PRO FOOTBALL : Hostetler Is Threat to Reign of 49ers

For the first time in two years or more, the San Francisco 49ers, who will play the New York Giants next, are facing a genuine threat to their little Super Bowl dynasty.

The 49ers knew last week that if they played their game, they could take the Washington Redskins out of the playoffs, as they did Saturday, 28-10.

Similarly, they knew a year ago that if they played their game, they could eliminate Minnesota and the Rams in playoff rounds and then Denver in Super Bowl XXIV.

But this time around, the 49ers’ best game may not be good enough to turn back the Giants, who will be at Candlestick Park Sunday with a distressingly familiar old defense and an alarmingly unfamiliar new quarterback, Jeff Hostetler.

The Giants, who on Dec. 3 lost at Candlestick Park, 7-3, with Phil Simms at quarterback, play different football with Hostetler.

Their offense is less predictable and less conservative with Hostetler than with Simms, who injured a foot in a 17-13 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Dec. 15.

That day, after the Giants called for Hostetler, they immediately called livelier plays--as they did before when making that change.

And in New Jersey Sunday, their ultraconservative coach, Bill Parcells, got positively giddy when he saw Hostetler out there against the Chicago Bears, who eventually fell quietly, 31-3.

To get a fast 10-0 lead in the Bear game, Parcells authorized pass plays every time the Giants had a first down in the first quarter.

After building a 17-3 lead on Hostetler’s passes and scrambles, the Giants protected it with second-half runs.

That’s exactly the way the 49ers used to do it, in the old days--when they could run.

The new man on the NFL block, the new face in the playoff program is Hostetler.

One of the best running quarterbacks to come along in recent years, Hostetler, a coolly competent player, strengthens the Giants in the two places where they need it most--running the ball, now that they’ve lost Rodney Hampton, and passing it.

Not that he’s a better passer than Simms--no Giant is. But the Giants are more willing to throw it when Hostetler is on the field. And for them, that’s a plus.

One reason for their new interest in passing is that Hostetler, playing for a coach who distrusts young players, is no longer a kid, no longer a Parcells apprentice. At 29, he can look back on seven years with the Giants, most of them well out of Parcells’ sight.

A more persuasive reason is that Hostetler is one of the NFL’s few intellectuals, one of football’s smartest quarterbacks since Pat Haden.

At West Virginia, where he was an Academic All-American, Hostetler, who stands 6 feet 3 and weighs 215, finished with a 3.85 grade-point average in finance. Combining brains with a feel for politics, he also dated the coach’s daughter and then married her.

Earlier, Hostetler was his high school valedictorian. Much more important to his football career, he was both a linebacker and tailback in high school, once gaining 1,000 yards.

He still looks like a linebacker and he still runs like a tailback. And sometimes, he passes like an NFL quarterback.

In any case, the Giants trust him to throw the ball, and if you know the Giants, that’s an awesome fact.

The extraordinary thing about the 49ers in the Redskin game Saturday--once again--was that Joe Montana controlled the ball with passes when his backs couldn’t run it.

It is conventional wisdom in this sport that if your opponent is unable to gain yards on the ground in order to get or hold a lead, your side should be able to make big defensive plays.

But Montana’s passes on passing downs frustrated Washington’s defense repeatedly, following a season-long pattern. The good-pass, no-run 49ers are one of the most unbalanced teams ever to get this far in the NFL playoffs.

They’re illustrating two things:

--The brilliance of Montana. Has the game ever seen such a quarterback?

--The power of the pass. If there’s a passer, receiver or pass blocker available, why draft a running back high?

The Bears, in their last appearance of the season--against the Giants Sunday--paid the price for not having played their best passer, rookie Peter Tom Willis, in the meaningless games of late December.

Maybe Willis is an NFL quarterback and maybe he isn’t, but nobody will know until at least next fall. When backup Mike Tomczak talked Coach Mike Ditka out of even trying out Willis last month, the Bears lost their only chance to survive in the playoffs.

The one sure thing was that to survive, they needed more passer than Tomczak.

After the Giants ran the score to 24-3 on their first drive of the second half, the Bears could have rallied only with effective passing.

It didn’t figure that they could run the ball against the 3-4, 4-3, or any other Giant defense--they finished without a first down rushing--and it didn’t figure that they could shut down the Giant offense.

What they needed was something more. They lost because they weren’t prepared to throw the ball productively.

In the other Sunday game, the Raiders broke a 10-10 tie in the fourth quarter, ousting Cincinnati, 20-10, with the kind of football it will take to oust the Bills in frozen Buffalo Sunday--ball-control runs by Marcus Allen and sure passes by Jay Schroeder.

It is being said that the Raiders would have trouble against the Bills anywhere. Does that mean that in Buffalo’s weather, victory is out of the question?

“The weather won’t be a factor,” Raider executive Al LoCasale, a former coach, said. “It’s a factor, of course, in preparation--but it won’t be an imbalancing factor in the game. If there’s a wind, it will bother (both sides). If there’s a traction (problem), it will be the same for both.”

For most of the century, other football coaches venturing into impossible weather from sunny fields or domed stadiums have said much the same, usually without meaning it.

The Raiders, on their record in winter football, mean it. They may lose in Buffalo, but they won’t lose to the chill factor.

The crowd of 92,045 for the Raiders and Bengals Sunday--subtracted from capacity by only 443 no-shows--was one of the NFL’s largest for a game with so few unused tickets.

In other years, the Bears and Denver Broncos have occasionally attracted crowds without no-shows, or with a minimal no-show count, but their stadiums seat only 66,946 and 76,273.

With tickets priced at $36, $25 and $15, the Coliseum gate Sunday exceeded $2.6 million.

In pro football, playoff gate money goes to the league, which pays the competing teams flat fees.

Quarterback Dan Marino and Miami Coach Don Shula were at the top of their game in Buffalo Saturday and still lost, 44-34.

Down, 20-3, in the second quarter, facing third and five, the wind and the snow blasting him in the face, Marino passed to Mark Duper for a first down, and then for a touchdown.

And Marino never did quit, even when a fumbled kickoff made it impossible for him to win in a 14-14 fourth quarter.

Shula, outmanned but not outthought, was ready with the surprise touchdown plays that kept the game even--a bootleg run by Marino and a pass to a guard, Roy Foster, who lined up at tight end in a short-yardage formation.

Other NFL teams this season, finding themselves within reach of touchdowns, tried unsuccessfully to hammer the ball in with conventional plays. The Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles come to mind.

Shula is different. And Shula was ready.

CHANGE OF VENUE: Barring a last-minute rejection by NFL owners, the 1993 Super Bowl will be moved from Phoenix to Pasadena or San Diego.