Chiefs Crack the Raider Defensive Cornerstones : Kansas City’s Wide Receivers Do Quite a Number on Hayes and Haynes

Ever since the Raiders picked up cornerback Mike Haynes in 1983, they have played a kind of pass defense that few offensive teams can handle.

In a league that basically prefers zone coverages, the Raiders have achieved spectacular results playing man-to-man defense with Haynes and Lester Hayes at the corners

They won Super Bowl XVIII with that scheme. And even when they were losing some games last year, it wasn’t their defense that failed, it was the offense.

But this all changed Thursday night. Using an exceptional game plan charted by third-year Coach John Mackovic, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Raiders by beating their cornerbacks on man-to-man passes.

There were other reasons why the Chiefs won from a good team by a score of this size, 36-20, but their decisive points were all produced or set up with throws by quarterback Bill Kenney to receivers who were the personal responsibility of Hayes and Haynes.

“These are the best cornerbacks in football but we accepted the challenge,” Kansas City wide receiver Carlos Carson said after catching five Kenney passes for 118 yards and a touchdown.

All told, Chiefs’ wide receivers going against Hayes and Haynes made 10 of Kansas City’s 18 catches.

“If they were going to go on playing us one-to-one,” said Carson, “we were going to go at them.”

Few other National Football League teams have recently felt this way in Raider games. The Raider cornerbacks are so swift and gifted--by comparison with others in the league--that it has seemed like suicide to most teams to attack them.

But Mackovic reasoned this way:

--You can’t expect to run consistently against Matt Millen, Lyle Alzado, Howie Long and the others in the Raider defense.

--You can’t make a living throwing the ball over the middle.

--This leaves one last option: go after Hayes and Haynes.

Theoretically, for any defense employing man-to-man coverages, that’s the weakness, anyway. That’s where the defense is vulnerable. As most coaches say, no defensive back can cover their best receivers one-on-one.

But Mackovic became one of the few Raider opponents of recent years to base his game plan on an attack at the corners.

“It isn’t easy to do,” he said afterward. “Their cornerbacks play your receivers so tight that it takes a nearly perfect throw to get the ball in. But whenever Bill (Kenney) got the protection, the pass was right there.”

Kenney completed only 18 of 38 for 259 yards, but many of his misses were throwaways.

“Football is a game in which you have to attack the other guys with your strength,” Kenney said. “And our strength is our wide receivers. Their corners are probably the best in the league but we weren’t afraid of them because we have (wide receivers) Carson, (Henry) Marshall and (Stephone) Paige.”

Over the years, the Raiders’ defensive concept, as planned by owner Al Davis and Coach Tom Flores, has been the most unusual as well as the most successful in football--whenever their offense scored a few touchdowns.

It is based on simple arithmetic. If the defensive team’s corners can cover the other team’s wide receivers one-on-one, that leaves nine other defensive people to stop eight offensive players, excluding the quarterback.

But this is a theory that hasn’t really been tested by a good offensive team lately. Most Raider opponents will throw at Hayes occasionally but rarely at Haynes. The significance of Thursday’s game is that Mackovic tested the Raiders’ strange defense at length, and finally beat it.

The only suspense in the game was whether the Chiefs could work their way into the end zone. In the first half they came down the field repeatedly on Kenney’s passes but failed to go all the way. They failed in large part because a passing team has less real estate to work with on the goal line.

So this one was won in the third quarter when, for the first time, Carson beat Hayes on the goal line for the 25-yard touchdown that put the Raiders away, 22-14.

Carson turned Hayes one way and went the other on this play, proving that it can happen to any cornerback. Previously the NFL had only assumed it couldn’t happen to Hayes.

“They (Hayes and Haynes) are very good at playing the bump and run,” Carson said. “So we changed up on them in the third quarter. Instead of firing off the line, we (Kansas City receivers) held up a moment and made them (Hayes and Haynes) commit themselves first. Then we took off the other way.”

In two other respects, Mackovic struck the Raiders with a winning game plan.

--He took away the Raiders’ favorite play, the long pass, by positioning at least one safety as a deep center fielder and sometimes two.

--Because his running backs are below average, Mackovic helped them along with some tricky ground plays, including a statue-of-liberty run and several kinds of draw plays.

The winner this time was the home team’s coach.