PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : Redskins Smooth, Bills Have Knocks

WASHINGTON —  The difference between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills, who have won their way into Super Bowl XXVI, is that the Bills resemble a sandlot team and the Redskins a machine.

With Mark Rypien at quarterback, the Washington offense gains ground smoothly, almost mechanically--running the ball inside and out, passing it short and deep.

Before he threw the touchdown passes that eliminated Detroit’s run-and-shoot team Sunday in RFK Stadium, 41-10, Rypien set the Lions up with well-designed plays of a kind that have been typical of Coach Joe Gibbs’ team here for a decade.

In Rich Stadium, by contrast, Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly played his usual sandlot-like game Sunday, seemingly throwing together a bunch of plays. This time they didn’t come off.

He tends to be the most erratic of the NFL’s great passers, and he proved it again against the Denver Broncos, who were eliminated, 10-7, although they were probably the better team.

If the Broncos were lucky to beat the Houston Oilers last Sunday, they were unlucky to lose this time.

It happened largely because last week’s star, quarterback John Elway, played injured when he played at all, and because the Denver kicker blew three field goals.

It can be taken for granted that the pain in his injured leg influenced the curious interception that defeated Elway, leading to the only touchdown of the day for Buffalo.

Put it all together, and the Bills didn’t appear to be team enough to beat Washington in the Jan 26. Super Bowl. By comparison, the Redskins seemed team enough to beat anybody.

Rypien’s game: Nobody this season has played quarterback as well as Rypien is playing it for the Redskins. He and his teammates are peaking at the right time, which could be the way Gibbs planned it.

The Lions had no defense for the second-half plays that put them away, Rypien’s touchdown throws to wide receivers Gary Clark and Art Monk--the first a 45-yard bomb, the second a rollout pass to Art Monk that gained 21 yards.

On the Clark play, the ball was in the air 57 yards, eventually dropping in softly to hit the target in stride a step beyond Detroit strong safety William White.

The decoy who made that play, Redskin wide receiver Gary Sanders, ran a hook pattern to the inside as Clark sprinted along the sideline toward the end zone. The other Lion safety, Bennie Blades, elected to double on Sanders instead of Clark, leaving the touchdown catcher alone with one defensive man.

Thus the design of the play was perfect if the ball could be thrown perfectly--and Rypien made it look easy.

Monk’s touchdown catch came in a corner of the end zone when Rypien again put the ball where Monk could keep a Detroit cornerback, Melvin Jenkins, screened out.

Said Detroit linebacker Chris Spielman: “When Rypien is on, I’ve never seen a long ball thrown like his since Terry Bradshaw.”

All-around team: Last season, which was Rypien’s fifth with the Redskins, he had some trouble--for the fifth season in a row--doing the things he did Sunday. But this season, suddenly, his game has come together.

And because it has, the Redskins are wearing the look of a champion. They have, apparently, all the other parts.

For example, this was a game that might have been tied at the half but for a second-quarter Gibbs gamble on fourth and one at the Detroit three--field goal country.

There are several Redskin teams--a jumbo-sized goal-line team among them--and after thinking it over when Rypien called time out, Gibbs decided to run the ball with his plow horse, Gerald Riggs. It gave the Washington offense the only touchdown it earned in the first half.

When called on, the Redskin running game, with the ball in the hands of Earnest Byner or Ricky Ervins, was another success story. On a day when Detroit’s Barry Sanders gained 44 yards, Ervins contributed 53 and Byner 62.

It didn’t always come easily against the Lions, but it came.

Unflappable Lion: In the week before this game, one thing the league knew about Detroit quarterback Erik Kramer was that he can throw straight, hard passes, having proved it last week. What it didn’t know was whether he was a football player or just a passer.

He turns out to be a football player. Against the Redskins, he took everything they had to give him and came back for more.

Other young quarterbacks might have quit in the opening minutes of the game when sacked or intercepted as Kramer was on the plays that gave the Redskins a quick 10-0 lead.

But before halftime, Kramer led the Lions on one of the most impressive touchdown drives of the playoffs. And late in the third quarter, when the Washington lead was 27-10, Kramer was leading in total offense.

He was unflappable against one of the toughest and most experienced of NFL teams, and his performance seemed to show that the run-and-shoot is a big-time offense.

Consider Kramer’s problems: He was up against a demonstrably better team; he was in an unfriendly stadium where the crowd was on him from the start and he could look back on less than one full season as an NFL quarterback.

Yet he had the Lions in what was a 20-10 game in the third quarter when the Redskin defensive coordinator, Richie Petitbon, made the day’s turning-point call. On a Detroit drive, Kramer had reached the Washington 26-yard line when Petitbon sent linebacker Andre Collins after him on third and five.

The sack ended Detroit’s last, best chance, and when the big Rypien-Clark touchdown followed shortly, it was, finally, all over for Kramer.