He Just Keeps On Keeping On

My nominee for greatest football player of our day is Emmitt Smith, though not because he’s having a career season in the pro league. He isn’t.

And not because he’s the all-time ground-gaining champion who sets an NFL record every week, 17,162 yards when 2003 began, 17,330 today.

The thing about Smith that wins my respect is that in this demanding sport, after 14 seasons as an NFL running back, he’s still running.

His “friends” in Dallas and in the national media didn’t want it this way. They told him to retire last year, after he’d clawed his way past Walter Payton’s numbers. They urged him to “go out on top.” They recommend retirement to all aging champions because they want to remember them as champions, not as broken-down old athletes.

But the trouble with going out on top, or at the bottom, is that you’re out, and Eminent Emmitt didn’t want out. Out and you’re nothing. In is everything.

Only One Choice

The inner spark that drives Emmitt Smith at 34 is that he loves to play football. Why should he give up a life he loves? If Smith had a choice, sure, he’d choose to play for a Super Bowl team, but this time that wasn’t a choice.

His old team in Dallas is rebuilding. His only choice was to retire or play for a pro club that wanted him, and it was the never-champion Arizona Cardinals who wanted him.

And in Smith’s Week 3 in the desert, there was a glorious payoff. The Cardinals upset a Super Bowl contender, the mighty Green Bay Packers, who are still favored to win the NFC North title. The final score was 20-13 -- and Smith was there. Smith played.

Not only that, he gained most of his 50 yards rushing at just the right times. For Smith is the prototype of the modern running back. Unlike Jim Brown and O.J. Simpson, he’s short and squat, thus getting intense upward leverage on bigger opponents.

Finally, he’s an inspiration to younger teammates, who could see that if an old champion still wants to play football as badly as Smith does, and still loves the game as much as he does, even in 106-degree heat, there must be something to it.

The other athletes I respect the most, Willie Mays and Warren Spahn, both played until they were thrown out of baseball. All the way, the compulsion never to yield to anyone or anything -- never to fold -- was a prime reason for their greatness. For Emmitt’s too.

Parity League

The regular-season races this year have yet to sort themselves out. Under the direction of new quarterback Jake Plummer, the 3-0 Denver Broncos won easily, 31-10, against the defending AFC champion Oakland last Monday night, moving a bit closer to the Super Bowl appearance they’ve been heading for -- in the view of some analysts -- since last summer. But the AFC has two other impressive 3-0 teams, Kansas City and Indianapolis.

The NFC’s three unbeaten teams have been less impressive. In alphabetical order, they are pushy Carolina, a Minnesota team that was hard-pressed at Detroit in Week 3, and Seattle, which doesn’t seem quite as stable as it will look if it gets past Green Bay and San Francisco in its next two.

Kansas City and Indianapolis are probably the sentimental favorites because of their nice-guy coaches, Dick Vermeil, who is in his third year with the Chiefs and always wins in his third year anywhere, and Colt Coach Tony Dungy, who built the Tampa Bay powerhouse that finally won the most recent Super Bowl a year after he was forced out.

Problems on defense hurt both the Chiefs and Colts a year ago, but both are better on that side of the ball this season. Going into their Week 4 game at New Orleans today, the new Colt defense has limited opponents to a league-best 26 points.

During the season’s first three weeks, last year’s strong teams have been up and down. Some of them, the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Jets come to mind, have all but disappeared. Tampa Bay is harder than ever to evaluate. Oakland can’t get off the ground. Promising Buffalo stumbled in Miami, where others often do.

The NFL today is really the NPL, the national parity league, which for most football fans is a good thing. If, as it’s said, anybody can be president, nearly every NFL team has Super Bowl capability.

First on Offense

The Denver offense scored stylishly Monday night to open a 31-0 lead on Oakland, after which the Broncos lost their sense of urgency. Their first-quarter show was, however, the great offensive performance of the new season in the NFL, pairing the Broncos in fast forward against the Raiders in slow motion, and it happened primarily for these three reasons:

* As led by Jake “the Snake” Plummer, the Broncos have a quarterback for the first time since the end of the Elway era in the last century.

