Thursday, October 31, 1996

Dallas playing the best ball in the league right now

By LANCE FLEMING / Staff Writer (Oct. 31, 1996)

We've hit the halfway point of the NFL season, and that's a perfect time to look back at some of the bests and worsts, surprises and disappointments from the first two months of the league's 77th season.

n Best team: Right now Dallas has supplanted Green Bay as the team playing the best football in the league.

And if you think it has nothing to do with Michael Irvin's return from suspension, you haven't been paying attention. Irvin's return has bolstered the passing game, taken some of the heat off Troy Aikman and helped revive a weak Dallas running game.

I still say the Cowboys got lucky to beat Atlanta two weeks ago, but the way they played Sunday in Miami reinforced the theory that the best talent usually wins. And the Cowboys have the best starting talent in the league.

The next month of the season, however, will tell the tale as the Cowboys are home against Philadelphia, at San Francisco, at home against Green Bay and at the New York Giants. If the Cowboys skate through those four at 3-1 or 4-0, watch out.

-- Worst team: Pity those poor Falcons. In the last two weeks, they've lost to Dallas on a 60-yard touchdown pass in the final minute, and a Pittsburgh field goal on the final play of the game.

Still, playing close doesn't count, and what matters is that Atlanta is 0-8. The Falcons, though, still have two games against St. Louis, two against New Orleans and one against Jacksonville. A 3-5 or 4-4 finish isn't out of the realm of possibility.

-- Offensive MVP: Brett Favre has followed up his MVP season of 1995 with another outstanding first half. And he's doing it after spending some of the offseason in a substance abuse counseling center.

He's thrown for an NFC-best 1,965 yards and already has 21 touchdown tosses. Not only that, he's throwing to guys most people have never heard of after Robert Brooks was lost for the season and Antonio Freeman for 4-6 weeks with injuries.

The best way to judge an MVP is to look at where his team would be without him. Without Favre, you could just turn around Green Bay's 7-1 record.

-- Defensive MVP: Leon Lett is having his best season as a pro, disrupting running games, providing pressure, sacking quarterbacks and blocking kicks.

When Charles Haley went down the Cowboys needed someone to step up and that person has been Lett.

Forget about his blunders in the Super Bowl and the 1993 Thanksgiving Day game against Miami; this guy can play.

-- Best move: Cincinnati's firing of David Shula as its head coach rectifies what was the worst move in franchise history when it hired him five years ago.

The guy proved over and over that he wasn't qualified to be an NFL head coach, and Bengals' management finally realized that two weeks ago. If Shula - who was the Cowboys' offensive coordinator if 1989 and 1990 - couldn't lead a Dallas offense with Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Irvin to better than a 27th-place finish in the league in offense, why did the Bengals think he could be a head coach?

-- Worst move: Think the Rams are regretting trading Jerome Bettis to Pittsburgh and drafting troubled Lawrence Phillips?

All Bettis has done is rush for 824 yards and five touchdowns for the 6-2 Steelers, while Phillips has rushed for 310 yards and two touchdowns for the 2-6 Rams. Phillips has even been replaced by the ever-forgettable Harold Green in the St. Louis backfield.

-- Most surprising team: Washington caught everyone by surprise with its 7-1 start.

The Redskins are led by running back Terry Allen who tops the NFC in rushing (803 yards) and touchdowns (13). He's done as much for his team as Favre has for the Packers.

We'll find out more about the Redskins over the next two months when they play the likes of Buffalo, San Francisco and Dallas twice.

-- Most disappointing team: Jets owner Leon Hess spent millions in the offseason on the likes of Neil O'Donnell and David Williams, and all he has to show for it is a bad 1-8 team.

How Rich Kotite has kept his job is as big a mystery as how Shula kept his in Cincinnati. In his last 33 games as a head coach, Kotite is a pathetic 4-29.

-- Three things to make the NFL better: The first thing is getting rid of commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who simply coasts along without rocking the boat.

Pete Rozelle had a vision for the league, and made it America's No. 1 sport in the 1960s and 1970s when it seemed baseball had a firm grasp on the sports public.

Tagliabue, however, has no vision for the league. And he's been at the helm when two teams left Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest TV market.

Second is free agency and the salary cap. Both have been good for the league, helping some teams get better and balancing the playing field. But there's got to be some better solution.

Why not try the NBA's salary cap plan? In it, a team can re-sign any of its own players to whatever salary it wants without it counting against the cap.

And third is the issue of franchise relocation. This has nothing to do with the four teams that have moved or are moving in the last three years.

But something has to be done to get the NFL back in Cleveland. And here's a plan:

Move the Indianapolis Colts into Cleveland and give them the Browns nickname, history and colors. Give the Colts nickname, history and colors back to Baltimore and get rid of the Ravens (and those hideous uniforms).

Meanwhile, put one expansion franchise in Los Angeles by the 1999 season, one in Houston by 2000 (using the current nickname, history and colors) and then impose a $10 million fine on any team that even thinks about re-locating before the year 2025.

Hope you enjoy the second half as much as the first.