Artful Dodgers

They are the dashing, derring-do boys of the National Football League, a tight little elite of halfbacks who survive by speed of foot and wit in a jungle of brute force. Although they may weigh 190 Ibs. or more, they are seldom risked in the crunch of line bucks against wrathful 260-lb. tackles. Instead, they whip downfield for passes, or take a pitchout in full stride to sweep around end. Given a yard or two of maneuvering room, they can break a game wide open by slithering, pirouetting, stutter-stepping and sprinting through a field of tacklers for the touchdowns that are the most exciting plays in football. Some top teams--notably the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers--have no such stars. The breakaway back is a specialist in the science of deception, and for the pros, he is in desperately short supply.

Once under way, the pros' artful dodgers seem to be running in all directions at once. "I fake with every part of my body," says the Cleveland Browns' Bobby Mitchell (6 ft., 190 Ibs.). "I use the shoulder shake and I use the head shake and I wiggle the hips. They all help to throw the tackier off balance." For Mitchell, the easiest defensive backs to fool are the fastest of foot. "They come up quickly and commit themselves right away. A slower one is harder to go all the way on. When I've got a blocker in front of me, we try to 'freeze' him by running straight at him. I don't take off until the blocker hits him."

"Slippery Squirt." Growing up in Los Angeles, the Rams' Jon Arnett (5 ft. 11 in., 195 Ibs.) was the smallest kid on his team. He learned to run around tacklers purely as an act of survival ("I was a slippery little squirt"). Arnett began taking tumbling lessons in the sixth grade, is now so agile that he literally has been knocked head-over-heels into the air only to land on one foot and take off in the opposite direction. When frustrated tacklers finally do catch up with him, Arnett knows how to take his lumps. "If I hit the ground tensely, rigidly, and two tons of angry linemen landed on top of me, they'd break every bone in my body."

The man whom the opposing defensive pros would best like to bury is the Baltimore Colts' Lenny Moore (6 ft. 1 in., 190 Ibs.), the most dangerous scoring threat in the league because he is the deep man for the pinpoint passes of Quarterback Johnny Unitas. Among the Colts, Moore is nicknamed "Spats" because he strengthens his spindly shanks with rolls of white tape before each game. The tape helps Moore cut for a pass faster than anyone in the N.F.L. Waiting for Moore to pivot and go, a defensive halfback often watches his feet for the telltale "plant step." But this can be risky. Says Moore: "If he really watches my feet and my legs, he's lost, because I can make my legs do a million and one things. And if he tries to follow my hips, I can fake him right into the stands."

"Fast Enough." Arnett has turned the 100 in 9-9, and Mitchell in 9.6. Since Lenny Moore never went out for track at Penn State, no one knows how fast he can go, but the answer is plain to every safety man who has ever tried to catch him from behind. Says Baltimore's Coach Weeb Ewbank: "Lenny runs just fast enough." So do the other top breakaway backs. Without them, professional football would be a far less exciting game.

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