A gifted scrambler and unique rollout passer, Plummer carried the Broncos along on three quick, elegant, similar touchdown drives every time the Denver offense was on the field in the first quarter.

Rolling out, he connected with tight end Shannon Sharpe on an 18-yard touchdown pass. Throwing on the run, he fired a long one to his fastest new receiver, Ashley Lelie, for 44 yards and a touchdown. Then after another long pass to Lelie, he faked a throw one way, hid the ball, and ran it the other way for six yards and a touchdown.

* Denver’s coach, Mike Shanahan, the last two-time winner of the Super Bowl, seems to be well ahead of most other football coaches as an offensive strategist and play-caller.

To get Denver’s fast 7-0 lead, Shanahan called six consecutive runs -- none of them power plays, each drastically different from the five others in design, all minutely rehearsed -- and finally the scoring pass. On the Broncos’ three other touchdown drives, Oakland was off balance on nearly every play.

* In Shanahan’s version of the West Coast offense, the Broncos are a running team that seemed to be running better than ever Monday night with Clinton Portis at tailback. Then Portis’ backup, Mike Anderson, setting up a one-yard touchdown run, pulled away for 44 yards on the longest running play of the night, a reminder that the Broncos have been explosive on the ground throughout the Shanahan era from Terrell Davis to Portis. With the league’s smallest offensive line and sharpest line coach, Alex Gibbs, they still know more about ground-play football than any competitor.

Gruden Ready

Tampa Bay looked not much like the defending Super Bowl champion during most of the first half last Sunday against the Michael Vick-less Atlanta Falcons. But in the last few minutes before the break, Buccaneer Coach Jon Gruden was ready with the two-play touchdown sequence that made it impossible for a team that can’t pass to catch up.

Play 1 was a good throw by Buccaneer quarterback Brad Johnson to running back Michael Pittman, who was executing a quick lateral pass route to the sideline.

On Play 2, Pittman darted toward the sideline again with a move designed to fool the Falcons into figuring that the Buccaneers were merely after another quick first down. Then, suddenly, Pittman turned and ran away from the Atlanta defense on a sideline-and-go pattern that broke a 3-3 tie when Johnson hit him in stride for 68 yards and a touchdown.

At the decisive moment, looking for Play 1, the Falcon defensive team -- previously in charge of the game -- got Play 2. That led the Buccaneers to a 17-3 first-half lead and eventually a 31-10 victory.

Their short touchdown scored by defensive tackle Warren Sapp on a tackle-eligible play was therefore only window dressing, showing off Sapp’s athleticism and ability to perform what Times writer Mike Penner called the elephant hop.

Eligible Tackles

The tackle-eligible play, which worked for Tampa, doesn’t always succeed nowadays. Although catching a pass is the simplest skill in football, widely and wildly overvalued, it isn’t as easy for a big lineman to hold the ball as it is for a smaller receiver who has been practice-catching all his life.

The difficulty was illustrated again Sunday by Jet lineman Kevin Mawae, who dropped quarterback Vinny Testaverde’s first-half pass in the end zone on the play that led in time to New England’s 23-16 decision.

A difference between the Sapp and Mawae plays was that Johnson hit Sapp in the stomach. Testaverde’s pass reached Mawae in his extended hands, where most NFL receivers, but few linemen, would have held it.

Johnson is the better passer, which is one reason he wears a Super Bowl ring. On the other hand, he is, afoot, the NFL’s slowest quarterback. He can be rushed, yet wasn’t. It’s tough luck for Atlanta Coach Dan Reeves to have lost Vick, but his defense couldn’t find a way to get to Johnson and beat him.

Option Play

Reeves brought back the old option play to score Atlanta’s only touchdown of the Tampa game. In the third quarter, he sent in his third-string quarterback, Woody Dantzler, a good runner, to call the option on fourth and goal at the Tampa one-yard line.

