His Nose Is to Grindstone : Bill Pickel Has Practiced the Work Ethic While Playing for Raiders, and It Has Resulted in Sackful of Tackles and Praise From Teammates

‘This is a bunch of has-beens and misfits. I felt that if anyone would give me a shot, the Raiders would.’--BILL PICKEL

The sack leader of the Raiders is:

(a) Howie Long.

(b) Rod Martin.

(c) Al Davis.

(d) None of the above.

The answer is (d), none of the above.

The Raiders’ sack leader is Bill Pickel, who plays the anonymous and demanding position of nose guard.

Pickel has played it so well that most of the Raiders think he is now comparable to the New York Jets’ Joe Klecko, generally considered the NFL’s premier nose guard.

He has played it so well that a growing number of fans now know that it’s not pickle, as in dill and kosher, but Pi- kell.

As in All-Pro?

Definitely, if you value the opinion of Howie Long, Pickel’s All-Pro neighbor at left defensive end.

“In my opinion, Bill is one of the top two nose guards in the league,” Long said the other day. “I think it’s a real injustice that he wasn’t selected to the Pro Bowl.”

It would have been a greater injustice if Pickel hadn’t gotten the opportunity to play in the NFL. It almost happened.

A disk injury that limited Pickel to half a season in both his junior and senior years at Rutgers and ultimately required a career-threatening operation scared off most of the NFL.

The Raiders, of course, love to tread where others fear. Pickel, 27, is in his third season, his first full season as successor to Reggie Kinlaw, a six-year veteran who had starred in the 1984 Super Bowl.

Kinlaw was waived during training camp. Some of the Raiders were surprised, but Pickel has since justified the coaches’ vote of confidence. He will go into Monday night’s game against the Rams at Anaheim Stadium with 12 1/2 sacks, three more than Long and four fewer than Andre Tippett, the New England linebacker who leads the NFL.

Part of Pickel’s success stems from his own ability and maturation, from a work ethic handed down by his father, a retired New York City police officer who often toiled at two jobs to help keep his six children in school.

Part of it also stems from the frequent double- and triple-teaming of Long, which creates sack opportunities for the 6-foot 5-inch, 258-pound Pickel, who also led the Raiders in sacks last year, registering 12 1/2 in parts of seven games.

The two-year total of 25 puts Pickel No. 1 in that category among NFL nose guards, who are usually found in a tangle of legs and arms at the line of scrimmage.

Pickel’s assignment is to prevent the center and/or guards from reaching the Raider linebackers. His assignment is to disrupt blocking patterns so that the linebackers can make tackles.

He is attacked by more than one blocker on almost every play, and is a frequent victim of the wham block, on which the center attempts to stand him up, creating an inviting target for the guard, fullback or man in motion.

“The nose guard has people coming at him from all sides at all times,” Earl Leggett, the Raiders’ defensive line coach, said. “He has to be able to read blocking combinations and read them real quick.

“He has to have the quickness that will allow him to get off the ball, to get to the center before the center gets to him, and he has to be tough, competitive and tenacious. Bill has all of that.”

Said Long: “If the nose guard isn’t doing his job, the linebackers aren’t making their 10 to 12 tackles a game. He’s a sacrificial lamb. He has to absorb as many blockers as he can.

“Like Bill has said, you start to like it after awhile, which is a warped way of looking at it. But after you’ve been hit by two or three blockers for so long, it feels good to be hit by only one. It feels like you’re catching a break.”

There are few breaks for the double- and triple-teamed Long, but Pickel has picked up a slack, lightening Long’s load.

“He’s like a vacuum cleaner,” Long said. “Nobody in football pursues the ball better, bar none. I’ve seen him go 20 or 30 yards downfield to make the play. I’ve seen him do things that leave you standing there, wondering about your own commitment.”

Long is biased where Pickel is concerned. They’re known as the Velcro twins because they’re seldom apart. Pickel is the godfather of Long’s son, Christopher Howard.

Their rapport is such that they don’t require verbal communication on the field. Many Raiders speculate that Pickel was drafted simply to provide company for Long, though they didn’t know each other before the draft. “Instant compatibility,” Long said.

Maybe it was the shared roots, the tough Eastern upbringing each had, Long in Sommerville, Mass., and Pickel in the Queens borough of New York City.

Maybe it was Long, reared by friends and relatives in a constantly changing and uncertain environment, seeing in Pickel’s strong family ties “a special relationship that I sometimes envy.”

Maybe it was Long, growing up amid “mistrust,” amid friends and neighbors “who were always looking over their shoulder,” getting swept up in what he calls Pickel’s openness and being calmed by Pickel’s personality.

