PRO FOOTBALL ’86 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : Quarterbacks Are Crucial to Season for Raiders, Rams : Wilson Gets Key Votes and Also His Job Back

It’s been a black-and-blue off-season in what Lester Hayes calls Silver and Blackdom. A federal appeals court overturned the $34.6-million penalty the NFL owed the Raiders. Owner Al Davis chose the wrong side in the USFL suit.

Last season’s outstanding on-field problem wasn’t redressed. Davis tried to trade his starting quarterback, even to the point of offering to pay the first $700,000 of his contract before acceding to his coaches’ wishes and bringing Marc Wilson back.

Camp might have gone better. The Nos. 1 and 3 draft choices were lost with back injuries. The weather in Oxnard was so cool, Coach Tom Flores thought of coming home early.

Flores spent two weeks saying he wasn’t sure about Napoleon McCallum’s status. He may still be awaiting clarification, but McCallum has pulled off an unheard-of combination: He’s an officer, a gentleman and a Raider.

In the front office, Raider fought Raider. Neither Davis nor the Oxnard Police acted on it. In this organization, they don’t sweat the small stuff and what’s wrong with a little hostility?

Lyle Alzado, a man who knew something about hostility, retired, leaving Davis pining for the lost leadership Alzado represented. You think it’s easy to find someone else who can make those faces?

Center Dave Dalby, Double D, commissioner of the training camp off-hour tournaments and one of the last links to the Santa Rosa days when Raiders were Raiders, was waived. Several young players were approached about the need to assume the mantle of such giants.

“This year is a transition year,” Davis said a couple of days ago at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “We never have the luxury of a rebuilding year. Never. Sometimes we talk about it. We wish we could just say, ‘Well, you know. . .’

“When I say transition, we’ve got a lot of young people. But we got those great players and those great players have to lead us. They have to carry us.”

Is it getting dim in here? Maybe only in Pete Rozelle’s dreams.

Embattled, poverty-stricken, confused, youthful, squabbling among themselves or not, these are still the Raiders, possessors of Howie Long and one of the great NFL defenses; of Marcus Allen, who is a great start for an offense.

This still looks like a playoff team unless things go very wrong, which isn’t impossible. If so, they can be depended on to take someone down with them, a team or two, an NFL official or two, perhaps one or two of each other.

You may beat the Raiders, or catch them in transit, but nobody gets away untouched. There is always that tunnel between the playing field and the locker room.

MARC WILSON, MARC WILSON The saga continues.

When Jim Plunkett went down, the 1985 season was rededicated to salvaging what could be salvaged while finding out if Wilson could play.

The salvage operation proceeded nicely, yielding an 11-2 finish after the 1-2 start. What the Raiders found out about Wilson was harder to say.

He spent the season with a sore right knee and a separated left shoulder, both of which required surgery. Raider brass readily forgave his early struggles in the hope he would improve as the season went on. In later games, they hoped to throw deep more often and run Allen less.

The more they opened the offense up, the worse Wilson did. When he completed only 11 of 27 passes in the playoff upset by the New England Patriots and missed several open receivers, Davis raged privately.

Davis tried to trade Wilson to the Philadelphia Eagles. Davis addressed the Associated Press Sports Editors in Phoenix, ruminating on Wilson’s ability to handle pressure.

The coaching staff and Flores are said to have reeled Wilson back in. They wanted to know who was going to be the quarterback if Wilson was dispatched for a draft choice. Jim Plunkett may still be infinitely competitive but at 38, could he last a whole season? He was knocked out of the last two.

Rusty Hilger was promising but inexperienced. Had he completed 99 of every 100 passes in the exhibition season, he might have stayed in the picture. As it turned out, he was almost carried off bodily by the San Francisco 49ers in the opener and was returned to the movie-title category: “Back to the Future.”

In Oxnard, the position was officially termed competitive, which was another attention-getter.

“At speaking appearances?” Flores said early in camp. “I get asked about it when I’m shopping. I thought one little old lady was going to hit me with her loaf of bread when I wouldn’t answer her question.”