When the Buccaneers took out the Falcon pitch man, Dantzler kept the ball and ran it over. It looked like a great play; and for once, it must have been, for it surprised the wily Tampa defense. But the fact is, good teams rarely use the option these days.

It has largely disappeared even from college football, for two reasons. In a passing era, it’s hard to integrate pass plays with option plays. And in a more sophisticated defensive era, teams have learned how to put one good defensive player continuously on the quarterback and one on the pitch man, taking away the punch principle of option plays: making the defense choose between two runners.

The old play can still be dangerous when an offense learns how to make a late pitch, meaning that Reeves and other old conservatives may still find a place for it.

Brady is Best

New England is 2-1 and in a three-way tie with Buffalo and Miami in the AFC East because Tom Brady of the Patriots is the best quarterback in the division. Indeed, almost every time we’ve seen him since he won Super Bowl XXXVI, Brady has worn the look of the NFL’s best quarterback.

For one thing, he has the game’s most effective passing motion, the most fluid and perhaps the quickest since Joe Namath, the Jet quarterback who won Super Bowl III.

Second, Brady comes with possibly the quickest mind there is at his position. That is, from the pocket, he can look downfield from, say, right to left in less time than it takes to say it and then pull the trigger instantly with a quick pass to his last look.

Among active NFL players, though, Brady is Exhibit A in the truism that it takes more than a good quarterback to win NFL games and titles. He has two problems:

* His coaches, Bill Belichick and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who have had trouble integrating pass plays and running plays, want to run first, then pass.

* Brady’s running back, the talented Antowain Smith, doesn’t want to run -- first, last or ever. Or at least it looks that way whenever they give him the ball, which they did 13 times Sunday for 55 yards. His personal strategy is to work hard when his contract is up for renewal -- which isn’t now -- then loaf.

Hasselbeck’s Comeback

Seattle’s comeback conquest of the Rams last week, 24-23, was orchestrated by a large tough quarterback who has had trouble proving himself in pro ball. Matt Hasselbeck, a 6 foot 4, 223-pound passer got his big chance in the fourth quarter when one of the new Ram receivers, Dane Looker, fumbled Marc Bulger’s good pass to the Seahawks for an interception.

At that moment, the Rams led, 23-17. They never led again and, naturally enough, they have been faulted for passing at the Seattle 40-yard line with three minutes left. But it wasn’t the interception that beat them, it was the long-ago disposal of their great No. 3 and No. 4 receivers, most notably Az Zahir-Hakim, who have yet to be replaced.

So the Rams could hold the ball for only seven offensive plays in the fourth quarter before Hasselbeck beat them in the last minute.

Where Was Holcomb?

Cleveland’s comeback conquest of San Francisco, 13-12, was orchestrated by a large tough quarterback who also has had trouble proving himself in pro ball. Kelly Holcomb, a 6-foot-2, 212-pound passer was cut by Tampa Bay seven years ago, when the Buccaneers desperately needed a quarterback.

Then he was cut by Indianapolis, which preferred Peyton Manning. Then after Holcomb landed in Cleveland, the Browns thought so little of him that they went out and got Tim Couch as the first NFL draft pick of 1999.

It was enough to make a good man cry, or leave home. Instead, Holcomb stayed and demonstrated late last year, at least to the Browns, that he was better than Couch.

The 49ers shook up Holcomb in the first three quarters Sunday, beating him black and blue, before he shook them up with two touchdown drives in the fourth quarter, the last sustained for more than 90 yards on Holcomb passes.

Worse for the 49ers, their splendid offense failed to score a touchdown all day against a defense designed by a defensive expert, the Cleveland coach himself, Butch Davis -- who shook up his own defense in the off-season, belatedly making the changes that worked so well in San Francisco.

Belatedly because Davis, after taking over more than three years ago, had delayed until this season the required defensive tweaking. The Browns had brought him in as their savior, from Miami, where he had won a national collegiate title, but he hadn’t saved anything in pro ball until Week 3 of his third season, when Holcomb saved him.