Some of it escapes the media, but Long said: “Bill doesn’t care about the limelight. He’s not in it for the publicity, the recognition. He cares what the team thinks, not what the media thinks. A lot of the press has said he’s boring, but most of us think he’s hilarious. He’s a lot like Bob Newhart with that dry wit. He absolutely owns Lyle (Alzado).

“I mean, there’s 45 different guys on this team and it’s only natural that you don’t get along with some of them. But you won’t hear anyone say a bad word about Bill. That’s quite a statement, I think. That’s your story, I think.”

Part of it, certainly. So is the fact that Pickel’s career was almost over before it started.

He lost his freshman year at Rutgers because of a knee injury. He lost the second half of both his junior and senior years because of a fragmented disk that finally had to be removed during Thanksgiving week of 1982.

Pickel can laugh now. He has remained free of pain. He can smile and say that the Raiders represent the missing link, alluding to his own back surgery and the fact that center Don Mosebar and guard Curt Marsh have each had two operations.

He wasn’t laughing in 1982, however. It was too hard to walk or sleep. There were too many doubts, too much discomfort.

“I had gone from being a preseason All-American in my junior and senior years to never making All-American, to never finishing either of those seasons,” he said.

“I was 20 years old. I had banked on playing professional football my entire life. Then I had the doctors tell me I may never play again. I was crushed. It can take your breath away, to say the least.”

His worst fears, however, were alleviated in the recovery room. He woke and found that the pain was gone, then learned that a fusion (requiring a full year of rehabilitation) had not been necessary.

“I went into surgery not being able to raise my legs more than an inch off the bed,” he said. “I came out of it knowing immediately I’d be all right.

“It was a miracle. I said to myself, ‘Yes, there’s truly a God.’ ”

He began therapy in a swimming pool, then advanced to walking laps on a running track and ultimately lifting weights again. The physical anguish of that year was compounded by the death of his mother and grandmother. The Pickel brothers helped keep each other on course.

George Pickel, with a year of eligibility left after having already graduated, was Rutgers’ captain last season, a 6-2, 220-pound nose guard who made 96 tackles. Jim Pickel, a freshman walk-on who received a scholarship as a sophomore, will graduate from Rutgers in May. Chris Pickel, a high school senior, was recently selected by New Yorker magazine as the state’s high school athlete of the year.

He is being besieged by scholarship offers, all channeled through his father, Bill Sr., who told his boys: “OK, I’m willing to work two jobs, to do my part, but now you have to do yours. Everyone has to pull his own weight.”

Bill Pickel Jr., who graduated from Rutgers with a criminology degree, adhered to the work ethic during his recovery from surgery. He came up to the NFL’s spring draft stronger than he had ever been, but still a suspect commodity who was rated a “D” by many predraft publications, one of which alluded to his physical uncertainty and compared him to a horse with a broken leg.

The hometown Jets even refused to work him out. The hometown Giants gave him a physical, then told him he had flunked. The Raiders were there when Pickel passed Cybex tests in Seattle and Oakland and were additionally impressed when they received a letter from Pickel asking that they at least look at his game films, that they at least work him out.

Pickel was obviously aware of what lurks in Davis’ heart. It was the only letter he sent. The Raiders selected him on the second round.

“This is a bunch of has-beens and misfits,” he said. “I felt that if anyone would give me a shot, the Raiders would. I’ve since talked to a lot of defensive coaches around the league who’ve told me that they really wanted me. My answer is, ‘Hey, I wasn’t the first guy picked. I was picked at the bottom of the second round. Everyone had a shot.’ ”

Pickel said he was grateful for the opportunity the Raiders gave him and is motivated by the snubbing he got from others in the NFL. He has not missed a game because of his back and has not visited the trainers room once this year, according to Long, who marvels at Pickel’s durability in the light of the beating that a nose guard takes and the fact that neither he nor Pickel miss a play on defense.

“I’m talking about the situation shuttles,” Long said. “Bill and I keep missing the bus. We never get a ticket.”

Pickel, of course, is happy to be on the field. He had always been a defensive left end, which is Long’s position. The adjustment to nose guard wasn’t that difficult, he said, though he is taller than most nose guards--an advantage against the pass but a disadvantage when trying to get under the blocks of smaller centers.

Pickel dismissed his impressive sack total and growing reputation as an all-pro candidate, saying all of that is for the media. He said he was fortunate to play for a great line coach (Leggett) and with a great group of defensive players, many of whom register a lot of sacks.

He said he would always trade all-pro for the Super Bowl, which is not to say that the Raiders’ nose guard won’t soon emerge with both.