Upstarts and Upsets in the N.F.L.

New rules help turn some of pro football's lambs into lions

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but don't try to tell that to the Dallas Cowboys. The National Football League's reigning Super Bowl champions have discovered that they cannot keep a good thing to themselves, either on the sidelines or on the field. First, a dozen teams around the league began buying up hot pants and spangles, then proceeded to out-cleavage the Cowboys' cheerleaders. Then, while Dallas was struggling to win games, a flock of teams once considered lambs suddenly turned into lions. As a result, the Cowboys face a struggle to make the playoffs.

With one month remaining in the schedule, Dallas last week was tied with Atlanta for a wild-card play-off berth. Lowly Houston, the mighty Cowboys' poor cousin in the American Conference, sported an identical record. Throughout the 28-team league, with the season nearly three-fourths over, the standings are closer than at any time since the 1970 merger with the American Football League. Before this week's action, only Los Angeles and Pittsburgh had managed to open modest leads in their divisions--two games. The Pack was back in contention, rekindling memories of the Vince Lombardi era in Green Bay. The New

York Jets, who drooped lower than Joe Namath's eyelids after their 1969 Super Bowl win, seemed to be on the way to their first winning season since 1970. Even expansion teams Seattle and Tampa Bay had managed to damage the play-off chances of the league's powers, scoring upsets over Oakland and Minnesota. It appears that competitive parity, long the aim of Pete Rozelle and other arms negotiators, has at long last been achieved.

The new balance of power is overdue for a sport that has been rigidly divided into haves and havenots: the same eight teams have monopolized the Super Bowl, playing one another again and again for a total of 18 appearances in the championship's twelve-year history. But parity on the field was wrought, at least in part, in the rule book. With the regular season expanded by two games to a total of 16, the league shifted to scheduling that pitted top teams against top teams and also-rans against also-rans more often than ever. The new scheme eliminated the sort of scheduling vagaries that in the past often allowed strong teams to feast season-long on weaker opponents.

The extra two games may well have been a key factor in the erratic play of top teams during the season's opening month, since the preseason schedule was cut to four games instead of the customary six. Many players found it difficult to get into shape during the truncated exhibition season, and coaches were unable to groom second-stringers or work the kinks out of new plays. Says Oakland Raider Coach John Madden: "In the past we would plan on playing Ken Stabler, for example, twelve quarters in preseason. Over six games, that would mean he'd play half of each game.

Now that twelve quarters means three-quarters of each game. The people back of him are given that much less preparation time." Dallas Coach Tom Landry admits: "I don't think we really adjusted to the short training-camp schedule. We coaches have to learn to pace the players better and peak earlier."

But the biggest rule changes took place on the field. All were aimed at juicing up the offensive game. For the first time, offensive linemen are allowed to extend and lock their arms to fend off the defensive behemoths charging toward spindly quarterbacks.

More important, however, is the new "no-chuck" rule that prohibits defenders from bumping pass receivers once they sprint five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Most receivers love the new rule, while defending cornerbacks and safeties curse the loss of their principal weapon. Where once defenders brushed, bumped and belted would-be pass catchers with each step, they are now reduced to a single bash as the ball is snapped. Says the Cowboys' top receiver, Drew Pearson: "It's great. Cutting across the field, I used to wind up looking out the earhole of my helmet. Now all I have to worry about is getting hit after I make the catch."

On the other side of the no-chuck fence, Dallas' All-Pro free safety Cliff Harris does not find the Astroturf as green as does Teammate Pearson. Harris complains: "We've had a tough time adjusting to the no-bump rule. We would play close to the line to stop the running game, then we would bump the receivers off their routes and keep on hitting them until the pass was thrown." Adds the Packers' Steve Luke: "It's like a carpenter. He needs both hands to do a good job. If he loses three fingers, his work wouldn't be as good. That rule takes three fingers away from us."

To enforce the new rules, the N.F.L. added a seventh official, and he has been kept busy. Halfway through the season, illegal-chuck penalties were the sixth most frequently called infraction, ranking behind such old favorites as offsides and clipping.

Free now to run their patterns without the constant tattoo of bumps, receivers got still another break from the rulemakers. Before this season, a forward pass tipped by an offensive player had to touch a defender before a second offensive player could catch it legally; it was just such a play, still hotly debated, that won Pittsburgh its first play-off victory over Oakland in 1972. That rule has now been changed to permit open season on all loose balls. Wily Minnesota quarterback Fran Tarkenton lost no time testing the new regulation. In the closing seconds of the first half during an early-season game against Denver, Tarkenton dispatched three receivers to an area no bigger than a washtub, then lobbed the ball into their midst. In a scene reminiscent of N.B.A. teams battling for a rebound, the gambit failed.

But Atlanta Coach Leeman Bennett took note. The Falcons' defense set a modern-day N.F.L. record last year for allowing the fewest points scored, but the offense packed the scoring punch of a geriatrics ward. Having nowhere to go but up, Bennett installed a "Big Ben" play --for desperate situations when the clock was running out. With 19 seconds to go against New Orleans last week, Quarterback Steve Bartkowski called Big Ben. Three receivers rushed downfield, dogged by a battalion of defensive backs. Bartkowski lofted the ball, and what looked like four dozen arms groped for it. Atlanta's Wallace Francis tipped it to Teammate Alfred Jackson for the winining touchdown. Afterward Beninett told stunned sportswriters: "We work on that play in practice. We just bat the ball around until somebody catches it." He added, "I'm being serious."

Certainly offenses have begun to perk up under the new rules. Championships may be won by tightfisted defenses, but the offensive flair that was typical of the old A.F.L. has finally taken lively root in the sport, and this season has already produced 330 more points than last year. Los Angeles Coach Ray Malavasi explains: "The N.F.L. had gotten stereotyped, but the A.F.L. came up with new formations-- multiple fronts, multiple coverages, using men in motion --and in the past four or five years, teams have begun to use them."

Running the offenses are young quarterbacks who are not afraid of carrying the ball themselves. The league that once considered Fran Tarkenton a heretic for deserting his protective pocket of blockers now boasts quarterbacks who routinely gallop upfield. New England's Steve Grogan fancies the end run; Baltimore's Jones likes it up the middle.

The Seattle Seahawks' spectacular young (25) quarterback, Jim Zorn, has passed, run, pushed and dragged his expansion team into the third best offense in the N.F.L. In eleven games this year, Zorn passed for ten touchdowns and ran for six more. With careful use of the draft and a few deft trades, Seattle has put together a supporting cast that does Zorn justice. Wide Receiver Steve Largent ranks second among American Conference receivers, behind Pittsburgh's Lynn Swann; with ten touchdowns, David Sims is the conference's top-scoring running back.

Fittingly enough, it was the vaunted Dallas scouting system that turned up Jim Zorn. Passed over in the draft after playing for tiny California Poly-Pomona, he was signed as a free agent, then cut by the Cowboys in 1975. He was quickly snatched up by Seattle when the franchise opened the following year.

No longer content to wait and see what stars Dallas' computerized system would locate on remote college campuses, Seattle and the other rising teams in the N.F.L. have beefed up their own scouting departments. Their model: Dallas, of course. Laments Gil Brandt, the Cowboys' vice president in charge of finding superstars: "We used to hear of a hot prospect at Podunk U. and send one of our guys to look at him. He'd be the only one there.

Now we go to Podunk and five or six other N.F.L. teams are looking over the same player." Remember, Gil, imitation is ...

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