He’s Proven He’s Not Out of His Depth in the NFL

After the game, the jokes were endless:

--”Still Waters run deep.”

--”If the Raiders blow the playoffs, they’ll just say it’s Waters under the bridge.”

--”Why should the Raiders memorize ‘Yes, My Darling Daughter’ in the huddle? Because it warns you, ‘Don’t go near the Waters.’ ”

The dictionary defines catastrophe as “a momentous final tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow.”

The L.A. Raiders know that definition intimately.

Try this on your Funk & Wagnalls: You’re the Los Angeles Raiders and you have the ball on your opponents’ 16-yard line, second and six in a game that’s in sudden-death overtime. A field goal will win more than a game. It will almost certainly guarantee you a place in the playoffs as a wild-card entrant. And the Raiders are the only team to have won a Super Bowl as a wild-card entrant.

But this Super Bowl has no handles on it. Marcus Allen fumbles it away.

That’s not the catastrophe, though. The catastrophe happens when an obscure safety man scoops up the loose ball and sets sail toward the Raider goal.

The Raiders’ call hath led them beside the still Waters. Wearing No. 20. Given name, Andre. When you play the Philadelphia Eagles, it’s like playing cards with a bunch of strangers on a boat. These guys are household nobodies, as anonymous as ransom notes. It’s like a Swiss bank account. Just a bunch of numbers.

They are no great shucks as athletes, either--as their 3-9 record going into this game against the Raiders will tell you.

Still, if you get beaten by the Eagles, you figure it might be by the aptly named wide receiver, Mike Quick, or maybe the marvelously gifted passer-runner, Randall Cunningham. The Raiders figured No. 20 was just the Waters boy.

They found out. This was a cool, clear Waters in which their 1986 season may have drowned. Waters, you might say, pulled the plug on them. All of a sudden, it was Waters, Waters, everywhere.

It was the second Raider turnover he had recovered. Earlier, he had aborted another Raider victory drive when he separated receiver Rod Barksdale from the ball on the Eagle 24 when the Raiders were on the way to the goal line, trailing, 27-24, with 3 minutes left to play.

It should have put L.A. on the Waters-wagon for keeps. Instead, they kept trying to part the Waters. Unfortunately for them, this Waters was hot.

The Raiders could be pardoned for overlooking this uncharted body of Waters. Andre is not exactly the head Waters of the NFC. He played his college football in such virtual anonymity at Cheyney State that he wasn’t drafted and would never have played in the pros had it not been for a Philadelphia scout named George Azar.

“We looked at film of Andre and he did so many things well that we decided he deserved a chance to play in the NFL,” recalls Azar.

“But what sold the coaching staff on him was his work habits. Nobody ever worked harder or learned faster than Andre. He was the most coachable kid you saw. You never had to tell him a thing twice and you never had to look around for him when you wanted him.”

The Eagles originally put Andre on the special teams, the kamikazes of football who hurl themselves down smokestacks to stop kickoff and punt returns. But the new coach, Buddy Ryan, a defensive specialist, knew a born safety man when he saw one.

“He should be in the Pro Bowl,” says Ryan, no lavish man with a compliment. “There’s no one better than Andre Waters at the position.”

The Eagles’ game plan paid Andre the ultimate compliment Saturday, assigning Marcus Allen to him. On the pivotal play of the game, maybe the season, the Raiders, trying to maneuver the ball for the field goal, gave the ball to Marcus. He slid right. He saw no hole, he veered left.

The ball didn’t veer with him. He was hit by a linebacker, Seth Joyner. Marcus and the ball parted company.

“I just saw the ball lying there,” Waters recalled after the game. “I just picked it up and ran. Seth had done all the work. I just delivered the message.

“I saw (Jim) Plunkett coming. I just stiff-armed him. I wish I could have gone all the way. I ran a kickoff back for a touchdown against Washington two years ago (which gave Philadelphia a rare victory over the Redskins). But, this time Dokie (Williams) ran me down on the four.”

As for the Raiders, the next time they play the Eagles and it’s overtime, maybe they should take a page from Noah and send out a dove before calling a line play to see if the Waters have subsided or whether they still cover every living thing, particularly fumbling halfbacks.

And if they’re ever in Philadelphia, they should be sure to boil the Waters.