The competition wound down soon thereafter. Even before the first exhibition, Flores was saying that Wilson had opened a lead. The players thought it had been Wilson all the time. It is possible that the competition was not so much real, but the last manifestation of the front-office split.

Wilson handled camp well, although in his new persona. Once shy, friendly and quick to laugh, he has pulled back to pleasant, polite and often withdrawn. A year of steady booing and having his competence debated weekly have left their scars. This is what happens to NFL quarterbacks, the ones who survive, anyway.

Flores and several players said they like the new Wilson. He seemed more unruffled. Was he booed? Did he throw an interception? He looked as if he had been there before.

The problem is that the situation still seems tilted against him. The Coliseum fans are loaded and waiting. They booed him in exhibitions on incompletions that he threw away purposely. The schedule, which starts with games at Denver and Washington, isn’t giving him anything easy early.

The Raider players seem more hopeful about Wilson than converted. He’s a quiet guy and they’re a macho group.

And on this roster, when they’re unhappy, it gets out. It was once said that Oklahoma was trying to build a university the football team could be proud of. On the Raiders, they’re trying to build an offense the defense can be proud of.

MARCUS ALLEN, MARCUS ALLEN Will the Raiders run him 380 times, as they did last season, which was 105 times more than they ever had previously?

Exposing a runner to a world of punishment isn’t the oft-mentioned Raider way. Exposing a quarterback is closer to it.

After the New England playoff game, Allen said Davis told him that he wouldn’t be worked that way again. Since then, Davis and the coaches have hinted that if they find themselves in the same pinch, they’ll do the same thing.

However employed, Allen embodies as much offense as a back can. A year ago, he ran for 1,759 yards and caught passes for 555, a total of 2,314. In Eric Dickerson’s record year with the Rams, he ran for 2,105 yards and caught passes for another 139, a total of 2,244. Allen has averaged 1,948 yards from scrimmage in his three full seasons.

The rest of the offense looks OK, at least. The line, a problem late in 1984 and early last season, regrouped around the new center, Don Mosebar. In the first nine games, it allowed 33 sacks. In the last seven, it allowed 10.

Actually, the line seemed to be playing with an extra guard. That was the little bulldozer, 5-9, 210-pound fullback Frank Hawkins, who cut down a lot of linebackers for Allen.

Tight end Todd Christensen caught his usual 82 passes. The young receivers, whose inexperience was part of Wilson’s problem, are both second-year starters now. Dokie Williams played well and, after a slew of early drops, rookie Jessie Hester came on.

With his speed, Hester is open all the time and Wilson is instructed to find him deep whenever possible. A lot of the big-play offense has been cut back in deference to the current Bear-style blitzing--the Raiders run more 10-yard patterns than the old 15s--but they still launch more ICBMs than anyone this side of Miami.

Hester started the exhibition season by dropping his first two passes, then bounced back. But if he doesn’t get beyond erratic this season, they’ll feed him to Mervyn Fernandez, the Raiders’ Canadian League star who is scheduled to come aboard in ’87.

“I PITY THE FOOLS” Mr. T says that and it applies to anyone who has to go against this defense.

There is nothing weak about it anywhere. The line is young, talented and mean. Offensive coordinators blocked Howie Long with two men and watched their quarterbacks get eaten up by Bill Pickel, a comer at nose tackle, Sean Jones, a comer at end, and Greg Townsend, a specialist at streaking in from the other end.

The Raiders’ 65 sacks were high in the AFC, one more than the Chicago Bears’ 64 and second in the NFL to the New York Giants’ 68.

The Raiders’ 3.5-yard average against the run tied them for first in the NFL with the Giants. They faced nine 1,000-yard rushers last season without allowing anyone 100 yards in a game, until New England’s Craig James got them in the playoffs.

The linebacker corps is strong enough that Brad Van Pelt, a perfectly serviceable veteran, was waived. He was picked up a day later by the Cleveland Browns, who had just axed Tom Cousineau.

