Wilson Is Missing, Not Gone : New Raider Coach Rates Holdout QB Still a Prospect

Some day when Mike Shanahan looks back on his first season as a head coach, a Raider fan suggested recently, he will conclude that he wasted a year with Marc Wilson at quarterback.

Shanahan, who succeeded Tom Flores this year, considers Wilson a prospect. Many Raider fans don’t. They grieved when the club made no effort to improve the quarterback position after last season’s 5-10 finish, which followed an 8-8 finish in 1986.

They fear that the coaching change has just delayed an essential rebuilding process at quarterback for the usual reason--new coaches don’t like to fire old players without studying them personally.

Wilson, the Raiders’ veteran starter, is holding out in Seattle this month, so Shanahan hasn’t been able to study him yet, but he wants to. And that’s bad enough for those Raider fans.

In the meantime this week, the club is running its annual quarterback camp at El Segundo with four other hard-throwing passers, sophomore Steve Beuerlein, former starter Rusty Hilger, strike veteran Vince Evans, and longshot David Webber, the rookie from Carroll College in Waukesha, Wis.

Jim Plunkett, is also on the premises, and at 41 Plunkett can’t be a day older than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but whereas the Lakers are still running their old man up and down the floor, the Raiders have sort of turned theirs out to pasture.

Plunkett is attending all the classes and learning Shanahan’s new terminology, but the Raiders don’t want him on the field, where they’ve decided to look at younger candidates instead.

They seem to like what they’re seeing, although, for other bystanders, it’s hard to evaluate passers when there is not a defensive player in sight. This camp--which follows last week’s camp for Raider linemen--is for quarterbacks and receivers, exclusively.

And against a west wind, any offense looks good.

The most obvious change in Shanahan’s club, by comparison with last year’s at El Segundo, is that the new coach is introducing a flashier, more sophisticated pass offense.

There are more motion, more movement of the tight ends before the snap, more one-back sets.

With two or three formation changes on almost every play, the Raiders this week are looking more like the Washington Redskins than some Raider teams of recent years.

Owner Al Davis’ underlying long-ball philosophy is still in place, but Shanahan is apparently getting ready to implement it a different way--by repeatedly shifting backs and tight ends back and forth along the scrimmage line before the start of most plays.

“There’s more responsibility for the running backs in this system, but there will be less recognition time for the defenses,” halfback Marcus Allen said after Tuesday’s practice.

“I think the big thing is that we’re getting more variation on all offensive plays.”

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“We’re trying to open up the big play, the long play,” Shanahan said.

In this week’s 90-minute drills he has been exhibiting one new Raider means to that end--flipping his receivers back and forth--before the snap--depending on the formation.

Previous Raider clubs for 25 years have had left and right offensive ends who stayed put along the same sidelines throughout the game.