Whatever happened to parity?
That's the unanswered question about the start of the 1998 NFL season.
Four weeks into the season, there are seven unbeaten teams and six winless teams.
That means 13 of the 30 teams have either won all their games or lost all their games.
That's surprising in an era when free agency has tended to group the teams together. Last year, there were seven teams -- four unbeaten and three winless -- in this category after four weeks. The gap between the haves and have-nots seems to be %% widening.
There are various theories about this development. One popular one is that it's simply too early to make any judgments.
The most intriguing one, though, is that in this era of parity, a franchise quarterback makes more difference than ever.
Brett Favre, for example, can virtually win games all by himself in Green Bay with little help from his running game.
It's noteworthy that six of the seven unbeatens -- Green Bay (Favre), San Francisco (Steve Young), Denver (John Elway, although he's been hurt), Jacksonville (Mark Brunell), Miami (Dan Marino) and Minnesota (Randall Cunningham) either have a franchise quarterback or one (Cunningham) playing the best ball of his career.
The seventh team is New Orleans, and the Saints have benefited from a soft schedule (St. Louis, Carolina and Indianapolis) and figure to lose their next two to New England and San Francisco.
The era when a Joe Gibbs could win a Super Bowl by putting together a veteran team around an average quarterback (Mark Rypien in 1991) may be all but over. It's too difficult to keep a team together the way Gibbs could in the pre-salary cap days when he won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks.
Now the easiest way to win is to get a top-notch quarterback.
Ozzie Newsome, the Ravens' vice president of player personnel, said, "They definitely make the difference. There's probably six to eight -- I don't want to have to name them -- elite quarterbacks, and they are the difference in the game."
Scott Piolo, the New York Jets' director of pro personnel, said, "The teams with the upper-tier quarterbacks have a chance to win every single week. The team that don't have a chance to lose every single week."
By contrast, the winless teams tend to have quarterback problems. The Washington Redskins, for example, are down to Trent Green now that Gus Frerotte has flopped and Jeff Hostetler is out for the year with a knee injury.
The Redskins are so helpless that Denver coach Mike Shanahan decided to rest Elway's tender hamstring last week and gave the start to shopworn veteran Bubby Brister.
The value of the top quarterbacks is so great that the only real question about this season now is if Favre and Young stay healthy and if Elway can overcome his hamstring problems.
If they're standing at the end, Favre and Young -- who meet Nov. 1 in Green Bay -- are likely to duel in the NFC title game, with the winner playing Denver in the Super Bowl.
Minnesota gets its chance tomorrow night to knock off the Packers. If they fail, the Packers then have an open date and games against the Lions and Ravens before playing host to San Francisco.
All bets are off, of course, if Favre, Young or Elway gets hurt.
As Newsome said, "Where would Green Bay be if Favre gets hurt?"
The Packers hope they don't get to answer that question since Favre has answered the bell 97 straight games. As long as he keeps extending that streak, the Packers will be in contention at the end.
Big Monday matchup
When the unbeaten Packers play the unbeaten Vikings tomorrow night in the best Monday night matchup so far this season, NFL officials will be keeping their fingers crossed.
Since the Monday ratings are down 15 percent, they're hoping this will bring the kind of ratings to which the NFL is accustomed.
"Monday Night Football" wasn't help by opening on Labor Day night -- next year the schedule will be moved back a week -- and was blindsided by the Cubs-Giants playoff game last week. The NFL got a boost during the 1994 baseball strike when it was the only game in September.
The earlier starting time doesn't seem to have made much difference, but viewers could be turned off by the dreadful pre-game show, "Monday Night Blast."
The show from the ESPN Zone in Baltimore is a good promotion for the city and for the latest Disney venture, but it doesn't much whet the appetite of football fans.
If the Vikings-Packers game brings back the audience, it will probably mean the real problem is that the matchups haven't been very good so far.
Feuding update
You need a scorecard in the NFL to keep up with the feuds.
In the latest one, Bob Kraft, the New England owner, publicly knocked Green Bay general manager Ron Wolf for reportedly making a deal that coach Mike Holmgren can leave at the end of this year if the Packers get a second-round pick as compensation.
Kraft compared that to the four picks he got for letting Bill Parcells go to the Jets and said, "That's the difference between a principal running a team and a hired gun. When you're an owner operator, you look at things differently from an employee managing an asset."
To start with, the two situations are different because the Jets had tried to hire Parcells when the draft-picks deal was made.
But Wolf also noted that even though the Packers don't have an owner, they have an executive committee and a chairman, Bob Harlan, who hired him.
"He's my boss," Wolf said, and noted he reports to Harlan on any major moves.
Of Kraft's comments, Wolf said, "This is a case of a guy who hasn't been in the league very long making comments about things he doesn't know much about."
So what's really behind all this?
Wolf and Parcells are good friends, so a friend of Parcells is no friend of Kraft's in the little world of the NFL.
Morris sidelined
Former Raven and current Bear Bam Morris was inactive for last week's game behind Edgar Bennett and Curtis Enis and expects the same today. He and and his agent, Terry Lavenstein, have asked the Bears to trade him.
Morris, meanwhile, still has off-the-field problems.
His former agent, Josh Kaufman, said he will file a lawsuit against Morris for unpaid loans of $10,000 and will file a grievance with the NFL Players Association for $6,000 in unpaid adviser's fees.
Rhodes' decision
When Phiadelphia Eagles coach Ray Rhodes said last week of his quarterback situation, "I've got to make a decision on what's best for the other 51 guys in the locker room," that seemed to indicate he was going with veteran Rodney Peete against Denver.
Two days later, he made the terse announcement he was going with young Bobby Hoying.
"I'm not going to talk about the QB thing. We're not going to talk about quarterbacks. Anything about Denver?" Rhodes said.
That seemed to indicate Rhodes was ordered to play Hoying by either director of football operations Tom Modrak or owner Jeff Lurie.
For the long-term health of the franchise, it makes sense to play Hoying and find out if he's the answer or whether they need to draft a quarterback.
But the episode is an indication that Rhodes isn't part of the future of the team regardless of whether or not Hoying is.
Quick facts
Steve Young of San Francisco has played in every NFL stadium except the new ones in Baltimore, Tampa and St. Louis (he was injured when the 49ers played there in 1996 and 1997).
The Detroit Lions have paid Scott Mitchell $12 million of the four-year $21 million deal he signed last year although he's played in just 18 games since signing it.
Names in the news
Arizona owner Bill Bidwill was awarded a game ball when the Cardinals beat the St. Louis Rams in their first regular-season game in St. Louis since they moved after the 1987 season.
Washington coach Norv Turner was given a vote of confidence last week by owner John Kent Cooke. That's usually a kiss of death, but in this case, Cooke may be gone before Turner because the team is for sale and Cooke is having problems coming up with the money to buy it. His father, the late Jack Kent Cooke, left the team to a foundation.
Chad Brown, who left Pittsburgh a year ago as a free agent, was upset when he was booed by Steelers fans last week. "Two years ago, they loved me. How can they turn to hate in two years?" Brown said.
Quatable
"This is not a game. This is a war. That's the posture I'm taking. I hope to God that's the posture my guys are taking. I hope by the end of the week, their teeth will be shorter because they've have been grinding all week."
-- Minnesota offensive line coach Mike Tice on tomorrow night's game at Green Bay.
Pub Date: 10/04/98 %%