Two Losses in a Row Are Too Many for Flores
When the Seattle Seahawks ended his team’s five-game winning streak, Raider Coach Tom Flores allowed as how a little humility might be a good thing. Sunday, the Chargers ran the Raider losing streak to two games, and that was way too much humility.
After the Seattle loss, Flores said he was happy at least that it hadn’t been a “total breakdown.” He wasn’t even that happy Monday. The Raiders are taking this one hard.
“I don’t know if it was a total breakdown,” Flores said. “The stats (San Diego gained 593 yards, the most the Raiders have ever allowed) show we didn’t play well. And we didn’t.”
How about the theory that after having just been run over by the Raiders, Don Coryell hit them with an adjustment--cooling off their rush by throwing to his backs-- that was more than they could handle?
“I don’t know if you could say it was more than we could handle,” Flores said, after a pause. “We just didn’t execute. We missed some tackles. We missed some coverages. And they made some big plays.
“I’m not going to point fingers. I’m not going to say a lot of things. None of that is going to bring the game back, so . . . “
Wouldn’t missed tackles have been inevitable, with the smaller, quicker Charger backs matched in the open field against bigger, slower Raider linebackers?
“When you get a good back space, it’s going to be hard to tackle him,” Flores said. “When we get Marcus (Allen) out in space, he makes a lot of people miss. But I’m not just talking about that.”
With 30 seconds left in regulation and one timeout remaining, Allen tried to kill the clock by intentionally fumbling the ball out of bounds, which an official disallowed. San Diego fans, remembering Ken Stabler’s intentional fumble for a game-winning touchdown--if they’d forgotten, it was shown on the Jack Murphy Stadium scoreboard earlier--booed.
With third and seven and one timeout left, Flores then elected to kill the clock.
Said Allen later: “My opinion is no guts, no glory.”
Flores, asked if he was second-guessing himself: “Oh, I don’t think so. They were in a prevent defense. They weren’t going to give up the big play. We tried to break a couple of runs and did. The first one (by Allen) got 10 yards. We tried to throw the ball and dropped one. At that point, I didn’t want to give them (Chargers) any opportunities.”
Raider Notes
The Raiders are 0-3 in road games against AFC West teams, but no one is doing much better. Road teams are 2-10 in intra-division games. The only road wins have been Denver’s at Kansas City and Seattle’s at San Diego. . . . A new right side? The Raiders went the last half of the game with Curt Marsh in for Mickey Marvin at right guard and Shelby Jordan in for Henry Lawrence at right tackle. Tom Flores said Lawrence had a cramp. Would the Jordan-Marsh combo start Sunday against the Bengals? Flores said it might and it might not. . . . Flores, giving the credit to Dan Fouts for the touchdown pass to Lionel James, who was left uncovered when Raider assistant Bob Zeman got caught in between substitutions: “They (Chargers) weren’t even set. They didn’t even know what was going on. The only ones who knew were Fouts and James. Everyone else was just standing there.” . . . Raider strong safety Mike Davis came out of the game with a sore left knee. His status hasn’t yet been determined. The Raiders hope free safety Vann McElroy, out with a hamstring pull, will play Sunday.