Browns Around the Corner : Raiders, Especially Hayes and Haynes, Await Challenge

The Raiders are off to Cleveland Sunday to play the upstart Browns, who want everything the Raiders have: fame, fortune, their faces up there on billboards just like Lester Hayes.

The Browns have a couple of cornerbacks who’d like to take Hayes down to street level, and Mike Haynes, too. Their names are Frank Minniefield and Hanford Dixon, and they have recently declared themselves the new kings of the corner.

Minniefield used the occasion of the Raiders’ exhibition in Cleveland to announce to the Cleveland press that football’s best tandem was going to be on display.

He also said: “Haynes and me are similar.” This was something of a stretch, since Haynes is 6-foot-2 and Minniefield 5-8.

Minniefield did call Haynes the best in the game, and conceded that Hayes “is playing well, but I believe if he were somewhere else, like Buffalo, he’d have a hard time.”

Said Hayes, laughing at the clipping a couple of days ago: “This little guy. . . . “

Hayes, by today’s standards a sumo wrestler on the corner at 6-0, 200, customarily refers to opponents who get in his face as “this little guy.”

It’s what he called the Chiefs’ Carlos Carson, who burned him in Kansas. Hayes subsequently blanketed Carson on a key play in the Coliseum, after which they traded threats.

“This little guy is a Pat Thomas clone,” Hayes said of Minniefield. “He’s obviously watched a lot of film on me. I like him. His mouth gets him into a lot of trouble but . . . . As far as playing tight, tough, man-to-man coverage, he reminds me of my mentor, Pat Thomas.

“The only negative intangible that consistently gets him into trouble is his mouth. Frank’s mouth is overmatched, in comparison to his gluteus maximus.”

Battle lines are being drawn. The Browns are coming, despite setbacks such as their long-awaited Monday night TV appearance, when Frank Gifford and O.J. Simpson kept referring to a Minny-ferd. One has to start somewhere.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere. It might be nice up there on those billboards, but it makes you a nice target, too.

The Raider cornerbacks had an unprecedented run, from the time Haynes was acquired midway through the ’83 season, through that Super Bowl and much of last season. They played almost pure man-to-man and they almost always won.

It’s not nice to fool with the law of averages, though. In the second game of this season, Carson singed Hayes a golden brown in Kansas City and then for good measure, beat Haynes deep for a touchdown.

After that, the Raiders began tinkering with one of their proudest traditions, the man-to-man coverage against the opposition’s flyboys. Deep help was made available.

The defense tightened up. Still, Haynes has been beaten twice more deep for touchdowns, by the Chiefs’ Anthony Hancock and last week by the Saints’ Guido Merkens. Each time, Haynes was in terrific position, and each time the quarterback dropped a perfect pass over him.

It was surprising, because of Haynes’ previous all-but-unbeaten record here. Cornerbacks get beaten. One of Haynes’ chief rivals as best coverage man in football, San Francisco’s Eric Wright, was beaten deep twice this season by Raider rookie Jessie Hester.

There was a theory that Hayes has been getting more deep help, so quarterbacks knew which way to go to find the last man playing man to man.

Hayes said that’s not so, that the deep help is being divided up 50-50.

“After that Redskins game (the ’84 Super Bowl), people thought Mike and I were invincible,” he said. “And that isn’t true.

“In that game, Mike and I did something no cornerbacks had ever done. We totally dominated the ‘Skins’ receiver corps consistently through the whole game. People thought we should be able to do that consistently the whole season. Not so. You can’t shut out every receiver in the NFL.

“That pass to Merkens, logically, the ball shouldn’t even have been thrown. Now even when a receiver is pinned, they throw. If I have one of your arms like so (jamming the writer’s arm against his body), and I have the inside or the outside on you, the old mentality was that there was a minute chance of the quarterback throwing.

“But not since the second coming of Joe Namath in Dan Marino. He started something in Miami that all the quarterbacks are patterning themselves after. They’re forcing the ball in there. They’ve evolved into baseball pitchers, placing the ball on the outside of the plate.”

Receivers also tend to be smaller and faster. There aren’t a lot of cornerbacks coming in Mel Blount-sized, or like Hayes, the converted Texas A&M; linebacker.

“I thought I was the best safety in the ’77 draft,” he said. “And genius Coach (Al) Davis made me a cornerback. I thought it was a conspiracy to have me on the first 747 back to Texas A&M.; I thought that was my destiny.

“So I thought, ‘If any mortal can do it, I can.’ I thank God for instilling the intestinal fortitude in me to do it. My rookie year I faced Haven Moses (of Denver). He was a very, very crafty, veteran receiver. I faced him three games and he scored three touchdowns. I went home and (he pointed his index finger at his temple). . . . No matter how big you are, the fact is, being beaten is going to happen.

“Before ‘78, when they instituted the five-yard bump zone, there were some invincible cornerbacks. An ex-linebacker such as I was was very difficult to beat in bump-and-run coverage.

“Carlos Carson? Gee, in 1977, it would have been virtually impossible for him to catch a pass on me. I could bump him at 10 yards, 17 yards, 25 yards, all his potential break points. Now, after five yards, it’s null and void as far as jamming the receiver.

“The best defensive backs of all times, I would say, were (the Raiders’) Willie Brown, (the 49ers’) Jim Johnson, and Mike Haynes, and they’d all get beaten. As far as the present day, Mike Haynes is the best cornerback I’ve ever seen. I had to watch film on him in 1977 to learn how to play.

“As far as it being neat to have everyone gunning for you, no, it’s not neat. It’s a silver-and-blackism. Coach Davis is not going to deviate from his defensive philosophy, although we’ve started doing some things the Chicago Bears do. The Raiders have adopted the Bear 4-6, a passing-down defense that blitzes a lot while also camouflaging coverages.

“That’s deceiving the offensive planners in the AFC West. They’re so accustomed to playing against the Raider philosophy and now we’re diversifying, from the Raiderism of tight, tough man-to-man coverage to half-man, half-zone. You can’t leave a man out there in single coverage. Offenses are becoming much more intelligent. Teams are using IBMs.

“Everyone is out to dominate us. That’s our mentality. Teams are now attempting to do what we do best, the take-no-prisoners attitude. So it’s a distinct challenge to go to an opponent’s turf and show them how domination is actually done.”