Only Wilson Gets a Passing Grade as Bears Beat Raiders

Taken as a whole, the Raider exhibition season wasn’t a complete disaster. They picked up a tackle from New England and $10 million from a village in the San Gabriel Valley. They didn’t have as many stars hurt as the Dallas Cowboys.

Other than that, it left something to be desired.

Various components of the Raider offense were put to the Chicago Bear test and found wanting Saturday at the Coliseum in an exhibition won by the visitors, 20-17, on Kevin Butler’s 42-yard field goal on the last play of the game.

Here’s how everyone did:

QUARTERBACK--Flunked.

Rusty Hilger went 7 for 18 with 3 interceptions to wind up the exhibition season with a 39.1% completion percentage, 5 interceptions and 1 touchdown pass.

Nevertheless, Tom Flores said Hilger’s No. 1 status going into the opener at Green Bay is unshaken.

“If Coach (Al) Davis says it’s etched in stone, if Coach Davis believes in him, the whole team believes in him,” Lester Hayes said. “If he’s Coach Davis’ man, so be it.”

Are the Raiders concerned about their young leader?

You bet your silver-and-black hard hat.

Said a Raider veteran: “I wish he’d looked better, sure. I think he’s getting a lot of pressure from a lot of places--coaches, friends, other players, press.”

Not to mention what he got from the Bears, introducing the next topic:

OFFENSIVE LINE--Flunked.

The Bears jumped the No. 1 unit like Godzilla on a gosling, overrunning the Raiders for seven sacks in just the first half, an even more imposing total seeing as how it was a 7-7 tie most of the way. When Hilger, who is always talking about the things he hopes to take out of a new experience, was asked the most important thing he’d gotten from this one, he said:

“Out, safe.”

One Raider possession went like this: Hilger sacked by Steve McMichael; Hilger sacked by Richard Dent; Hilger sacked by Otis Wilson.

On another possession, Dent showed John Clay some tricks they don’t have in the Big Eight, getting one sack in which he seized Hilger by the neck, and another that was erased by penalty, in which Dent tried to twirl Rusty like a baton.

In all, the Bears had 11 sacks, or one more than they had in The Mugging of 1984.

The Raider run-blocking wasn’t much either. In his first four carries on first and 10, when a three-yard gain is the minimum passing grade, Marcus Allen got 2, 2, 2 and 2 yards.

RECEIVERS--They’ve got some room for improvement.

James Lofton finally became the starter, replacing Jessie Hester on the left side . . . and dropped a ball in the end zone on Hilger. Mervyn Fernandez replaced Dokie Williams on the right side and played OK. The new backups, Williams and Jessie Hester were fine, the latter catching everything he touched, prompting new speculation that he’ll be the one to stick and Mark Pattison will once more be the one to go.

BACKUP QUARTERBACK--Strong.

That was Marc Wilson, who came off the bench to start the second half and promptly marched the Raiders 89 yards, completing 4 passes for 91 yards, including the 30-yarder to Dokie Williams for the touchdown.

You know what that sets up, don’t you?

All together now: Another Potential Quarterback Controversy.

And now for the thrilling action:

The Bears took a 7-0 lead when Wilber Marshall intercepted a pass thrown by Hilger, returning the ball 18 yards to the Raider 17, and Doug Flutie hit rookie wide receiver Ron Morris for the touchdown on the next play.

Flutie, playing for his Bear career, was 6 for 13 with 2 interceptions, and no one thought he looked very good, until the Bears’ No. 1, Mike Tomczak, came in and went 2 for 11.

The Raiders tied it when Greg Townsend blocked Maury Buford’s punt and the offense put together a 16-yard drive, Allen scoring from the six.

The Raiders went ahead, 14-7, on Wilson’s 27-yard scoring pass play to Williams on the first possession of the second half.

After each team had picked up a field goal, the Bears tied it, 17-17, when rookie quarterback Jim Harbaugh marched them most of 84 yards to score with 1:20 left. Tomczak came in and passed to Riley Walton, a second-year tight end, for the touchdown. Walton was hit at the three, dragged a Raider to the goal line, reached out with the football and was ruled to have broken the plane.

The Bears won it, driving 36 yards in the last 25 seconds on Harbaugh’s 11-yard scramble, a 16-yard pass to Dennis McKinnon and a 9-yard pass to McKinnon. McKinnon was originally ruled to have been brought down in bounds as time ran out, but instant replay brought a reversal, with McKinnon ruled to have rolled out of bounds at :01, setting up the winning kick.

A little surprisingly, since the Raiders make little of their exhibition records (this summer’s 1-3 gives them six years in Los Angeles without a winning exhibition season), Flores bothered to express disagreement with the replay reversal.

“It was a tough way to lose the ballgame,” he said. “I didn’t agree with the call. We were told it was an inadvertent whistle. My feeling is the whistle overrules.”

Not this time. The Raider exhibition season closed on a down-tick, but like so many other things, it could have been worse. Overtime was beckoning.

Raider Notes

Lester Hayes, on the shot he took in the head that knocked him woozy and out of the game: “I was hit by a 5-10 Teflon bullet, Walter Payton. He hit me, like, very hard in the jaw. I was seeing stars for hours.” . . . The two squads filed to the middle of the field after the coin toss to exchange solidarity handshakes, in reference to the stalled talks for a collective bargaining agreement. Not to be outdone, in the press box, irrepressible Raider official Mike Ornstein shook hands with some Bear aides. . . . Rusty Hilger: “As a whole, I’m not pleased with the way I played in preseason. But I believe I’m going to get better. That’s what I’m counting on. . . . When you throw a guy in for the first time against the best defense in the country, things are going to go wrong. But the thing is, how do you learn from it? . . . That was something I wanted, to face some adversity in preseason so we could sit down and figure out how to deal with it. That one’s over with. Now we’re 0-0 and starting with Green Bay.”