Pro Football / Bob Oates : One Never Knows Where the Bears Will Put The Refrigerator

The undefeated Chicago Bears last week reduced 308-pound William Perry’s offensive role from runner to decoy. This has opened two schools of thought in Chicago:

--Coach Mike Ditka is cooling off on The Refrigerator as an offensive weapon, preferring to save him for defense.

--Ditka is saving him for a spot as a passer on national TV Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium.

Perry, whose uniform number is 72, is the first prominent Bear back to wear a number in the 70s since Red Grange, who wore 77. But his style is more like that of Bronko Nagurski, whose speciality was the jump pass.

Perry practices passing daily, and still plays offense better than defense.

Asked about this last Sunday, Buddy Ryan, the Bears’ defensive coach, said: “Offense is easier.”

The Dallas defense stands between Walter Payton and an NFL record this week. With 49 more yards, the Chicago running back will become the first pro to rush for 1,000 yards in each of nine seasons. Going in, Payton and Franco Harris are tied at eight.

Said Ditka: “Walter is the Bears’ all-time MVP.”

If the Cowboys win, Tony Dorsett could also hit 1,000. He has 898 now to Payton’s 951. The Cowboys almost never lose when Dorsett has a 100-yard game.

The first NFL backs to cross 1,000 this year are Freeman McNeil of the New York Jets, 1,052, and Gerald Riggs of the Atlanta Falcons, 1,015.

The Houston Oilers, tied for the lead in the AFC Central and used to playing in the comfortable Astrodome, ran into 30s weather in Buffalo Sunday and bombed, 20-0.

At the same time, the Windy City Bears took advantage of a cold gale to win easily without their injured quarterback, Jim McMahon.

“(Our) weather helps the Bears,” Ditka said frankly. “We know more about it than the other guys do.”

This is what’s keeping the Bears motivated in their drive to a 16-0 season.

“The winners get the (playoff) home field advantage, and we love winter in Chicago,” Ditka said.

No one else does. Of the seven passes thrown into the wind Sunday by Detroit’s Eric Hipple, two were intercepted.

“It will be interesting to see those California finesse teams here in January,” Chicago tackle Jim Covert said.

It will also be unfair, some people believe. They suggest that in the interests of justice for all, the NFL’s January playoff schedule should be played in domed stadiums.

On pleasant fall afternoons, the home-field edge is sizable enough in the NFL. Home teams won 58% of the time last year. But in the playoffs, the figure rose to nearly 70%.

Of pro football’s 110 winter playoff games since the first tournament in 1970, home teams have won 75 and lost 35.

One explanation:

The strategy of football changes completely on a winter day, as Payton said Sunday.

In good weather, the strategic idea is to set up passes with runs--or vice versa--he said, adding:

“In a (Chicago) wind you can’t fool a defensive team (and) loosen them up with deep passes.”

In other words, the NFL is offering the nation two kinds of football.

The object in the fall is to play a better game than the other team plays. The object in the playoffs is to play winter-weather football better.

It’s true that a cold, windy day is the same for both teams, but :

--The home team is more knowledgeable on the nuances of its weather, as Ditka said. For one thing, stadium winds blow in all directions.

--Home crowds warm up home teams, particularly after they get in front.

The NFL’s present playoff system is clearly unfair.

If the Raiders come up one game short of the playoffs this season, the turning point will be easy to identify. It was their blocked extra point in San Diego Sunday.

Dan Fouts couldn’t have caught them at the wire if they’d made that routine play.

Although mistakes are part of life, there are different kinds, or grades, of mistakes in football. Fumbles, for example, are inevitable. So are missed assignments. So are coaching errors.

Prudent players, however, never mess up an extra point. This is football’s simplest play, and, therefore, in a close game, a blown conversion is inexcusable.

The time-and-distance frame of a conversion kick is such that a blocked ball is never a credit to the blocking team. It is always the kicking team’s mistake. The Raiders will be lucky if this one doesn’t cost them their season.

The long punt return for a touchdown is sometimes called football’s most underrated play.

It is frequently the decisive play, as their coaches said Sunday after two NFL youngsters ran away from the field.

All-Pro receiver Louis Lipps of Pittsburgh scored on a 71-yard punt return. An improving New England receiver, Irving Fryar, scored on a punt run that measured 77.

“That was the play of the game,” Coach Chuck Noll said after Lipps’ sprint kept Pittsburgh first in the AFC Central.

Coach Raymond Berry said Fryar is one reason the Patriots are first in the AFC East after surprisingly starting 7-3 this season. Last year as a rookie, Fryar scored only once.

Said Berry: “He’s a touchdown waiting to happen every time he touches the ball.”

Five of the Patriots’ seven wins have come against Indianapolis, Tampa Bay, Green Bay and Buffalo twice. They’re at Seattle and at the Jets next, though, and that will be different.

Still, quarterback Steve Grogan expects more help from Fryar.

“Irving’s getting smarter every week,” he said.

In an AFC Central showdown for first place Sunday, one young quarterback, Boomer Esiason, outplayed another, Bernie Kosar. And so with six weeks left, Cincinnati is 5-5, Cleveland 4-6.

The difference between them--in what was doubtless only the first of 20 or 30 Esiason-Kosar matchups in the football hotbed that is Ohio--is that Esiason has been in the league 1 1/2 seasons, Kosar only a half-season.

As Cleveland tight end Ozzie Newsome told the Ohio writers:

“It’s not fair to compare Bernie to the other quarterbacks in this league. When Esiason was a rookie, I’m sure there were a lot of times he looked hesitant, too.”

Kosar ranks as the most prominent NFL rookie starter since Denver’s John Elway, who showed Monday night that he is among the NFL’s top quarterbacks.

This, however, is Elway’s third season. As a rookie he had so many problems that his coach, Dan Reeves, eventually apologized for starting him.

Life as a rookie, said Kosar, who is 1-4 as a starter, is like this: “You make a few good plays, then you make a bad one that hurts the team.”

Kosar’s specialty is reading defenses, a skill in which he is far advanced for a young pro but not yet the master.

Esiason is a more modern mobile quarterback, meaning he is maturing faster.

But both appear to be so gifted that Ohio can look forward to a long run of big-time football on a new level.