Monday, December 7, 1998

Mike Ditka's brand of football too much for Cowboys

By FRANK LUKSA

The Dallas Morning News

NEW ORLEANS -- When the One Great Scorer came to mark against the Cowboys here Sunday all he needed was the stub of a pencil. Plus ability to count to three.

The Cowboys went to record lengths while losing to the New Orleans Saints, a team its coach accused of playing to a "pathetic" level seven days ago. It was a word Chan Gailey could have borrowed to describe his team.

The Cowboys managed a feat never accomplished in 38 years of franchise history. They rushed for less than the distance of a first down during the entire game.

The new club record is eight yards. Or 24 feet. This meant that on 18 times the Cowboys ran the ball they gained 0.4 yards on average. Or nine inches, less than the length of their shoe.

The Cowboys tied another team record for futility, humiliation and being kicked aside like empty feed sacks. In doing so, they lost more than a 22-3 game. Dallas lost the last illusion of its relative strength when forced to compete outside the NFC East, a division populated by ground squirrels.

The Saints went to Shred City against a Cowboys offense that asked not to be identified until next of kin had been notified. The short version: Dallas was physically manhandled and mentally challenged to deal with a variety of unexpected blitzes. So the Cowboys fell to 8-5 and made a sound like a tomato dropped from a tall building.

Zaven Yaralian, who sounds like a symphony conductor, visited grief on the Cowboys by revisting the past. The New Orleans defensive coordinator dusted off tactics from the Bears' 46 defense used by the world champions of the mid-80s. Mike Ditka coached those Bears.

Assisted by two artificial hips, a lineup of try-hard youth and his intimidating persona, Ditka has energized the 6-7 Saints to an ornery level. His players in turn remind Ditka of the fierce way Chicago played defense for him and coordinator-rival Buddy Ryan.

"This is the best defensive game I've seen in a long time," said the long-ago Cowboys tight end and aide to Tom Landry. "You've got to take me back to the '50s...or the '80s. This is the best I've seen."

Ditka made another flattering comparison when asked if this was the biggest victory of his second-season term with the Saints.

"Definitely, because we went up against a quality opponent, a well-coached team. It wasn't like we tricked them. It was just football. We came to play football and probably did it a little better than they did."

To Ditka, "just football" amounts to knocking the other fellow down and stepping on his neck. The Saints left lots of cleat marks on the Cowboys who appeared timid and passive in comparison to the hard-charging hosts.

Much of the Cowboys' muddled state can by traced to confusion. They never got a handle on the blitz package that Yaralian prepared late last week. Some of his stuff didn't enter the game plan until last Thursday.

Yaralian's theme bore the subtlety of being struck on the head with a bed slat. Pressure and penetration were his objectives. Unprepared for game-long kamakaze assault the Saints had shown only in brief moments, the Cowboys were left to grope and guess about who'd block whom.

"Nobody had done it to the Cowboys," said Yaralian of his scheme. "We wanted to hit Emmitt Smith in the backfield. Move around and not let their front line come off the ball and drive us back. Get penetration. We were in an attack mode more than anything else."

Smith suffered a career-low rushing output for a game in which he carried more than 10 times. He got six yards in 15 attempts, which means Smith covered more ground getting out of bed to brush his teeth. The quality of the Cowboys' addled blockers was best illustrated by seven rushing plays where Smith was tackled for negative yardage.

"The key was to throw them off balance," Yaralian went on. "We didn't want Troy Aikman to settle his feet and throw the ball. If he does, he's one of the most accurate passers in the NFL."

Aikman settled into a routine of ducking and dodging. He got tagged for a safety on the game's third play when rushed into intentional grounding from the end zone. He was hurried and harassed thereafter into a 16-for-32 chart worth 192 scant yards.

The Cowboys ended the game in befitting style. Aided by penalties, they ran eight plays between the New Orleans 14 and 1-yard line and failed to score. By then, the One Great Scorer had fallen asleep anyway.