Raiders Get First Win on Long Arm of Wilson and Very Stout Defense
This was a tale of two quarterbacks, two seasons and two defensive secondaries. The quarterbacks were Dan Fouts and Marc Wilson, one reknowned, one reviled.
The seasons were those of their teams, the San Diego Chargers and the Raiders, and for the Raiders, another loss would have left their season with little meaning.
The secondaries were the famous one employed by the silver and black , and the one belonging to the Chargers which can’t be employed long.
It’s the Raiders who can still dream. They took the field at the Coliseum Sunday without Marcus Allen, fell behind, 13-0, and won (you read right, that’s emerged victorious), 17-13, for the first time this season. Both teams are 1-3.
The season is, of course, four games old, but they’ve figured out how to salvage it: Win all the rest of their games in the AFC West.
In silver-and-blackdom, things have been a little tense lately. If they’d lost this one, there would have been more furniture flying around El Segundo than there was in “Poltergeist II.”
And for the first 28 minutes, it looked like they’d better limber up.
The Chargers marched 81 yards for a touchdown the first time they touched the ball. As far as the Raider offense was concerned, the six-pointer was a myth or a museum piece. They’d been nine quarters without one and came within 16 seconds of making it 11.
Wilson, back in action and seeming to dangle by an ever-finer thread, had thrown two passes, either of which could have been nominated for worst ball ever thrown in the history of the NFL. Both were intercepted. Guess what the crowd was doing.
You were waiting for the Raider stars of the game? Here they come:
Linebacker Jerry Robinson, playing his finest Raider game, intercepted two passes, the first setting up a short drive for a touchdown in the final seconds of the first half.
With :16 left in the half, Wilson threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Dokie Williams, while linebacker Thomas Benson was unloading on the quarterback. Wilson went on to complete 19 of 28 passes for 314 yards, the fifth 300-yard game of his career.
Williams, who’d caught 5 passes in 3 games, caught 8 for 143 yards. Todd Christensen caught 8 for 105, or about his average against the Chargers. Jessie Hester, who’d been benched or eclipsed because of dropped passes, caught a 40-yarder for the game-winning touchdown.
The Raiders’ secondary survived Fouts. The Chargers tried Lester Hayes deep all day and came up with nothing. Hayes and Mike Haynes held the San Diego wide receivers to 3 catches for 33 yards, out of Fouts’ 45 pass attempts.
And free safety Vann McElroy put a jarring from-the-ankles hit on Lionel James, trying to catch a Fouts floater across the middle in the first period. The Raiders thought it so electrifying that three linebackers ran up and high-fived McElroy while the San Diego trainers ran out and tried to dig James up.
McElroy later bruised his left shoulder trying to KO another Charger receiver. Then he intercepted a Fouts pass with :42 left, ending the last Charger possession.
Fouts survived the Raiders, if barely, playing most of the game with a broken nose--the result of a Bill Pickel sack in the second period. With blood staining the front of his jersey, he went to the bench where several strips of tape were stretched across his cheekbones and over his nose.
The Raiders, of course, knew better than to dream that they’d intimidated him.
“Are you crazy?” McElroy said.
“I’ve seen games where we pounded the bleep out of Dan Fouts,” Howie Long said. “He keeps coming and keeps coming. You see him at golf tournaments sometimes in the off-season and you just want to let that 3-iron go.”
Fouts didn’t miss a play and within a few minutes of repairs, threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Trumaine Johnson. Rolf Benirschke having missed the first extra point, this one made it 13-0.
A few minutes later, Wilson threw his second interception. The pass was intended for Dokie Williams running deep, but smack-dab into double coverage. Wilson put the ball up anyway, with a nice touch too, and let Charger safety Gill Byrd run under it to get his second interception of the day.
“With Marcus gone, maybe everybody was trying too hard to make the big play,” Christensen said. “He had just hit me with a couple of passes that made pretty good yardage. All of a sudden, he’s going for the big one and they’re laying in wait. I think it was all the frustration, with 32 (Allen) not in there.”
The crowd, which started booing with Wilson’s first interception, booed more loudly.