The inside guys, Matt Millen and Reggie McKenzie, are brutes. The outside men, Rod Martin and Jerry Robinson, are stars. The Raiders are so happy that they’ll be able to show their good friends in Chargerland what a mistake they made with Linden King.

The Raider cornerbacks, Lester Hayes and even Mike Haynes, ages 31 and 33, heard a lot of off-season muttering about supposed declines. Both had a problem or two early last season but they closed as impressively as ever. Neither is amused by the speculation. Hayes intercepted three passes in an especially impressive exhibition season.

The safeties, Vann McElroy and Stacey Toran, the comer who is replacing Mike Davis, are strong. Only the Patriots, Bears and Raiders held opponents under 50% in completions a year ago.

Placekicker Chris Bahr, who struggled last season, missed his first exhibition field goal try from 21 yards and then made 5 of 6, the lone miss a 45-yarder that was blocked.

Punter Ray Guy did it the other way around. Coming off a fine year in which he led the AFC in net average, he struggled throughout the exhibition season.

Add it all up and it’s a long afternoon’s work for anyone. Whether it will be long enough remains to be seen. Right now, the only place the Raiders are in transit to is Denver.

RAIDER STATISTICS

FINAL 1985 TEAM

Team Opp Raiders First downs 273 304 Rushes-yards 461-1605 532-2262 Net. yd. passing 2998 3146 Sacks-yd lost 65-488 43-335 Passes 251-511 269-506 Int.-yd. ret. 24-365 17-235 Plays-net yd. 1037-4603 1081-5408 Punts-average 104-41.9 89-40.8 Punts ret.-yd. 26-159 71-785 Kickoffs ret.-yd. 59-1165 54-1132 Fumbles-lost 28-13 26-14 Penalties-yards 105-825 120-993

INDIVIDUAL RUSHING

Player TCB NYG Avg. TD Allen 380 1759 4.6 11 Hawkins 84 269 3.2 4 Wilson 24 98 4.1 2 King 16 67 4.2 0 Jensen 16 35 2.2 0 Hester 1 13 13.0 1 Plunkett 5 12 2.4 0 Hilger 3 8 2.7 0 Strachan 2 1 0.5 0 Guy 1 0 0.0 0 Totals 532 2262 4.3 18 Opp. 461 1605 3.5 7

PASSING

Player PA PC PI YD TD Wilson 388 193 20 2608 16 Plnktt 103 71 3 803 3 Hilger 13 4 0 54 1 Allen 2 1 0 16 0 Totals 506 269 24 3481 20 Opp. 511 251 17 3486 22

RECEIVING

Player NO. YD TD Christensen 82 987 6 Allen 67 555 3 D. Williams 48 925 5 Hester 32 665 4 Hawkins 27 174 0 Moffett 5 90 0 King 3 49 0 Smith 3 28 1 Junkin 2 8 1 Totals 269 3481 20 Opp. 251 3486 22

OTHER LEADERS

Punting--Guy, 89-3,627, 40.8 avg. Punt Returns--Walker, 62-692, 11.4 avg. Kickoff Returns--Walker, 21-467, 22.2. avg. Scoring--Bahr, 100 points. TD--Allen 14. FG--Bahr 20-32.

RAIDER SCHEDULE

Date Opponent Time Sept. 7 at Denver 1:00 Sept. 14 at Washington 10:00 Sept. 21 New York Giants 1:00 Sept. 28 San Diego 1:00 Oct. 5 at Kansas City 10:00 Oct. 12 Seattle 1:00 Oct. 19 at Miami 10:00 Oct. 26 at Houston 10:00 Nov. 2 Denver 1:00 Nov. 9 at Dallas 1:00 Nov. 16 Cleveland 1:00 Nov. 20 at San Diego (Thurs.) 5:00 Nov. 30 Philadelphia 1:00 Dec. 8 at Seattle (Mon.) 6:00 Dec. 14 Kansas City 1:00 Dec. 21 Indianapolis 1:00

ALL TIMES LOCAL