What’s Silver and Black and 0-2? : It’s the Raiders Who Have No Offense in Loss to Redskins

Raider mommas must have told them there’d be seasons like this, but not many of them. Other Raider seasons have started 0-2 before, too, even if the last time was 1964 when the coach was Al Davis.

That’s what they are again today, 0-2 after Sunday’s one-big-play, winner-take-all, 10-6 loss to the Washington Redskins. Jay Schroeder, the Redskin quarterback out of UCLA and the Toronto Blue Jay farm system, snuck tight end Clint Didier behind Stacey Toran in the fourth quarter and hit him on a 59-yard play, setting up the lone touchdown. .

The Raider offense produced no touchdowns. Their deepest penetration ended in confusion, with about half the unit lining up wrong, players trying to call time out and the quarterback throwing the ball away to escape a blitz.

Their much-counted-on long-ball game was shut down, not that they stopped trying to hit one. The wide receivers’ entire output consisted of Dokie Williams’ 2 catches for 20 yards. Rod Barksdale, the phenom, dropped a sure touchdown pass.

The offensive line was overrun. Redskin defenders held a convention atop Marc Wilson, who was sacked 5 times and threw 2 interceptions.

Wilson was almost forced out of the game by a shot to his right shoulder on the first Raider possession. Both his shoulder and his left hand were X-rayed after the game, with both findings negative.

“It’s sore,” Wilson said of his shoulder, “but . . . a lot of places are sore.”

Did Al Davis say something about leadership? His leaders did what they could.

Marcus Allen got his 11th straight 100-yard rushing game, breaking his own record once more, and caught five passes.

The question is, are they going to break him? The man who never comes off the field, came off in the third period, after a seven-play stretch in which he carried the ball 4 times (for 20 yards) and caught 2 passes (for 17 yards).

After his first reception, he took a hit, slowly got to his feet, and, carrying one arm gingerly, took a long look at the bench.

On his fourth rush, he started around left end and did something he almost never does: He made the wrong cut. With running room unfolding before him, he reversed his field and wound up gaining one yard. Then he came out.

“I was a little winded,” Allen said.

Was the arm hurting?

“It goes dead every now and then,” he said. “No feeling.”

Davis’ other MVP candidate, Howie Long, was as good as a lineman can be. He had a sack, he got to Schroeder on an option and caused the fumble that kept the Redskins from breaking this game open early. He also recovered it. He led a charge that sacked Schroeder four times.

“This was the hardest week I’ve had from an emotional standpoint since I’ve been a pro,” Long said. “I was down so low (after the loss in Denver), I was lower than whale stuffing, and that’s low.

“I felt like I’d let the team down last week. One thing I wanted to do today was to play hard every down and hope the pieces fell together. If there’s one consolation, I know I didn’t leave anything out there.”

Holding an NFL team to 10 points is generally good enough, but not if your offense is getting blanked. Sunday, the first Raider drive reached the Washington 10--aided by two third-down penalties--but died after a holding call on Bruce Davis. The Raiders settled for Chris Bahr’s 28-yard field goal.

Tied 3-3 at the half, they got a chance to break it open--in other words, score a touchdown--when Toran intercepted Schroeder early in the third period, returning it nine yards to the Washington 18.

Six plays later, the Raiders had burned one timeout, one problem Wilson and/or his offense have had before, and stood third and four at the six.

They broke from the huddle. Barksdale, tight end Trey Junkin and tackle Bruce Davis all lined up in the wrong places. Fullback Frank Hawkins was signaling for a timeout that the officials wouldn’t recognize until Wilson turned back to him and set him.

Don Mosebar snapped the ball and the play was run, ineffectually. Wilson wound up dumping the ball into an unoccupied corner of the end zone while the fans called for intentional grounding.

Bahr kicked a 23-yard field goal for a 6-3 lead, but that was the last real Raider threat.

“A couple of guys were in the wrong formation,” Wilson said. “I got up to the line and changed them around. . . . Hawk was yelling to call time out, but I looked up at the clock and there were 16 seconds left. There was time to get everybody set and run the play. But their safeties blitzed right up the middle, and I had to throw the ball early.”

Why would so many players line up wrong?

“It’s an unusual formation,” Wilson said. “We hadn’t worked a lot on it.”

The way things were going Sunday, the defense was either going to hold the Redskins without a touchdown, or the Raiders were going to lose.

With 9:23 left and the Raiders still leading, 6-3, the Redskins took over at their 32. Schroeder went back to pass, looked for his primary receiver, Art Monk, who was running a pattern short over the middle, and then picked up Didier running a fly down the left sideline.

Didier had been running the same pattern all day, but had been breaking it off short and coming back. Didier said later that he told Coach Joe Gibbs that he could get behind Toran. Schroeder said the idea had come from him.

“I told him (Didier) we owed it to ourselves to try this,” Schroeder said.

Whatever its origin, it was an idea whose time had come. Schroeder launched one downfield and Didier caught it behind Toran, who dove and fell. Mike Haynes chased Didier down at the nine, but two plays later, George Rogers blasted over right tackle for the final three yards.

Toran is the new starter at strong safety and is considered a fine young player, but so far he’s been an unlucky one. A week ago, he was fingered for the big disputed pass interference last week at Denver. Sunday, he dressed and left quickly.

“Unbelieveable,” Lester Hayes said. “That has never happened before in a decade. It was a fluke play.

“We were in cover three, a zone. You don’t get behind us in a zone coverage. But it’s a game played by mere mortals, and mere mortals make mistakes.”

Said the other safety, Vann McElroy: “It may have been a mental thing. I won’t know until I see the films. But he (Toran) is one of our stars in the secondary. One play like this shouldn’t decide the game.”

In the absence of anything good going in the other direction, one play did decide Sunday. The last Raider possession took them from their five to the Washington 28. There, on first down, Williams got a step behind his defender, but Wilson’s pass was just beyond him.

“I thought it was a good throw,” Wilson said. “We missed by inches. The ball was in the air 50 yards and we missed by inches. That’s pretty close.”

Three plays later, defensive back Darrell Green intercepted Wilson’s fourth-down desperation pass in the end zone with 30 seconds left, and the Raiders had their worst start in 24 years.

Victory did not come cheaply for the Redskins. Starting left linebacker Mel Kaufman will probably miss the rest of the season because of a torn Achilles’ tendon, and running back Kelvin Bryant will sit out at least one game with a sprained left knee and ankle.

The Raiders, meanwhile, perhaps mindful of falling into the trap of last week, of having gotten too high for the Broncos, and having taken that loss too hard, took this one almost matter-of-factly.

“No need to worry about the Raiders,” Rod Martin said.

Long was asked about the fact that no team that started 0-2 had ever come back to make the Super Bowl.

“I don’t listen to that stuff. I flunked history,” he said.

“I hope this is our first and last valley on offense,” Hayes said. “We had a great day against Denver. We’re going back to L.A. to be victorious against the Giants. I hope and pray.”