Pete, The Way They Play Today Stinks

I was watching the Jets and Patriots on TV two Sundays ago. NBC was doing promos on the following Sunday's Cleveland-Denver game, which I guess they figured was the most interesting matchup of Week 14 in one of the dullest NFL seasons I can remember. Six, eight, 10 times they ran that promo. I lost count.

"Watch the big, bad Browns battle the hard-charging Broncos," the guy was saying, and do you know what they used to illustrate that big, bad, hard-charging battle? Dennis Smith, a Bronco safety-man, doing a backflip in the end zone. That's it, I thought. That's the 1983 season, a big, bad, hard-charging backflip. An 8-5 team against a 7-6, two clubs from that great, gray mass that is pro football these days. Going into last weekend's games, 13 teams were either 6-7 or 7-6 and the biggest and baddest Brown was Jim, talking about a comeback with the Los Angeles Raiders at the age of 47.

Once giants like Brown roamed the NFL. Every team had an identity. The Packers against the Lions—the mere thought of that battle made you tingle. Alex Karras and Joe Schmidt laying it on Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor. Ray Nitschke and Dave Robinson and all the rest of those superstars. These days Robinson would be a designated blitzer. Schmidt and Nitschke would be situation linebackers; they'd come out on passing downs. Karras would be a noseguard, Hornung would be the single back in the one-back offense and Taylor would come in for short-yardage plays.

There used to be teams that would make you nervous just thinking about them. In their playoff run from '72 through '79 the Steelers were 50-1 against losers, against teams that finished under .500. Man, you needed some credentials, some pedigree papers, to play the Steelers in those days. Fifty and one! And when someone gave them a battle, the world tuned in. Well, yeah, they're 9-5 and leading their division this year, but they're shaky. Anyone can beat them on a good day. Detroit blew 'em away, 45-3, two weeks ago.

Look at Sunday's lineup. Twenty-four clubs were still in contention for the playoffs. Saints-Patriots? Did that turn you on? How about Bears-Packers? You say you can't name three guys on the Bears, once you get by Walter Payton? What's the difference. They were contenders. Or how about Bills vs. Chiefs, or was it Chills vs. Beefs?

The league office likes the idea of a lot of contenders around for the final countdown. "The New York teams are down, so a lot of New Yorkers are turned off," Pete Rozelle said last week, two days before an NFL record 51,589 no-shows at the Giants-Cardinals game in the Meadowlands, "but you'll find plenty of enthusiasm around the rest of the league. Fans' enthusiasm generally rises and falls with the fortunes of their own teams. Attendance is off 2% from 1981, our record year, but we'll still finish in the top three, alltime."

You'll finish in the top three because there are more people in the U.S.A. every year, the stadiums keep getting larger, and corporations can still write off season tickets as a business expense. As far as local interest—hey, once upon a time the NFL was universal. Everyone knew the Jets meant Joe Namath, the Bears were Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, and when you saw a game in the Black and Blue Division you were going to see some hitting. That's what made the game so great. The guy in Kansas City knew about the Colts and the Rams. They had faces. Every week there was a game that turned you on. Now the pro football world marks time until this coming Sunday when Washington meets Dallas, the first big one since Dallas played the Raiders a month and a half ago.

"Dallas-Washington is the only game I hear people talking about," CBS's John Madden says. "I think people will get interested in the playoffs once they start, but they don't seem interested in the road to the playoffs like they used to be."

I blame last year's tournament—that expanded playoff format the NFL used in the wake of the strike. The NFL keeps repeating, "It was only a one-year thing," but guys like Patriot owner Billy Sullivan wanted to continue it this year. The tournament cheapened the playoffs, reduced them to the NBA and NHL level, where everyone gets in. Sixteen teams out of 28 made it, losers made it—stiffs. After that, who could take the playoffs seriously, or the road to the playoffs?

And how can you get excited about a game in which the defensive backs and defensive linemen have no identity. Oh, sure, here and there you can recognize a Randy White or an Everson Walls, but there used to be lots of guys like that. Not now. The rules, plus the great corporate game of "situation substitution," have made them faceless. Defensive linemen are sacrificial lambs, double-team absorbers, gap occupiers, so that the outside linebackers, who are probably the most gifted athletes in today's game, can strut their stuff. Sacks today come on stunts and blitzes. Walls stands out among the cornerbacks, but elsewhere they shine briefly and then dim. Guys like Herb Adderley used to go half a season without getting beaten deep, but now everyone's vulnerable to the picks and crisscrosses and no-bump rules. It makes for wilder football, but it's also rendering some positions virtually anonymous.