This Raider Likes to Do It His Way

If the Raiders were a fighter, they’d be somebody like Ernie (The Rock) Durando, right-hand crazy, looking to take you out with one punch and not caring how many black eyes and subdural hemorrhages it took to do it.

If they were a tennis player, they’d be at the net all night, looking for the overhead smash and the kill. If a baseball player, they’d be Ruth, swinging from the heels, ignoring the strikeouts, waiting for the grand slam. If they were a basketballer, they’d be shooting from the three-point line all night.

When you think of the Raiders, you think of these incredibly swift and elusive wide-outs catching these fantastically high and long passes for touchdowns. You think of Cliff Branch, Warren Wells, Art Powell, Clem Daniels. These guys used to have 150-200 yards receiving a game. In two catches.

The team was quarterbacked by guys known as the Mad Bomber and the Gunslinger. If you couldn’t throw the ball through two area codes, the Raiders didn’t want you. Some teams run to daylight. The Raiders threw to daylight.

So, how come the most prolific pass receiver on the field week in and week out--and the third-most prolific in Raider history--is this slow ex-fullback who spends the first few seconds of every play blocking some 240-pound linebacker before he can run downfield just in case one of the 9.2 gazelles can’t escape double-coverage?

What does Todd Christensen do to the Raider image, the Raider mystique and why does he keep doing it week after week? Christensen is just faster than a New York waiter. If he were inanimate, he’d be something you’d use to haul gravel in or berth ocean liners in.

The rest of the pass receiving team looks in dim light like an Olympic relay squad--or a chorus of ocelots. They leave the line of scrimmage as though a lion were after them. They scare the opposition so mightily that they frequently take half or more of its manpower to dash back and cover them.

And here comes Todd Christensen, chugging along like a Tijuana taxi as wide open as a waterfront saloon. And he catches pass after pass and puts the team in position where it can kick for three or run for six points.

That, or something like it, has happened 408 times in Christensen’s career as a Raider. Only two other Raiders in history have caught more passes--Fred Biletnikoff, whom nobody ever mixed up with a flying saucer, either, and Cliff Branch, whose routes were a blur and who spent the day in the opposition’s end zone.

For five straight seasons, Christensen has caught more passes than any other Raider. He caught 95 last season, more than any tight end in the game’s history.

The tight end is kind of the butler in the pro football scheme of things. He’s supposed to do a little bit of everything and try not to be noticed doing it. He has to be half-ape, half-antelope. Tarzan would have made a great tight end.

Christensen realizes that he louses up the public perception of the Raiders as a quick-striking, daring, go-for-the-jugular force. He’s like a beer can in a cellar of fine old wines, a Percheron in a field of polo ponies.

The Raiders’ motto is: “We don’t take what they give us, we take what we want.” Christensen takes what the defense gives.

“Brian Piccolo used to say Gale Sayers got the club 60 yards in one carry and he got them 60 yards in 20 carries. Well, that’s what I do,” he says, grinning.

The Raiders went out last year and swept up every available speed burner and they now have so many world-class speedsters that the line of scrimmage looks like a track meet when the ball is snapped. Dokie Williams, Jessie Hester, Mervyn Fernandez and James Lofton are so fast that only three people in the league know what they look like.

Everybody knows what Todd Christensen looks like--as if he just heard the funniest joke of his life.

He fits the Raider mold in one category: he doesn’t take life as seriously as, well, say George Bush or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or Don Shula. Christensen is prone to quote H. L. Mencken instead of Mike Ditka in his everyday conversation. He keeps a library of authors such as Dostoevsky and Proust, and may be the only man west of Oxford who knows what James Joyce is talking about.

He’s a free spirit. He refused to play tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. He thought he was more the fullback type. But when he came to the Raiders and realized that the tight end position was somewhat like being a spy, it appealed to his sense of the absurd. He hates being predictable.

He came in the locker room Sunday, after his team had shut down the Detroit Lions, 27-7. First, he repaired to the training room to have aching ribs checked for breakage. “They’re not broken,” he told his understudy sunnily. “Sorry about that. You’ll have to wait awhile for my job.”

He turned his attention to the game. “We won ugly,” he reported. “My kind of game.”

As usual, Christensen had out-caught the receiving corps with 6 receptions for 88 yards.

“I would like to break Tom Fears’ (NFL) record for one game (18),” he said.

That might not be possible now if there’s a strike. What did Todd think of the strike?

“I just saw ‘Gandhi’ the other night and it reminded me of us football players,” he said. “Here we are, little brown men waiting for independence.”

What if another player took his place?

“So much for the integrity of the game they’re always talking about.”

What would his replacement have to do?

“Take a shot in the ribs,” succinctly suggested Todd Christensen.

But he could be slow?

“I hate to tell you this but I’m not slow. I ran 4.5 (-second) 40s. In the Pro Bowl, (defensive back) Kenny Easley and his partner came up to me and said ‘Leave off that slow stuff--we’re not buying that anymore.’ Another facade cracked. I’m not slow. I’m just ugly.”