“I heard it today,” Wilson said. “I always hear it. I realize it shouldn’t have any impact . . . “
Once again, the question was posed: Were the Raiders concerned for their field general?
“I told him the same thing on the sideline I always do,” Christensen said.
What was that?
“When in doubt, throw the ball to me.”
But just when you thought the Raiders were on a roll that wasn’t going to stop until they had the uncontested rights to Vinny Testaverde, something else happened.
On the next play, Fouts hit tight end Pete Holohan, who made a skidding catch, except that the ball popped up a little. Robinson, who was diving over him, snatched it away for the interception at the Raider 40.
Two minutes remained in the half. Wilson came back in, to the loudest boos of the day and threw two incompletions, on which both receivers, Christensen and Hester, were open.
On third down, he hit Williams for 32 yards, just as a blitzing San Diego linebacker, Ty Allert, hit him.
On first and goal at the eight, Wilson was sacked. On second down, he threw an incompletion. On third down, he stepped up as another linebacker, Benson, was stepping into him and hit Williams, who was behind cornerback Wayne Davis--as usual--in the back of the end zone.
(Davis, burned on a key play the week before by the Redskins, had been campaigning to keep wearing his gloves on the field, but was turned down by defensive coordinator Ron Lynn.)
Williams managed to come down with both feet in the end zone, and the Raiders had scored one of those what-do-you-call-its, when you break the plane of the goal line?
Oh yes, touchdown. Did Wilson need that one?
“It’s not my nature to say, ‘Yeah,’ ” he said. “ We needed a touchdown. It’s a lot nicer coming in here 13-7 instead of 13-zip.”
If they loved the way the first half ended, they were going to adore the way the second half began.
James, a gamer and an elusive one, broke free down the right sideline on the opening kickoff. Then, before anyone hit him, he dropped the football. Tim Moffett recovered at the Charger 40.
On the next play Wilson threw a touchdown pass to Hester, who was making tracks behind right cornerback Donald Brown. Chris Bahr’s point made it 14-13.
After that, the Raiders just had to hold off the highest-powered offense in the world, which they did. They held Fouts to 9 of 24 completions in the second half, intercepted him twice, thanked their lucky stars and went home.
“I’m going into that fourth quarter seeing stars,” McElroy said. “I know what they’re going to do. Dan Fouts is going to sit back there. You don’t know where he’s going. Receivers are going all over. You can’t eye him down (read his eyes) because if you try, he’ll throw you off.
“He throws quick ones. All of a sudden he’ll waggle around and come back to somebody else. Sometimes it feels like you’re not doing a dad-gummed thing but running around, getting tired.”
Midway through the fourth quarter, the Raiders, with Napolean McCallum in Allen’s spot, marched 73 yards to the Charger one. The Chargers threw three plunges back, so Bahr kicked an 18-yard field goal for a 17-13 lead.
With 1:41 left and no timeouts to work with, Fouts got the Chargers out to the San Diego 47. There he threw a pass that Holohan tipped up in the air and McElroy intercepted.
“All I wanted to do was just cradle it and hold it,” McElroy said. “I don’t know how to explain how I felt. Like a little kid.”
The Raiders were in the win column. All they have to do is get there every Sunday for the rest of the season and they’ll be fine.
Raider Notes
The first Charger drive was aided by a 15-yard penalty on Sean Jones, coming to the aid of Howie Long, who was in a minor pushing match with Charger tackle Gary Kowalski. Jones ran into Kowalski from the blind-side. “I was just breaking it up,” Jones said. “I don’t know how it looked. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” . . . Long said he tried to drag Dan Fouts out of further hostilities. “I know Dan is a big leader,” Long said. “He likes to come out with that macho stuff, wade in among all the 6-8 guys. And Sean has that Jamaican temper.” . . . Marc Wilson was sacked eight times. Raider quarterbacks have been sacked 16 times in three games. You’d either say the offensive line is becoming an area of concern again, or that it’s getting dangerous to be a Raider quarterback. . . . In his first real exposure as a halfback, Napolean McCallum was impressive: 57 yards in 14 carries. Vance Mueller, who started, was held to 20 in nine carries and lost a fumble. . . . Marcus Allen’s injury is still diagnosed as an ankle sprain.