Raider Quarterback Derby Begins Today : Hilger Is Closing Fast, but Will There Be Enough Time?

The Raider quarterback derby will begin today at noon in the exhibition opener against the San Francisco 49ers. This chapter can be titled: Rusty’s Next-to-Last Stand.

Marc Wilson will start. Hilger will play the second half.

Hilger will play next week’s second half against the Dallas Cowboys, too, this time in relief of Jim Plunkett.

The final two exhibitions will belong to the 1-2 quarterbacks. Flores said last week that he was “anticipating” those would be Wilson and Plunkett, and that at the moment Wilson had an edge. So unless Hilger gains some ground, he’s back to being the quarterback of the future.

“Rusty is closing fast but I’m not sure how fast,” Flores said last week.

So does that leave Hilger feeling he needs to show a lot?

“Yeah,” said Hilger. “I want to settle this dispute and show that I gained something last year, that I can come in and play with success, that I wasn’t just a fluke in preseason.

“Down the road if anything happens and I come in, I want everybody to feel confident, that they don’t have to readjust the offense.”

Reading the quarterbacks’ performances promises to be challenging, since the Raiders traditionally take a low-key approach to exhibitions. They have now strung together three straight 1-3 exhibition seasons, and they haven’t been over .500 during the summer since they moved to Los Angeles.

A year ago, they started 0-3. The third game was an unimpressive 23-17 loss to the Dolphins, who were without Dan Marino, and several other vets who were hurt or unsigned.

That was a little too low-key for the coaching staff, which turned up the heat before the exhibition finale, which the Raiders then won at Cleveland.

“I probably wasn’t too excited when we were 0-3,” Flores said. “Who would be excited about 0-3? But it wasn’t a panic-type situation, like, ‘Oh we’re lousy.’ I just thought we were out of sync. We were bouncing. That happens sometimes in preseason.”

There are several grudge angles possible in any Raider-49er meeting. A 49er player told a Raider last off-season that the 49ers’ Bill Walsh is always dying to beat the Raiders, no matter when they meet. A year ago, when Matt Cavanaugh, then the No. 2 San Francisco quarterback went out with an injury, he was replaced, not by the No. 3, but by Joe Montana.

The 49ers won that one, 28-21.

The regular-season meeting was a 34-10 rout by the 49ers, in which Plunkett’s season was ended by a driving sack by Jeff Stover. Stover later wrote Plunkett a note but Plunkett remains angry.

Then there was the leg-whipping controversy, with Howie Long chasing 49er line coach BobbMcKittrick up the tunnel to the dressing rooms.

Of course, this is an exhibition. Raider players were laughing at the idea of a grudge match last week.

It should be recalled, however, that the last few exhibition meetings have included Long knocking off Bubba Paris’ helmet and Charlie Sumner, then the Raider defensive coordinator, fighting a 49er assistant. In this great rivalry, any mayhem is possible.

Raider Notes Bob Buczkowski, the Raiders’ No. 1 draft choice who has missed all of camp with a bad back, is better and about to be released from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but won’t make the trip. . . . Tom Flores wants to see a lot of his rookie backs, Vance Mueller, the No. 4 pick from Occidental, and Zeph Lee, the No. 9 choice from USC. Mueller’s play in camp has suggested that he can, indeed, make the jump from Division III. At 6 feet and 210 pounds he has size and is the fastest of the Raider backs. Al Davis is said to like him a lot. . . . Napoleon McCallum will be tried as a punt returner. McCallum, who had first said that his only contact with other football players during the season would be “watching them on television,” is now hoping that the Navy will let him play on Sundays. Flores says, however, that it would be hard to keep a one-day-a-week player on the roster.