Like a Good Mystery? NFL Offers Plenty of Intrigue for 1987 Season

If baseball is America’s pastime, football is America’s passion and it has become so in part because of man’s violent nature as well as the fact that most everybody loves a good mystery.

There is nothing really mysterious about baseball. Before the season starts it is already known that the Yankees will generate most of the headlines, the Pirates and Indians won’t be any good and that overcoats will be needed at the World Series.

Basketball is even worse since the Celtics and Lakers are the closest things to cinches in all of sport -- and will continue to be as long as Bird and Magic can bend over to tie their shoes.

There are a few givens about pro football, of course. The Super Bowl will be a one-sided bore and half the starting quarterbacks in the league will spend at least one night in a hospital.

But with the 1987 NFL season fast approaching, there are enough intrigues available to capture the imagination.

For openers, there is the question of whether there will even be a season. One would assume there will be, but there is never any accounting for greed or illogical behavior.

The league’s collective bargaining agreement has expired and the consensus is that crunch time will come after three weeks of the regular season. After three games, a season is considered to be complete as far as the league’s pension plan is concerned and once that occurs it will be time for the players to decide just how much they want to push the issue of free agency.

“I am cautiously optimistic that there won’t be a strike,” said Tex Schramm,Dallas Cowboys president and general manager. “I don’t see that there is any issue worth striking over. I can’t believe the players will make free agency a strike issue. It wouldn’t benefit that many players. I know the owners won’t give in on that issue.”

If there is, indeed, a complete season in the NFL, some of the more fascinating questions will be these:

-- What will happen to Jim McMahon? Between McMahon’s tender shoulder and his tender relationship with Coach Mike Ditka, the Chicago quarterback has become one of the biggest mystery men in the NFL.

-- What kind of heartbreak will befall the Cleveland Browns? Cleveland has made a recent habit of exiting the playoffs in disappointing fashion. Two years ago the Browns had Miami beat in the divisional round, only to fall victim to a comeback. Last year they had one foot headed in the direction of the Super Bowl before Denver’s John Elway altered the Browns’ plans.

-- Will this be the year New Orleans finally does it? The Saints have never had a winning season, but once again there is optimism on the bayou. The latter half of the season will include games against Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Houston and Green Bay so if the Saints can get off to a good start, this could be the year. Breath holding, however, is not advised.

-- Where will the Raiders go? Al Davis has been promised a stadium in Irwindale, Calif., but there is no predicting Davis. He might end up in Hawaii before it is all over.

-- How will Bo Jackson’s latest hobby turn out? Jackson’s decision to give pro football a try after starting his professional career with the Kansas City Royals has amused some and angered others. If he hits it big with the Raiders, the popular theory is that the Royals will never see him again.

-- And most of all, what will the New York Giants do to keep themselves from winning the Super Bowl for the second straight year? On the surface, the Giants seem to be a logical selection to again emerge as NFL champion. But it has become very unfashionable to repeat and it must be assumed that the Giants will stumble somewhere along the way.

As those questions are answered during the year, attention will automatically focus on some of the NFL’s old and new.

Walter Payton, for instance, will break the NFL rushing touchdown record the first time he scores on a running play. He currently shares the record of 106 with Jim Brown.

Seattle receiver Steve Largent is also closing in on the records recently set by Charlie Joiner. Largent needs 57 catches to surpass the mark of 750 held by Joiner and he needs 1,018 yards worth of catches to move past Joiner in the yardage department.

At the other end of the career spectrum, we have Vinny Testaverde and Brian Bosworth -- folk heroes in their college days whose collegiate career ended on nasty notes.

Testaverde, the Miami Hurricane Heisman Trophy winner whose bid for a national championship fell short against Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl last January, has been given the awesome responsibility of making a winner out of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

An unheard of 11,000 tickets were sold on the day of Tampa Bay’s opening preseason game, swelling the crowd to 56,000, and Testaverde responded by throwing three touchdown passes.

“That is a sampling of what we’ve said all along,” said an enthusiastic Tampa Bay coach Ray Perkins. “He is going to be a great NFL quarterback.”

Bosworth, meanwhile, ended his college career sitting on the sidelines during Oklahoma’s Orange Bowl win over Arkansas. The use of steriods resulted in his being banned from bowl competition.

The headline-seeking, outspoken Bosworth drew up a list of teams which he proclaimed he would postively not play for in the NFL and Seattle was on the list. Money, and lots of it, eventually lured the big linebacker to the Pacific Northwest.

“What we need to do now,” said Seattle Coach Chuck Knox, “is to get all the hoopla out of the way. You’ve got to let what you do on the field speak for you.”

From a team standpoint, meanwhile, the NFL has managed to achieve a certain degree of balance over the past few years and there are indications that balance could reach an all-time high this year.

Miami and Dallas have joined Pittsburgh as former powers seeking to regain former glory. Kansas City made the playoffs last year for the first time since 1971. Minnesota posted a winning record last year, Philadelphia made some recovery noises and New Orleans came within one win of a breakeven season.

Hope was even restored in Indianapolis, where the Colts won their last three games of the season.

Such hope can be fostered even further when it is realized that a winning record is usually all it takes to make the playoffs. Last year just three teams with a winning season failed to make the playoffs -- Cincinnati (10-6), Seattle (10-6) and Minnesota (9-7). The year before, there were only two -- Denver (11-5) and Washington (10-6).

Parity has even reached the league’s big show. Eight different teams have taken part in the last four Super Bowls -- the Los Angeles Raiders, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, New England, the New York Giants and Denver. Three different teams from the same conference -- the 49ers, Bears and Giants -- have won the last three Super Bowls.

One would not expect the Atlanta Falcons to continue that trend this year. Or the Detroit Lions, for that matter.

But you never know in the NFL. In the opening Monday night game of the year in 1986, the Dallas Cowboys rallied for two fourth-quarter touchdowns and knocked off the New York Giants.

With Herschel Walker running wild, the Cowboys seemed destined for big things. The Giants’ defense gave up 31 points that night and troubled times seemed to lie ahead.

A few months later the Cowboys had fallen flat and the Giants were on their way to the Super Bowl. Such evidence shows that it takes more than just a few clues to unravel the NFL mystery each year. That is what makes it enjoyable for so many fans around the land. If it was easy to figure out, it wouldn’t be any fun.