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Sport: Bengal, Bengal, Burning Bright

6 minute read
Tom Callahan

Football’s best quarterback leads Cincinnati into the playoffs

Being of quite a different stripe this year, the Cincinnati Bengals have sprung from last to first in the National Football League’s A.F.C. Central, and it all began with the helmets. Men have been shot out of cannons wearing less gaudy headgear, but there is more to these new helmets than a profusion of tiger stripes.

Paul Brown chose the design personally. Little about the Bengals is not of Brown’s personal choosing, and nothing is without design. Cincinnati’s expansion team was conceived by him in 1967 as a surrogate for the Cleveland Browns, the team he founded in 1946 that bears his name. After 17 mostly glorious seasons in Cleveland, Brown lost title in a power struggle with Art Modell, and Paul made sure he kept total command the next time.

For the first eight seasons of the fledgling Cincinnati franchise, which even dressed like the one in Cleveland, Brown coached the Bengals himself and provided them with what small identity they had. By expansion standards, the Bengals prospered until 1975, when Brown stepped down as coach but remained as general manager. That was the last year Cincinnati made the playoffs. Two coaches have come and gone since.

The third, Forrest Gregg, arrived last season, like Brown a deposed Cleveland coach, also fired by Modell. There seemed no more reason to expect Gregg could get by the specter of Brown and be his own man than to imagine the Bengals would get by the specter of the Browns and be their own team. But both things happened stunningly fast, and the changed stripes are symbolic.

“Men, this is going to be our helmet,” Gregg said as he previewed the new style for his amused troops last year, when the Bengals were a misleading 6-and-10, “and I don’t want anyone making fun of it.” The laughter stopped. Such is the old style of Gregg, the former Green Bay Packer offensive lineman, called by Vince Lombardi “the finest player I ever coached.” Following one legend, it may help to have been acquainted with another.

In the office of the headmaster and head coach, a billy club hangs on the wall, a clue to Gregg’s attitude on discipline. Asked how he turned this team around, he says, “I just sort of put some order to things. There’s time for play, and there’s time for work. We’re just very specific about when it’s time for work. Then again, Ken Anderson has been healthy.”

Very quietly, which is his way, Anderson has been the best quarterback in the N.F.L. this year and probably the most valuable player in the league. For eleven seasons, he has been a better quarterback than most people know, though in the past few years he has been prone to injury. Recently, the Cincinnati customers had been less than compassionate.

When his very first pass this season was intercepted, Anderson, who has the lowest interception percentage in N.F.L. history, was savagely booed by the home crowd. Directly, he was benched (just for the balance of that game, it turned out); no longer could he be sure of his place in the N.F.L., not that he ever was.

Anderson grew up in Batavia, Ill., next door to the town’s supreme athletic hero, Basketball Star Dan Issel. WELCOME TO BATAVIA, read a sign on the outskirts of town, HOME OF DAN ISSEL. The two were friends and played all the different sports. The only one who knew Anderson was a great athlete was Issel.

When it came time for college, Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp showed up in person to fetch Dan; nobody even telephoned Ken. He ended up at Illinois’ Augustana College (student body: 2,000), which had previously supplied the N.F.L. with one Bill Oakes, an offensive tackle, for three weeks. Not exactly a football hotbed. But Anderson, typically, felt “lucky” to be there. “I got to quarterback four years.”

The Bengals made him a third-round draft choice, and he made the Bengals.

This is the third season Anderson has been pro football’s highest-rated quarterback, completing 63% of his passes for 3,754 yds., 29 touchdowns and only ten interceptions. He is expected at his fourth Pro Bowl next month. In a larger city, with his statistics, he might be taking showers with Farrah Fawcett. If not as acclaimed as Joe Namath, he would at least be as famous as the Jets’ Rich ard Todd. The thought does not consume him. “I don’t mind not being too celebrated,” says Anderson. “It’s hard to say how you’ll feel looking back, but while you’re playing football, it’s enough just to love football.”

He is a precise man, a mathematics major with a law degree, and a precision passer. Suddenly the Bengals have a huge offensive line to protect him, principally 278-lb. Anthony Munoz from U.S.C.; a powerful runner to complement him, 249-lb. Pete Johnson from Ohio State; and pass catchers finally smart enough to go where he expects them to be, including one from Harvard. That’s Pat McInally, who is also the punter, the best in the league.

Rookie Receiver Cris Collinsworth from Florida has been such a sensation, catching over 1,000 yards’ worth of Anderson’s passes, there has been a tendency to assume nine-year veteran Isaac Curtis must have lost something.

Evidently acting on this assumption, San Diego tried to cover Curtis with just one man several weeks ago, and Isaac caught eight passes in the first half. Cincinnati’s defense is equally imposing, formed along another giant line and traced to the dignity of a 13-year cornerback named Ken Riley. This team is 12-4 on merit.

“We don’t say we’re the best,” says Anderson, but Las Vegas does, picking them to get to the Super Bowl. This Sunday Brown, Gregg, Anderson and the tiger stripes will preside at the first playoff game ever played in Cincinnati, and the home quarterback will not be booed.

— By Tom Callahan

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