PRO FOOTBALL : Raiders Prove to Be a Disappointment to Seahawks’ Bosworth

Something wasn’t right. Brian Bosworth thought he and the Seattle Seahawks were coming to town to play the Raiders.

You know--bone crushing, head bashing, bleeding. Lots of bleeding.

“I was all psyched up,” Bosworth said. “I was in heat all week to play the Raiders.”

But something definitely wasn’t right, and The Boz was keenly disappointed.

“Yeah, a little bit,” he said. “I really wanted to play against Marcus (Allen) and I wanted to play against the run, and it was just real disappointing when the first play was a pass.”

Well, it was supposed to be, anyway, but instead of throwing, quarterback Rusty Hilger scrambled for five yards--not at all what Bosworth had come to expect in his youth as an admirer of Raider mayhem.

But it was all over in the first 30 minutes when the Seahawks went into the Coliseum tunnel with a 28-0 lead, on their way to a 35-13 laugher.

A laugher against the Raiders? Not in Bosworth’s wildest dreams.

“I watched film on ‘em all week and was really excited about it,” he said. “But by us taking ‘em out of the game as quick as we did and puttin’ ‘em in a passing situation, it was just kind of a limp feeling out there.

“It fell far below my expectations. If it had been a closer game they would have tried to hammer Marcus and Bo (Jackson) and all those guys in there and try to establish a dominating rapport with us, but it never unfolded that way.

“This was like an Oklahoma win to us. At Oklahoma, I’d be out of the game at halftime.”

Bosworth, who plays weakside inside linebacker, never even got a chance to hit Hilger, whom he recalled as a former opponent from Oklahoma State. He was credited with a 10-yard sack of the Raider quarterback but actually never touched him.

“I G-forced him down, I guess,” Bosworth said. “As soon as he turned around and saw me he ducked and . . . one of those things. Like I said, it was a limp feeling out there today.”

Officially, Bosworth was credited with only four tackles. His best play against Allen was a necktie tackle on third-and-two that stopped Allen for only a one-yard gain.

“They were trying to use Marcus’ speed to the outside and wall it off to the inside,” Bosworth said. “The only thing I really remember is somebody coming up and hitting me from behind when the play was over. I couldn’t believe somebody was hitting me on my sideline. I thought they were crazy. I was ready to turn around and swing and it turned out to be (Seahawk defensive end) Jacob (Green).”

Once he showered, dressed and arranged his blond punk hairdo, Bosworth was in a talkative mood. He took on a crush of media wearing blue reflector sunglasses, a blue French designer sweat shirt, white pantaloons and three earrings in his left ear: a diamond, a gold band and a gold BOZ pin.

As the game wound down, he roamed the Seahawk sideline with his helmet on backward. Or was it his head?

Bosworth may not have the answers on what has happened to the Raiders to put them in their current fix, but he had some opinions.

“The Raiders thought their mystique was gonna last forever,” he said. “The Raiders never won pretty. Every time I saw ‘em they never won pretty. They just won. That’s the mark of a mystique-filled team because they’ll find a way to win.

“So they had an off-day today and we had an on-day. We took ‘em out of their game plan, and when you do that you frustrate the Raiders. The Raiders like to be an intimidating team, and when they’re not playing the game they want to play, then it’s catching them off guard.

“They’re frustrated offensively this year because they don’t have a sure leader on the offense because of their quarterback controversy. You get ‘em down 14 points and all of a sudden the shadow of doubt comes into the back of the Raider offensive players’ minds.

“They’ll bounce back. As soon as they get some confidence on the offensive side of the football they’re gonna be all right. Their defense was put in a situation they don’t like to be put in.”

All in all, Bosworth concluded, it was not a memorable day.

“I’m not gonna remember it at all,” he said. “I really expected to have a real battle there. I wanted a game that was gonna be a war, and it never unfolded to be like that.”

Bosworth figured the Seahawks may have had something to do with the Raiders’ impotence.

“We had a lot of team unity during the strike,” the Boz said. “Everybody was well organized. We knew what we were doing. We understood that the team that came out best after the strike would be the team that worked the hardest during the strike.

“We had a good week of practice . . . very intense, very attuned to what the coaches were attempting to teach us, and we did the things it took to put the Raiders in their place.”

If Bosworth had gotten his way last spring, he might have been in that same place today. The Raiders were one of five teams he said he would sign with out of the National Football League’s supplemental draft. When the Seahawks drafted him, anyway, he relented--for $11 million over 10 years.

“I couldn’t be more happy,” he said. “I’m in the toughest division in the NFL and I enjoy every challenge. It’s unfortunate that things didn’t work out (with the Raiders), but right now I wouldn’t change it at all.”

He thought he might have even made a few friends in Los Angeles, by the end of the day.

“There were a lot of boos (before the game),” he said. “It surprised me a little bit. I thought people in L.A. kind of liked me. But L.A. Raider fans, I guess they have a black attitude, like the team wears black uniforms.

“But they started cheering after the game.”