Washington Redskins Football Team

Can the Detroit Lions make it close when they meet the Washington Redskins today? The Redskins seldom lose at home, and this season they shut out three teams in RFK Stadium. What's more, the game wouldn't have been scheduled here if the Redskins didn't have a better record. The Lions are a terror at home, but they are 0-15 in Washington, where they lost in the season opener, 45-0. So can they make it close this time?

The well-rested Buffalo Bills dropped their bags and their gloves Monday night, ready to take on the world. This week their world revolves around the Washington Redskins. It's quite a contrast from a year ago before Super Bowl XXV, when the Bills had only a week to prepare for the New York Giants. This year, the NFL has returned to a two-week break between conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Buffalo Coach Marv Levy even showed up for his mandatory first-day news conference.

Lord knows, Thurman Thomas has lost his head before. Many times, in fact. Many times this week. He owns a National Football League most valuable player trophy, but he says he gets no respect. He lost last year's Super Bowl, but says he should have won the most valuable player trophy there, too.

Kicker Brad Daluiso of the Buffalo Bills probably will not make or miss the game-winning field goal in Super Bowl XXVI. His chances of getting hurt are slim. He will have one of the best seats in the Metrodome Sunday. If the Bills win, Daluiso will make $64,000 in playoff earnings. "You can't beat that," he said. Daluiso, a rookie from UCLA, is the ultimate NFL specialist, Buffalo's kickoff man. Nice work if you can get it.

Super Bowl XXVI. Many people think it will be Washington LV, Buffalo, X. Or some such. Brute strength always conquers in the end. Well, I don't know about that. But I do know some other things to bet on: --One team, confronted with fourth and one on the other's 40-yard line, will elect to punt. It will punt out of bounds at the other team's two-yard line, whereupon the receiving team will march 98 yards down the field and score.

For 10 years, the Super Bowl has been dominated by the NFC, although the explanation for that strange fact has always proved elusive. As a Super Bowl phenomenon, it seems to be more widely discussed among NFL coaches than any other But hold on: The mystery may have been cleared up this winter with the arrival of the Washington Redskins for their fourth NFL championship game in a decade. The Redskins are coached by Joe Gibbs, who, by this hour next week, could be a three-time Super Bowl winner.

It is, presumably, the best matchup we could get--Buffalo vs. Washington. Finesse vs. brute strength. Dempsey vs. Tunney. Ali vs. Frazier. Power vs. guile. John Daly vs. Corey Pavin. They play 16 games to get the ribbon clerks out of the pot. But sometimes, they stay in. We have had wild-card teams (i.e., teams that got in on a pass--the Oakland Raiders in 1981, for example), who have won. We have had teams that limped in on a wing and a prayer after early-season successes.

Rest assured, trouble awaits the Washington Redskins later this month at the first Minneapolis Super Bowl, almost all of it outside the Metrodome. Outside is where the American Indian Movement demonstrators will congregate to protest this month's racial-slur-with-a-fan-club, a sports nickname so anachronistically offensive that the Atlanta Braves' tomahawk chop looks positively PC by comparison. Inside is where the Buffalo Bills will play the Redskins on Jan.

In a league full of passing fancies, Mark Rypien is the rarest of Super Bowl quarterbacks--ready, willing and able to melt into the background of his team's vanilla personality. Rypien, a private, cerebral man in the very public position of starting for the Washington Redskins, emerges only when there is blame to be assigned, fingers to be pointed, losses to be explained.

Those precocious 30- and 40 somethings may be the hottest things going among NFL head-coaching candidates, but Richie Petitbon and Ted Marchibroda, both on the hard side of 50, do not lose sleep over it. Marchibroda, 60, the offensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills, won't even lose his shot at a top job because of it. He's the Indianapolis Colts' No. 1 choice to take over their barren franchise after Sunday's Super Bowl.