Raiders and Patriots Have Similarities but Also Have Differences to Settle Today

It’s a Patriot-ic time, but this is a Raider city--according to the Raiders, anyway. Today, they’ll find out in an AFC playoff game that will determine which of these teams of destiny has a future beyond sundown.

The Raiders are five-point favorites. The Patriots think that’s funny, having invited scorn and laughed at it all season. The Patriots have covered the point spread in their last 11 games, winning nine and losing only on the road, in overtime to the New York Jets, 16-13, and to Miami, 30-27.

Not much really separates these teams. They’re both tough and defense-oriented. Both started badly, the Raiders 1-2 and the Patriots 2-3, then rallied--the Raiders 11-2, the Patriots 9-2.

They even met once, the Raiders winning, 35-20, though they couldn’t get too cocky about the way it happened.

They were 1-2 when they wobbled into Foxboro, having just endured their two worst defeats since moving to Los Angeles, 36-20 at Kansas City and 34-10 to the 49ers in the Coliseum.

Jim Plunkett had just been lost to an injury. Marc Wilson sprained his right ankle that day. Wilson asked to go back in, but Tom Flores stayed with rookie Rusty Hilger.

Flores said he was afraid of further hurting Wilson’s ankle. That barely slowed speculation that Wilson’s Raider stock had slipped for the last time.

The Raiders trailed, 20-14, late in the third period, when Brad Van Pelt stripped Craig James on a routine run up the middle. Rod Martin recovered and was himself stripped of the ball by the Patriots’ Derrick Ramsey. Martin said he was trying to bat the ball ahead, a la Pete Banaszak forwarding the Holy Roller to Dave Casper in the end zone at San Diego in 1978.

Voila, this one rolled into the end zone, and Lyle Alzado recovered it for his first NFL touchdown.

Midway through the fourth quarter, Hilger, until then zero for six, completed his only pass, to Todd Christensen in the end zone. The Raiders put it away when Tony Eason’s pass was intercepted by Sam Seale, newly converted from wide receiver to cornerback, who ran it back for a touchdown.

Lester Hayes had also run in an interception, giving the Raider defense three touchdowns. That was as many as the Raider and Patriot offenses got together.

On the way to the locker room, a fan spit into the face of Eason, a soft-spoken young man who used to handwrite replies to all his fan mail.

And James, who’d carried 12 times, complained angrily about being underworked.

The Raiders then won four more in a row, lost two and won their last six.

The Patriots lost the next week at Cleveland. Then Steve Grogan replaced an injured Eason and was allowed to call his own plays by Coach Raymond Berry, whose plays hadn’t been working too well. Among a segment of the New England press, Berry is considered a nice man whose strength is in providing a low-key sort of inspiration, rather than X-and-O genius.

Grogan took the Patriots to six straight wins, while Patriot fans taunted Eason. At one game, someone unfurled a banner that read, “Hurry Back, Tony, Frank Perdue Needs You,” in reference to the East Coast chicken producer whose commercials have made him something of a media star.

Patriot General Manager Pat Sullivan dispatched a security man to remove it, but the fans resisted. No defamation without representation.

Then Grogan was hurt. Eason came back and won four of his five starts, including last week’s 26-14 wild-card victory over the Jets at the Meadowlands, the Patriots’ first playoff win in 22 years. Now, all New England needs him.

The Raiders have their own quarterback drama, though they’ve held it below the controversy level, perhaps intentionally, by keeping a healthy Jim Plunkett on injured reserve and sticking with Wilson, whose playoff experience is limited to mopping up in the Raiders’ 38-9 win over Washington in Super Bowl XVIII.

Wilson started 13 games and won 11. He also completed 49.7% of his passes, threw 21 interceptions and finished as the second-lowest-rated AFC passer, ahead of only Buffalo’s Bruce Mathison.

Now, Wilson has to show whether he’s part of the problem or part of the solution. Raider management’s stolid defense of him may not last a long time after his next defeat.

These being the playoffs, Wilson was implored by his employers at midweek to face a crowd of reporters asking about vindication. Wilson is a pleasant man and a good talker under ordinary circumstances, but those are long gone.

“I’m not thinking about that,” he said. “I think you guys are coming up with all these other things, that if I concentrated on, I wouldn’t be able to play my game. I have enough to do.”

Raider Notes Then there’s the Raider defense. It hasn’t allowed a touchdown in 2 1/2 games, since leaving the field trailing, 14-0, at Denver. It led the AFC with 65 sacks. It faced eight 1,000-yard rushers--Gerald Riggs, Eric Dickerson, Craig James, Kevin Mack, Earnest Byner, Freeman McNeil, Roger Craig and Curt Warner twice--without allowing one of them 100 yards rushing. Only Dickerson with 98 and Riggs with 95 made it past 85. . . . The Raider defense finished the season fourth-best in the NFL in yards allowed. The ranking would have been even better had it not been for San Diego. The Chargers gained 324 yards while being drubbed in the Coliseum, and then got a Raider opponents’ record 593 in their overtime victory. Without those two games, the Raiders’ average would have been the NFL’s second-best to the Bears. At that, the Raiders held the Chargers under San Diego’s average of 408 yards a game. . . . Raider free safety Vann McElroy, who aggravated his hamstring pull two weeks ago, and defensive end Sean Jones, who sat out the Ram game with a dislocated elbow, are both expected to play. In the three games he started after Lyle Alzado’s surgery, Jones had 5 1/2 sacks. . . . The Patriots’ defense was seventh-best in the NFL and registered 55 sacks. Linebacker Andre Tippett had an AFC-high 16 1/2 after last season’s 18 1/2 and is now considered a full peer of Lawrence Taylor and, by some, even better. Garin Veris, a rookie defensive end from Stanford, available in the second round because he was supposed to be too small and too slow, had 10 sacks during the season, two more against the Jets last week plus one interception and a forced fumble. Veris started the year as a backup to Ken Sims, the first player taken in the 1982 draft, who went out with an injury. . . . Tony Eason was the fourth quarterback taken in the big ’83 draft, behind John Elway, Jim Kelly and Todd Blackledge, ahead of Ken O’Brien and everyone’s albatross, Dan Marino. Eason was the NFL’s third-rated quarterback in ‘84, throwing 25 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions. A good scrambler, he was said to be feeling the heat too quickly early this season. There is a theory that he took the rap for everyone’s unfamiliarity with Coach Raymond Berry’s new offense. Craig James: “He’s just a much more poised quarterback now. He sets up differently. He throws the ball with more confidence. And that has to come from the fact that we support him much more. We don’t let people pound on him like we did.” . . . The Patriots have seven players going to the Pro Bowl: James, offensive linemen John Hannah and Brian Holloway, linebackers Steve Nelson and Tippett, cornerback Ray Clayborn and kick returner Irving Fryar. The Raiders have four: running back Marcus Allen, tight end Todd Christensen, defensive end Howie Long and cornerback Mike Haynes.