The Nfl

MAXIMUM PARITY

The Steelers lost their first two games this season by a total of 82 points and then won four of six. The Rams won their first five games, dropped four in a row and then drubbed the Giants, who had lost only once, on Sunday. After the Bills lost Jim Kelly, the AFC's top-rated quarterback, to a shoulder injury, they won three consecutive games with a quarterback, Frank Reich, nobody had wanted as a Plan B free agent. Kelly returned two weeks ago, and Buffalo promptly fell to the lowly Falcons.

Dallas, the worst team in the league, won by 10 points in Washington. Washington won by two in New Orleans. New Orleans won by 19 points in Anaheim against the Rams. The Rams beat the 49ers, the best team in the league, by one in San Francisco. Do these results make any sense?

Here comes that P word again. In the year that parity-loving Pete Rozelle left office as commissioner, it's fitting that the NFL is at maximum parity. The season is 10 weeks old, and the competition could hardly be more balanced. Never before have 16 teams been bunched at 4-6, 5-5 or 6-4. Twenty-two teams have at least four wins. That means more than 78% of the teams still have a realistic shot at making the playoffs, with six games left. "What an unbelievable year," says Bills general manager Bill Polian. "I turn 47 in December, but this season my stomach is 116."

Parity has also made for closer games (box, right). "I can't remember the last time I was in a game that was over in the third quarter," says Patriots guard Sean Farrell. What's going on? Pete's parity has become even tighter in the last year for a number of reasons:

1) The Forced .500 Factor. The NFL has long tried to pit the weak against the weak and the strong against the strong early in the season to keep as many teams as possible in playoff contention. But since 1987 life has been even tougher for the top teams. Before then the league presented a division's first-and fourth-place finishers with the same caliber of competition the next year. Second-and third-place finishers also faced similar competition. (Fifth-place finishers played against other fifth-place finishers.) Since '87 the higher a team has finished in its division, the tougher its schedule has been the next season.

2) The Getting-Caught-in-the-Draft Factor. In the 14 years since the NFL moved the draft from two weeks after the Super Bowl to three months after it, scouting has become uniform and seemingly endless. "It used to be that the good organizations were ready to draft in January, and the others weren't," says Tex Schramm, former president of the Cowboys. "After the first round, I'd always see four, five, six of our preferred players still on the board, and we'd get one in the second round. Teams have so much time to scout now, that nobody can make a really big mistake."

3) The Passing-Fancy Factor. Late leads are ridiculously unsafe. In the past few seasons teams have become adept at using wide-open passing formations, especially those that employ four wide-outs. That, coupled with various rules changes over the last decade that have benefited the passing game, means that desperate offenses can strike more quickly. "It's clear that it's easier to make games close in the final minutes with the opening up of the passing game," says Polian. "You've got to have a three-score lead at the two-minute warning to be safe."

4) The Plan B Factor. The system of unrestricted free agency for any player not on a team's protected 37-man roster, which was instituted last winter, distributes marginal players to needy teams. For example, the Raiders and Dolphins got needed linebacking help from Plan B and are much improved.

5) The Nice-Guys-Finish-Last Factor. Teams fired assistant coaches at a record rate this past off-season in an effort to find different combinations on their staffs and to make sure they didn't miss out on any new wrinkles in the game. Case in point: Steeler coach Chuck Noll, with prodding from club president Dan Rooney, broke up that old gang of his in Pittsburgh in the off-season, hiring a defensive coordinator (Rod Rust), a linebackers coach (Dave Brazil), a defensive-backs coach ( John Fox) and a special-teams coach ( George Stewart), none of whom are former Steelers. "There's very little cronyism and friendship in hiring today," says Giants general manager George Young. "It used to be you hired your good friends for your coaching staff. Now you hire the best teachers and motivators and coaches."