Raiders Get a Setback on Way to Seattle : Sunday’s Upsets Make the Road to Playoffs Even More Treacherous

The Black Hole of Seattle beckons the Raiders, who have lost their last four games in the Kingdome, and perhaps some of their hearing, but unfortunately for them, none of their memories.

One more Raider loss here and they’ll have another nightmare for their collection. After Sunday’s round of upsets, the Raiders (8-5) are already a half-game behind Cincinnati (9-5) in the race for the second wild-card spot. They’re only a half-game ahead of Kansas City (8-6).

Of course, the Raiders have their own charm, their 24-3-1 Monday night record. Oh, that doesn’t work up here? One of the losses, the Seahawks’ 17-14 regular-season victory in 1984, was on Monday night? Never mind.

It’s bad timing for the Raiders, who turned last week’s Philadelphia mismatch into an Eagles’ upset that had Al Davis walking around the locker room muttering, “(bleeping) all-stars.”

This one has become all-important--”win or spend Christmas at home” was all anyone heard last week.

Coach Chuck Knox concedes any playoff chances for Seattle (7-6) are “minimal,” so the Seahawks are going to Plan B: salvage what you can. And what could be more fun than beating guess-whom?

Raider Hater T-shirts have sold briskly. People with tickets rested their voices over the weekend and stayed off their feet, the better to be fresh to leap up for their waves and rattle some silver and black eardrums. If any Raiders have anything to say to each other, they’d better get it out of the way by 5:30.

“The thing that killed us up there in the playoff loss (13-7 in 1984) was our inability to audible,” said Jim Plunkett, who was the quarterback that day. “I’d see them coming on a blitz or in a certain defense but I couldn’t audible. If I did, we’d jump offsides. It was a totally unfair advantage and I said so.”

Said Seattle halfback Curt Warner: “It definitely works to our advantage. And the crowd--they know how to do it. (At the Chamber of Commerce’s preseason luncheon, Bill Pickel did a skit in which he instructed Los Angeles fans when to start their wave--when the other team has the ball.) I’m definitely not going to complain about it. They can make all the noise they want to. It’s a part of the game. If you can’t deal with it, you’re in trouble.”

They’re trying, they’re trying. A year ago, Tom Flores had huge loudspeakers brought to practice to simulate the din. Before the game, quarterback Marc Wilson was told to back away from center if it was too loud. On the very first play, the fans screamed, Wilson backed away . . . and was told to get back in there and do the best he could by the referee.

The Raiders lost, 33-3. This year they’re trying a new tactic:

What noise?

“If you worry about the noise all week long, you’re not going to worry about the Seahawks,” Flores said. “The Seahawks are the ones we have to beat.”

Did Lester Hayes say after last year’s game, “We couldn’t beat these guys up here with an all-star team?” Well, maybe he did, but Raiders are now trying to put this jinx stuff behind them.

“I like playing in the Kingdome,” Howie Long said. “I don’t get psyched out in the Kingdome. The way I look at it, the crowd isn’t going to come down on the field and kick your butt. They don’t bother me.

“They get that triple wave going. They have some guy up there they let out on weekends, but they’re the type of crowd that waits after the game for your autograph, too. It’s not like going to Camden, N.J., to play the Camden Knights, where you know win or lose you’re going to get your butt kicked on the way to the bus.”

Said Curt Marsh, the Raider guard who lives in Seattle:

“They’re like the old Raider fans, back when we were in Oakland. A game was the highlight of the week for everybody. It’s what everybody talks about at work all week. They have T-shirts, TV commercials. It’s not like L.A., where they’ve got 20 different things to do on the weekend.”

The weekend is over but the fans are warming up their throats.

The Raiders already have the satisfaction of doing what they could to start the Seahawk slide. Seattle was 4-1 and a prime early-season surprise when the Raiders unseated them, 14-10, in the Coliseum. This thing cuts both ways: the Seahawks have lost four of the five meetings in the Coliseum.

At 5-2, the Seahawks went to Denver and lost a heartbreaker, or a bloodboiler, 20-13. Two Seattle touchdowns and a field goal were nullified by penalties. Nick Skorich, the NFL’s assistant supervisor of officials, later told the Seahawks that two of the calls were bad.

Knox, who long defended his scrappy little quarterback, Dave Krieg, benched him and tried Gale Gilbert. The Seahawks got blown out in successive weeks by the Jets (38-7), the Chiefs (27-7) and the Bengals (34-7). The Seahawks had never had a four-game losing streak as an expansion team.

Krieg returned for an unimpressive 24-20 victory over the Eagles, in which the punt return team contributed two touchdowns. Then, with three days of preparation before the Thanksgiving game in Dallas, the Seahawks destroyed the Cowboys.

“We only had 2-3 days to prepare,” said Krieg last week. “Maybe that’s better.”

Everything isn’t all better in Seattle, with suggestions in the air that a major revamping may be next. The Seahawks have bid on every available quarterback in the last two years and they may bid further this winter. A Seahawk official noted the 10 former free agents in the starting lineup and wondered how far they’d get that way.

But for one night in the Kingdome, they’re tough enough. Ask the Raiders before their eardrums start ringing.

Raider Notes The Raiders are three-point favorites. . . . Todd Christensen, the NFL’s leading receiver, needs one reception to become the first receiver to catch 80 passes in four straight seasons. He needs 33 yards for his third 1,000-yard season. . . . Several Raiders thought Curt Warner ran better in the first meeting than they’d ever seen him, and that was on a day they held him to 74 yards. Warner has 1,080 yards and leads the Bengals’ James Brooks, the AFC’s second-leading rusher, by 278 yards. One reason has been rookie fullback John L. Williams, a 213-pound crunching blocker who knocked Bill Bates’ mouthpiece out on one Thanksgiving day play. . . . Marcus Allen has one 100-yard rushing day on artificial turf in his five-year pro career. It came here last season. . . . The Seahawk defense is 25th in the NFL and hurting, with safety Ken Easley and defensive end Jeff Bryant gone. Easley had arthroscopic knee surgery at mid-season and tried to play six days later, even taking part in pregame warmups before conceding he couldn’t go. He has since had further surgery. Nose tackle Joe Nash, a Pro Bowl player in ‘84, has been hurting and is playing behind Reggie Kinlaw, who was cut by the Raiders last year. The other end, Jacob Green is double-teamed and the once-feared Seahawk rush, which sacked Jim Plunkett 8 times in ‘83, has recorded 32 sacks all season. And 10 came in one game, against the Eagles’ Randall Cunningham.

LOS ANGELES RAIDERS

Tonight’s Game

Opponent: Seattle Seahawks.

Site: Kingdome, Seattle.

Time: 6 p.m.

Records: Raiders 8-5, Seahawks 7-6.

Radio: KRLA (1110); KTNQ (1020), KIK-FM (94.3).

TV: Channels 7 and 10.

Rosters: Page 21.