A SELF-DRIVEN VANN : Raider Safety McElroy Pushes Himself to the Limit and Then a Little Beyond

To the menaces of camp, along with those mind-numbing repetitions the coaches love so much and the rivers of sweat running around under your pads, add the ultra-competitor who doesn’t know how to go halfway and isn’t sure he wants to learn.

Or in other words, Raider safety Vann McElroy, hard-hitting son of a preacher man, July through January.

In the Raiders’ non-tackling scrimmage last Saturday--”Well, it’s supposed to be,” said Coach Tom Flores beforehand--McElroy jumped all over Kenny King on a sweep and buried him behind the line of scrimmage. King could tell you, if that wasn’t a tackle, it will do until the real thing comes along.

Then after Mervyn Fernandez made the mistake of running through Lester Hayes’ tackle, McElroy blasted him out of bounds with the fervor that Seahawk and Charger receivers know so well. Fernandez, until recently a British Columbia Lion and uninitiated, jumped up and confronted McElroy. They had to be peeled apart.

“It was just a situation, I guess I just got overzealous,” said the crown prince of zeal, grinning. “I made a little contact. Mervyn turned around and threw the ball back, and we just got into it. I was glad to see it. I was glad to see Mervyn get a little excited. That excites me, to check out a guy.

“It’s just a situation in those scrimmages, you can do everything right and then sit back, and the coaches say, ‘I think he made the tackle.’ Or you can make the tackle, and the coaches start yelling, ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’

“I do what I’ve got to do. I can’t just sit back. I’ve got to check myself out, make sure my tackling angles are right.”

Of course, this is nothing compared to those days in Santa Rosa in ’82 when McElroy, a rookie No. 3 pick from Baylor, was really checking himself out, when he and a rookie named Marcus Allen seemed to fight daily.

“Marcus is not a light person,” McElroy said. “He doesn’t take things lightly. It was a situation, I wasn’t used to non-contact drills. He came through the line, and they just let him straight through. I popped him and knocked him straight over. He got up and didn’t say a word. Ran back to the huddle like he always does. Everybody’s going, ‘Wh-o-o! H-a-a-a!’

“The next play, they ran a sweep. I go over to pop him again, and at the last minute, he throws a forearm right at my head. We went into it. I thought, ‘It won’t be long for me--this is the franchise.’ ”

McElroy was right, it wasn’t long for him--on the bench. He was starting midway through his rookie season, a Pro Bowl pick in the next two. The Raiders thought last season should have been three, but he finished second in the player balloting to Kansas City’s Deron Cherry, then lost out when the squad took one free safety and two strong safeties.

You think McElroy needed the compliment?. Uh, darn right.

You think it’s a coincidence that he tries to decapitate teammates in scrimmages?

“I’m almost paranoid,” he said. “I’m always thinking that somebody is thinking, ‘Vann McElroy isn’t doing enough.’ I always think that of myself. That attitude makes me over-aggressive. I’m trying to prove Vann McElroy.

“It doesn’t make any difference if I have 18 tackles and an interception. Even though I did that, I think the other stuff is my fault. I’m constantly proving myself.”

Where could he have gotten that? How about from his father, Brother Ted McElroy of the Church of Christ, Uvalde, Tex.

Vann says his dad used to be a little on the aggressive side, himself.

“He was, at one time, a hell fire and brimstone guy,” McElroy said. “He’s 70 years old now. He’s probably lightened up a little.

“He always seemed to me to have the same attitude that coaches do. They want you to do things right. They’re in a prove-yourself-type situation. Preachers go from Sunday to Sunday, wondering how many people are going to come to services.”

You might not have expected to get a Raider safety from the family of a Texas preacher but they did.

Does McElroy fit in? They have Greg Townsend’s shaved head and earring here, and Todd Christensen’s curly locks to the shoulder blades, and Lester Hayes’ imagination. McElroy, however, has the the only Goofy cap from Disneyland in camp. It has a bill painted to look like a dog’s snout, and long black ears that flop down over his, and he wears it everywhere. A Raider, to the manner born.