos, owning a good blocking line, also have a notably effective ballcarrier, Clinton Portis, who, running up 117 yards, was the only 100-yard gainer on the Minneapolis field Sunday -- despite the fact that there was no countervailing Denver quarterback threat.

Portis is the best of the many good running backs Shanahan has had at Denver since Terrell Davis, who was so wonderful during the Elway era that he was the most valuable player of one of the Super Bowls. Then he too unraveled mysteriously. The curse of Elway?

Conventional Rams

The St. Louis Rams have become a different kind of team -- one that wins playing conventional NFL football -- so the Pittsburgh game today, at Pittsburgh, will test whether the new Ram team can succeed that way on a difficult foreign field.

In their great days as a Super Bowl bunch, the Rams played unconventionally, playing as if charged with electricity. They repeatedly whisked down the field on big plays by continually throwing first-down passes to the magnificent Isaac Bruce and as many as three or four other classy receivers.

In contrast, their new team likes to run the ball on first down, forcing quarterback Marc Bulger to pass on passing downs, ostensibly playing into the hands of any defense. Yet Bulger is so accurate that he threw only two interceptions into the stacked Green Bay defense last week when the Rams won, 34-24.

On defense, the Rams played like and looked like Tampa Bay, which has the NFL’s most respected defense -- as constructed by Indianapolis Coach Tony Dungy in the pre-Jon Gruden years and as brought to St. Louis by Dungy disciple Lovie Smith.

But on offense, unhappily, the Rams are also beginning to look like Tampa Bay, whose quarterback, Brad Johnson, doesn’t move around much and whose running back, Michael Pitman, grinds out the hard yards.

For the Rams, a rookie running back, Arlen Harris, has been grinding out the hard yards, 85 Sunday in 18 runs on a day when Bulger, who doesn’t move around much, completed 22 of 34, dispatching three for touchdowns.

The Rams are not as exciting as they used to be, but their coach, Mike Martz, seems just as smart. Having built both Ram teams, Martz is betting that in a wide-open championship race, he can be successful either way.

Dallas in Game of Week

The Dallas Cowboys, 5-1, have become the most reliable winner in pro football under their new coach, Bill Parcells, who, however, hasn’t beaten anybody yet. Or so his critics keep saying privately.

That could change when Dallas plays at Tampa Bay today in one of this week’s best matchups.

The 3-3 Buccaneers have had a defending champion’s usual troubles, meaning that every opponent is pointing their way, the San Francisco 49ers included.

Unloading their only good game of the season last Sunday, the 49ers dropped the Buccaneers, 24-7, on a day when 49er wide receiver Terrell Owens showed that in the NFL, world-class footspeed is hard to beat and impossible to catch. On his 75-yard touchdown pass play, Owens ran through and away from a very fast defense.

As for the Cowboys, they’ve won five consecutive from five stiffs: the two fading New York teams and two other weak opponents, Arizona and Detroit, plus struggling Philadelphia.

Still, it’s the way they’ve won that makes the Cowboys seem pretty good. For one thing, they seem to be proving that Parcells, before accepting work in Dallas, had identified a much better nucleus of players than most other people saw. In three prior winning tours in New York and New England, that had also been Parcells’ secret weapon.

Moreover, he has had some luck. In New England, he had decided, before ownership’s personnel people drafted Terry Glenn at wide receiver, that he didn’t want him. At Dallas he insisted, as a condition of employment, that the Cowboys bring Glenn in. And at Detroit last week, Glenn caught three touchdowns as the Cowboys romped, 38-7.

Nonetheless, if the Buccaneers choose to put up a fight, they can make it hard on Dallas quarterback Quincy Carter -- who says he’s ready. That’s the Parcells effect.

Not Carolina’s Way

The Carolina Panthers, undefeated until they ran into the tough Tennessee Titans last week, have discovered one of the controlling truths about life in the NFL, namely that the hard way to win professional championships is with a running team, even one that plays grand defense.

In a parity-bound league with many good title contenders, it is possible for any club to fall a couple of touchdowns out of it early on, or even 17 points out as the Panthers did in the first quarter Sunday.

When that happens, the best, usually the only way, to get up off the mat is with a well-rehearsed, well-respected pass offense. The Panthers, however, are a running-and-defense team under their second-year coach, John Fox, who made it a point to bring in a tiger of a running back in the off-season, Stephen Davis.

For the last month, Davis has been earning oohs and ahs from the electronic broadcasting world’s many devoted running-and-defense analysts on the NFL beat, but in an 0-17 game he’s helpless. And so in time the Titans won handily, 37-17.

Along the way that day, the Panthers learned that maybe their quarterback, Jake Delhomme, is better than advertised. By game’s end, Delhomme had completed 31 of 49 passes -- with no interceptions -- for twice as many yards, 362, as those gained by Tennessee’s renowned quarterback Steve McNair.

Delhomme’s one problem, perhaps, is that the Carolina pass offense has not been rehearsed at length or in depth. Thus in Week 7, the Panthers weren’t ready to make big pass plays in the first half, when they dropped off the pace, 27-3. What Delhomme showed in outscoring Tennessee in the second half, 14-10, is single-handed promise.

Depending on his coaches’ interest in pass offense, there could be more progress in New Orleans Sunday.