Fontes Certain He Has Lions on Right Track : Pro football: Detroit coach, who has revamped offense and defense, is building a quality team despite recent setbacks.

By JOHN WEYLER

Nov. 16, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Bill Parcells, the former New York Giant coach-turned-television-analyst, said before the season that he didn’t see how Wayne Fontes could keep his job through the end of the year. Oddsmaker Danny Sheridan went a step further, listing 6-1 odds that Fontes would be fired in 1991.

Fontes, however, had a vision of his own. And halfway through the season, the Detroit Lions’ coach had a couple of numbers he wanted to post on the board:

Make that 6-2, Danny boy, as in six Detroit victories and only two losses.

Instead of answering questions about his job security, Fontes was able to work the crowd at press conferences for a change. “Now when people wave at me, I can see all their fingers,” he said.

Fontes didn’t get much time to enjoy it, though. Quarterback Rodney Peete’s season ended when he tore his Achilles’ tendon Oct. 27 against Dallas. Erik Kramer, a free agent from the Canadian Football League, is now the quarterback and the Lions have tumbled to 6-4.

Two weeks, two losses and the questions arise yet again.

“I think most of that job-being-on-the-bubble stuff is made by the press,” Fontes said. “The only guy I have to answer to is (owner William Clay) Ford, and he knows it takes time to build a team.

“This is our third year of our rebuilding program and I think we’re on the right track. It’s just been unfortunate that we’ve lost a couple important players. I think my owner is aware of that and he knows that this franchise is much better than it’s been in a long time. That’s the bottom line. When my time is up, we’ll just see how it works out.”

Even before he was named interim head coach three years ago, Fontes had a plan for rebuilding the Lions. Ford gave him a three-year contract in 1988 and then quickly added a two-year extension, saying that Fontes deserved the time to build a quality team.

Taking over a team that had averaged fewer than five victories per season the past five years, Fontes was determined to start a youth movement and see it through. No shortcuts. No quick fixes. The renovation program began immediately and continues.

Of the 22 players who started on opening day of Fontes’ first full season in 1989, only five started in the opener this year. There are 10 players starting now who weren’t even starters on opening day last year. Twelve of the 22 players in the starting lineup were drafted after 1988.

And the average NFL experience on the team is fewer than three years.

The Lions were 7-9 in Fontes’ first full year, 6-10 last season. Then he decided to make a couple of revisions in the grand scheme. He fired run-and-shoot gurus Mouse Davis and June Jones and hired Dave Levy as offensive coordinator. The Lions also switched to a more aggressive 4-3 defense.

The changes that needed to be made in the offense were as obvious as 1-2-3: One. Detroit has Barry Sanders, probably the most gifted ballcarrier in the NFL. Two. Detroit is employing a run-and-shoot attack that doesn’t even include an outside rushing play in the playbook. Three. Detroit needs to dump the run-and-shoot.

Fontes and Levy decided to alter the Lions’ Silver Stretch run-and-shoot attack to employ bigger receivers, tight ends and fullbacks to block for Sanders. The changes also included a host of new running plays. The run-and-shoot now accounts for less than one-third of the total offense.

“The biggest change was trying to get Barry Sanders involved in the offense more,” Fontes said. “We wanted to be more successful in controlling the ball and controlling more of the clock.”

The Lions unveiled their revamped offense and attacking defense in the season-opener at Washington’s RFK Stadium.

The Redskins won, 45-0.

Fontes spent a sleepless night wondering if he had completely blown it, but came to the conclusion that the program was indeed headed in the right direction. The next morning at a team meeting, he asked the players to trust him and trust what he was doing.

“Wayne never hit the panic button, and that was really important because players can tell when a guy has lost it,” nose tackle Jerry Ball told the Flint (Mich.) Journal. “The way he came through that loss was very important. If Wayne would’ve lost it, we probably would have too.”

Sanders, who missed the opener because of a rib injury, returned the next week and rushed for 43 yards. It was the first game of a five-game Detroit winning streak. He rushed for 143 yards in Week 3, 179 in Week 4, 160 in Week 5 and 116 in Week 6.

By the time the Lions had run their record to 5-1 with a 24-20 victory over Minnesota, defenses bent on stopping Sanders had become prime targets for Peete’s passes. Peete completed 24 of 38 passes for 281 yards and two touchdowns against the Vikings, leading three fourth-quarter touchdown drives as the Lions rebounded from a 17-point deficit.

“We wanted to put the ball in Barry’s hands more and by doing that, people started stacking the line of scrimmage,” Fontes said. “When they did that, Rodney came into his own. He became a more efficient quarterback. He started throwing for a higher percentage and moving the ball down the field.

“So we were still running for 100 yards a game, but now we’re also throwing for 200 or 250. It improved our whole offensive scheme.”

Then in the first quarter against Dallas, Peete dodged a Cowboy blitz and scrambled out of the pocket. He planted his foot to throw and went down in a heap.

“There was no contact on the play,” Fontes said. “He just went down. Then he just went straight to the bench and threw his hands up.

“We thought we were just growing. It was about Rodney’s 22nd game as our starting quarterback, and everything was going just super. It’s really taken the starch out of our sails.”

Peete’s injury was a crushing blow for a young team on the rise. His status as a team leader had soared, and he had become the defense’s No. 1 cheerleader and the offense’s prime crunch-time player.

“It hurt us tremendously because when he was off the field, he would pick the defense up,” Fontes said. “And then if he’d go in and throw an interception or something, the defense would say, ‘Don’t worry, Rodney, we’ll get it back for you.’

“He was becoming the guy the other players would look to.”

Fontes the Lion-hearted isn’t likely to lose the faith, but he is struggling to maintain a positive team psyche, working to keep his players focused on the task at hand and not dwelling on what might have been.

“The team is down right now,” he said. “Sure, Rodney was really, really coming on. He was getting better every time he took a snap. But we don’t want to talk about that too much. The thing we have to do is regroup, try to win a few more games and see what happens when the season is over.”

Fontes won’t be the only guy standing on the Silverdome artificial turf Sunday who’s feeling down on his luck. In fact, Ram Coach John Robinson would be glad to trade his 3-7 record for his old buddy Fontes’ 6-4 mark.

Robinson and Fontes were assistants under John McKay at USC in 1972, ’73 and ’74 and drove to work together.

“We lived right near each other,” Robinson said. “He was a good guy, a fun guy.”

Fontes remembers the relationship as being more football than fun, however.

“We’d ride to work together, and I’d go to his house on weekends or he’d come to mine, and we’d always talk football,” Fontes said. “We’d always talk football. He was so focused. He’d ask how I would try to stop a certain thing they were trying to do offensively, and I’d ask which defenses caused offenses certain problems.

“He kept me focused, and I have great respect for him because he taught me a lot.”