This Time, He’s Got a Chance : Rich Campbell Starts Career All Over Again With Raiders

Rich Campbell, one-time Cal Golden Bear, golden no longer, sits on a bench in the Raiders’ camp, trying to explain how his career came to this.

You want the short version? Try two words: Bob Schnelker.

Schnelker is the Green Bay Packers’ offensive coordinator and was, until recently, Campbell’s coach. Schnelker and Campbell had a difference of opinion concerning Campbell’s ability. Campbell thought he had some, and Schnelker didn’t.

Specifically, Campbell thought he had a big league arm. Schnelker didn’t, and told the world.

Whatever else Schnelker was, he was the boss.

Campbell, the sixth player chosen in the 1981 draft, was relegated to a career of trying to keep warm on the Wisconsin tundra and doing TV commercials for a sausage company.

In four years, he played in eight games. He threw 68 passes, 30 of them in a single game in 1981 when all the other quarterbacks were hurt. Finally, the Packers parceled him off to the Raiders for the ever-popular undisclosed draft choice.

“The last two years, I asked them to trade me,” Campbell said. “Finally this year, I asked them to trade me, or cut me, or do anything to me, just get rid of me. They finally got around to doing it.

“Was I happy to come to the Raiders? To tell you the truth, I’d have been happy if it was Buffalo or anybody. I’d have been excited. But the fact that it was the Raiders was even better. I was the happiest man in the world. When I found out I was traded, I was probably happier than the day I was the sixth player drafted.”

The Raiders, talent retrieval their specialty, knew him from his high school days at San Jose and his halcyon days at Berkeley. The Raiders go their own way in scouting, shunning the combines, but they’d had him rated as high as everyone else.

They run a players’ club. Their system reclaimed Jim Plunkett when the world thought he was washed up. Campbell’s cost was little more than the price of the phone call. So why not?

“They get as much accomplished as the Packers did, and the atmosphere is so much more relaxed,” Campbell said.

“There were so many coaches yelling at players in Green Bay. They coach you here, they don’t yell at you. That’s important to me. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to be yelled at. If something happens here, Larry (Kennan, quarterback coach) talks to me. In Green Bay, Bob Schnelker screamed at me on the practice field. Then he yelled at me that night again watching the films.

“Schnelker was the type of guy who decided for you or against you, within a week. He decided I wasn’t going to play for him. From that point, he started criticizing me publicly. He did some things that were extremely cruel, that I never heard of a coach doing.

“He was critical of my throwing motion. Heck, I threw for 7,000 yards in college.

“My first three years, Coach Starr was the head coach. I did go to Bart, but Bart had gone through such an emasculation, he had really lost his power. The executive committee (which runs the community-owned Packers) had forced him to hire an offensive coordinator. He went out and hired Schnelker. Schnelker pretty much had his own way, and he knew it. Bart was very sympathetic, but he just didn’t make the decisions he should have made.

“All four years, it was (Lynn) Dickey, (David) Whitehurst and me. It didn’t surprise me I was the third guy (as a rookie), but I know from my second year on I showed enough to be the backup, which I never was.

“Last year, they signed a kid from Wisconsin (Randy Wright). I figured, if they kept him, the natural process would be to get rid of me. They got rid of Whitehurst and kept me the third guy.

“It was the most frustrating thing I ever had to go through. Because even the few times I did play, I’d get down on myself. Everything just seemed to be a struggle.

“I realize I have some scar tissue left. I was under so much negative criticism. Right now I’m just trying to regain a positive outlook on football and life in general.

“As far as my technique goes, they’re just letting me play here. I think they realize to a certain degree, my mind has been screwed around enough in Green Bay. I’ve got enough to think about here, learning the system. I think they’re going to let me do my thing for a while.

“I know I can make this football team, whether there are two quarterbacks on it (as there were last season), or three. I know what Rich Campbell can do. If I don’t make it here, I believe I can make it somewhere else. But at this point, I’m counting on being here.

“It’s a happy time in the sense I feel relaxed here, that I’ve got an opportunity in front of me. It’s strange because I really don’t have the security I’ve had the last four years. Being a first-round draft choice, I always felt, one way or the other, they’d keep me around. Whereas here, I can’t be so sure.

“I sure didn’t think it would be anything like this. You grow up as a kid always thinking it would be incredible, getting paid big bucks to play a kids’ game.”

For every kid who comes from nowhere to become a star, there is one making the trip in the other direction, which isn’t nearly as much fun. Ask Rich Campbell who, at 26, is trying to turn it around once more.