PRO FOOTBALL : It’s the Space-Age Approach, and It’s Working Well for Bills and Oilers

After the first two weeks, the only undefeated AFC teams are the NFL’s most effective new-wave, high-tech pair, the Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers.

And that’s probably no coincidence. The no-huddle Bills and the run-and-shoot Oilers are averaging 43.5 and 38.5 points, respectively, ranking 1-2 in the league.

But there’s one significant difference. The Bills so far have been a defensive pushover and the Oilers a defensive power. “We’re doing a better job against the other (offensive) guys than we did last year,” Houston Coach Jack Pardee said Monday, talking about changes from 1990, his first season in charge.

A trade with the San Diego Chargers, bringing in Lee Williams to join Ray Childress, William Fuller and Sean Jones, has strengthened Pardee’s defensive line.

And the linebacking has improved with the maturing of Lamar Lathon, the No. 1 draft choice last year, whose touchdown run with an interception Sunday doomed the Cincinnati Bengals, 30-7. That on a night that otherwise featured quarterback Warren Moon’s 315 yards passing and running back Allen Pinkett’s second consecutive 100-yard game.

The Oilers weren’t a complete team last season in their first year in the run-and-shoot. They didn’t run or defend aggressively enough. They do now. They’re even playing ball-control now, holding possession for 13 minutes in one quarter, the second, at Cincinnati.

For the first time since the Bum Phillips era, the Oilers appear to be a legitimate contender.

Caught looking: The Ram play that beat the New York Giants in Sunday’s 19-13 game wasn’t Robert Delpino’s four-inch touchdown run, as necessary as it was. The key to the upset was an earlier draw play that Delpino ran on third and nine to the Giant three-yard line.

Gaining 36 yards, it set up his touchdown reach on fourth down.

And that’s a reminder that the draw play--which is a fake pass--is probably the best running play in football today.

When it works as effectively as Delpino worked it, the linebackers are caught looking at the quarterback. They’ve taken a step or two toward the pass receivers in their midst, and they’re out of position when the running back comes thundering by.

The draw play is the staple run of the run-and-shoot. Last year, Detroit’s Barry Sanders gained most of his league-leading 1,304 yards on such plays.

The Giants seldom yield 36 yards to a power runner, or a passer, on any down. At the critical instant in Giants Stadium, the Rams probably couldn’t have picked up a first down any other way.

Patience required: The Raiders’ 90-yard touchdown drive at the start of Sunday’s second half, which won the Denver game, 16-13, was as well planned and executed as any such series by any NFL team this season.

It required a defensive mistake to get the touchdown--on quarterback Jay Schroeder’s 16-yard pass into the end zone to wide receiver Willie Gault--but the Raiders were there, at least, to capitalize on the error.

The series followed a first half in which the Raiders scored only a field goal in what for nearly 40 minutes was a 6-3 game.

For the spectators, not much in the way of fireworks.

But that’s the way the Raiders do it--have almost always done it. They’re a big-play team, meaning that their little plays are often as unproductive as they are unspectacular.

What a Raider fan needs is patience. Over the years, this has been a team that usually has the look of a plodder, but is usually setting something up.

Former-Ram Day: Eric Dickerson, the widely known running back, will make his first professional appearance at the Coliseum Sunday, when he comes in with the Indianapolis Colts to test the Raiders.

Once a local resident, Dickerson has played most of his California football at Anaheim.

He’s on the team that took the NFL’s first all-300-pound offensive line into a regular-season game Sunday at Miami. The Colt line didn’t simply average 300. Its smallest member is center Ray Donaldson, who weighs an even 300.

Another former Ram, tackle Irv Pankey, will break the mold when he makes his debut here as a Colt starter. Pankey weighs 295.

Worth a thousand words: The most graphic picture of the week was shown by the Turner network at Sunday night’s Cincinnati game--a picture of the cuts and scars in the artificial turf after the groundskeepers had laid it over the baseball infield at Riverfront Stadium.

It seems unlikely that a man in cleats could indefinitely race over those gaping scars without getting stuck and tearing up a knee.

It’s questionable, in fact, whether the NFL should allow football to be played on such surfaces.

The problem is that football in mud or snow in Cincinnati, when games are scheduled on grass fields, isn’t football at all.

It’s a tough problem, but not beyond solving. The NFL should simply give its artificial turf teams 10 years or less to change surfaces.

There has to be a better way than playing on the cuts and ridges of, say, the Astrodome in Houston, where Roger Craig and Marcus Allen have been injured in successive years.

Quote Department:

Don Shula, Miami coach, on new running back Mark Higgs, who has exceeded 100 yards in each of the Dolphins’ first two games: “He’s a guy who gets in the hole in a hurry, and gets the max out of it.”

Mark Higgs on his four-year NFL career in Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami: “Our second-string line (in Miami) is better than the starters were at Philadelphia.”

Boomer Esiason, Cincinnati quarterback, on the Bengals’ 0-2 start: “Everyone’s down right now.”

Steve DeBerg, Kansas City’s play-action quarterback, who threw only four interceptions last year, on the two he delivered in the fourth quarter at New Orleans Sunday: “When you’re behind, and they know you have to throw, it’s harder.”