The Raiders Get It Right This Time, Finally Win in OT

Some things that didn’t happen in this season’s Raider-Denver Bronco overtime game here:

--Gary Kubiak didn’t play.

--John Elway, who had never won a game in the Coliseum, didn’t win.

--Frank Hawkins didn’t fumble.

--The Raiders didn’t lose.

Fate delivered a second chance to Christopher Bahr, who had missed a regulation-closing 40-yard field-goal attempt. On the reprise, he nailed a 32-yarder with 2:42 gone in overtime and the Raiders won this season’s classic, 31-28, Sunday at the Coliseum to tie the Broncos for first place in the AFC West.

Both teams are 8-4. They play again in Denver in two weeks.

Bahr got his first chance with :01 left in regulation, missed to the right and snapped backwards so fast, he could have gotten whiplash.

Did anyone say anything to him?

Marc Wilson: “They say a lot of things to the ground, but never directly to the kicker.”

Bahr: “What are they going to say? They don’t want to ostracize you right there. By the same token, they don’t want to congratulate you.”

Instead, they just went out for the coin toss. Rod Martin, who called tails in San Diego, lost and watched the Chargers go the length of the field, watched Elway call tails and lose. When will they ever learn?

This time the Raiders never gave the ball up. The offense, carried for much of this season, had already come back from three seven-point deficits. In overtime, it clicked off a 66-yard drive and that made it the unit’s brightest moment of the season.

Here’s how it went:

First down at the 20--Marcus Allen gains 14 yards around left end. In all, Allen runs for 173 yards, his regular-season career high. Included was one of his reverse-his-field, here-he-comes-again specials, a 61-yarder for a touchdown on which he got a key block from the umpire.

Allen: “Those guys are good for something, aren’t they?”

First down at the 34--Wilson hits Dokie Williams on a 10-yard out pattern. Williams breaks away from half the Bronco secondary and gains 32 more. A face mask penalty moves the ball to the Bronco 18.

First down at the Bronco 18--Hawkins picks up two yards, covering the ball with both hands.

Second down at the 16--Allen gets two more.

Third down at the 14--Raider Coach Tom Flores sends Bahr in again. Bronco Coach Dan Reeves calls time out. When it’s back in, Bahr holes out.

“Chris was hitting the ball really well before the game, warming up,” said Wilson, his holder. “He was starting the ball out to the right and drawing it in. This one just didn’t come in. It missed by inches. One more revolution and he’d have made it.”

Bahr: “To be honest, I thought I’d hit the first one perfectly. It was like a putt that goes through the break. It was hit so good, it never moved.

“To tell the truth, there wasn’t that much difference between the kicks.”

There was a difference you could tell on the scoreboard. What had gone around had come around. A year ago, the Broncos won here, with Elway out, the little-known Kubiak as quarterback and Hawkins fumbling at the Bronco 11 in overtime.

Hawkins and Flores have never heard the end of it. It may have been remembered as a classic in Denver, but in El Segundo it was just an embarrassment.

With the Broncos a game ahead of them, with a better conference record and a rematch waiting in Mile High Stadium, this was can’t-lose for the Raiders. It was a shade less so for the Broncos, although you might drive bamboo under Dan Reeves’ fingernails without getting him to admit it.

For the duration of the first half, all the Raiders did was hang in. Elway had 14 completions and three touchdown passes and the Broncos had three different seven-point leads, forcing the Raiders into playing catch-up. Whenever they’ve tried that this season, they’ve lost a quarterback, and they’re running low.

Their surviving incumbent, Wilson, was off slowly. In his most recent low point, he was zero for five with one interception.

Wilson: “That first quarter was disastrous. I was wondering if I was going to complete a ball the whole game. I knew once we got started, we’d be all right. If I could just get started.”

But hang in, they did.

Down 7-0, they went 61 yards on one play, Allen’s run off left tackle . . . and right tackle and back down the left sideline. Allen took the ball, saw tight end Todd Christensen stalemated with Rulon Jones and everyone else on that side in similar shape, and a lot more daylight, or overcast anyway, to the right. He went that way and got an effective nudge from Jessie Hester, and a great cutoff block from Rick Stuart. Stuart is the umpire , who knocked off the last Bronco with a chance, the fast-closing Karl Mecklenburg. Give that zebra a game ball.

Down 14-7, they drove 68 yards, with Wilson going four for four. His first one, with 11:45 left in the half, was his first completion. His fourth was a 17-yarder to Christensen who ran an out-and-up on Steve Wilson, caught the ball over his shoulder, took two delicate steps in the end zone, fell down and slid belly-first into a puddle.

Down 21-14 in the third period, they went 58 yards with Wilson, who has good scrambling ability, using it for the first time this season, gaining 10 yards on a third-and-four. At the end of it, he hit one of the three tight ends, Trey Junkin, for three yards and a touchdown.

Surprise time! Instead of kicking off, Bahr bunted up the middle, followed it for the required 10 yards and fell on it. Raider ball at their own 48.

Bahr: “It was something we saw that they give. They line up real deep and run out real fast.

“I have the option. We have a philosophy. If you do it and get it done, it was the right call. If you don’t, don’t come back.”

They went the remaining 52 yards in 12 plays, including another Wilson scramble on third-and-seven, a 19-yard pass to Allen on third-and-three, and a successful fourth-and-one dive by Hawkins, not Allen. Remember last week when the Bengals kept shooting down Air Marcus? Flores did. Wilson went the last yard himself, on a naked bootleg and the Raiders had their first lead.

Having rallied his own team, Wilson then misread a Williams route and fired interception No. 3 of the day into the belly of Louie Wright.

Wright returned it to the Denver 44. Elway marched the Broncos in, eluding the Raider rush when necessary, such as third-and-seven at the Raider 40, when he ran around for a while and found Steve Watson 17 yards downfield.

At the end of it, rookie Steve Sewell ran three yards, Rich Karlis kicked the extra point and it was 28-28.

A Raider drive died at the Denver 46.

A Denver drive died at the Bronc 40.

The Raiders went nowhere.

The Broncos went nowhere.

The Raiders got the ball at their 47 with :20 left. With :13 left, Wilson hit Allen for 11 yards. With :06, he hit Jessie Hester for 21. Hester stepped out of bounds at the Denver 21 with :01 left, setting up the potential game-winning field goal.

Bahr missed.

Elway lost the coin toss.

Karlis kicked off into the end zone.

Allen ran 14 yards.

And then Wilson hit Williams, who made a quick pivot toward the middle of the field and tore away from cornerback Mike Harden.

Ten yards downfield, he encountered three more Broncos. Steve Foley had the best shot until Tom Jackson hit him and screened Dennis Smith. Steve Busick chased Williams down but it took him a while.

“When I came to the line, I saw how deep he (Harden) was,” Williams said. “Marc got the ball to me real quick. I figured it would be easy to turn around and get a little more. It turned out, I got a little more than I expected.”

Join the soggy crowd.

Raider Notes Sean Jones, taking over for the injured Lyle Alzado, had two sacks. . . . Karl Mecklenburg sacked Marc Wilson who landed on his sore left shoulder in the second period, putting the Raider medical staff on a fast alert, but Wilson stayed in. Wilson: “I think they get the cart ready every time I fall down. They know how tender my shoulder is.” . . . Wilson has taken several injections to stay in the lineup. “Don’t make it sound like something,” he said. “A lot of guys are doing what I’m doing. I don’t want any attention for that.”