LETTING WILSON JUMP SHIP : Al Davis Didn’t Want to Keep His Quarterback

Raider fans always knew Al Davis had a quarterback move up his sleeve, even if they might have hoped for more than the Branch Rickey adage, “Sometimes it’s addition by subtraction.”

But that’s what they got.

The Raiders had seemingly committed themselves to Marc Wilson for another season. Their wheeling and dealing went in other directions, dispatching two starters for additional No. 1 picks in a quarterback-less draft. As they’d done with Bobby Hebert, Doug Williams and Neil Lomax in preceding seasons, they thought about, then decided they weren’t interested in, Kelly Stouffer or Jay Schroeder.

And then they let Wilson take a walk to Green Bay.

No one is exactly leaping to his feet to explain this one. The new coach, Mike Shanahan, described as a private Wilson admirer, looks stung.

“Marc made the decision he didn’t want to be part of this football team,” Shanahan said. “I want to talk about the people who are here.”

That would be Vince Evans and Steve Beuerlein, the early contenders for the top spot. Evans is 33 and was out of the National Football League for 2 1/2 years before the Raiders signed him for their strike team, and Beuerlein hasn’t taken his first pro snap, so the Raiders are doing an unprecedented amount of hoping. A year ago, they took a chance with Rusty Hilger, but at least they had planned that one all off-season. This time, the depth chart got shuffled a week before camp opened.

Was it just business?

Not exactly.

A source close to Al Davis said the Raiders and Wilson substantially agreed on a one-year contract, disagreeing only on whether it would be guaranteed.

Was it a matter of principle then?

Not exactly.

Sources close to Wilson and Davis agree that Davis had offered to guarantee the first $200,000.

Well, what happened?

The sources agree: Davis had had it with Wilson. Maybe he was just embarrassed to have paid all that money to a famous non-producer. Maybe he considered himself badly used by Howard Slusher and Donald Trump in the negotiations that kept Wilson out of the United States Football League at a cost of $4 million. Maybe he snapped when Wilson boycotted mini-camp.

Maybe it has gotten personal between Davis and Slusher, who has two more unsigned Raiders holding out, whom he claims are free agents.

“Howard and Al are having unbelievable arguments,” a source said. “They’re (cursing) each other.”

The Davis side says Wilson and Slusher asked too much, and this time Davis just told them to take a hike.

The Wilson side says Davis was looking for a way not to make a deal.

Suspicion abounded on both sides, and prevailed.

Letting Marc Wilson go isn’t quite the same thing as, say, trading Magic Johnson. Wilson was as unpopular with Los Angeles fans as any recent local athlete. His tenure coincided with the Raider decline. Respected members of the Raider front office had prayed for his exit for years.

“He’s a jerk,” one official said. “If the guy says he wants to be here, why’d he sign there?”

In recent years, Wilson always had one defender, however, the man who would have to play with Wilson or whatever alternative there was. That was the Raider coach of the moment, first Tom Flores, then Shanahan.

Critics and what few defenders there were agreed that Wilson had the requisite attributes: height, a strong arm, the ability to throw with touch, an apprenticeship in a passing offense at Brigham Young University and NFL experience.

Critics say it’s simple: After all the talking, one either does it or doesn’t. Wilson had chances in each of the last five seasons, and didn’t.

Defenders remember his big games (at Dallas in ‘83, at Miami in ‘84, at Cleveland in ‘85, at Denver in ‘86, at Seattle in ‘87), they note the declining state of the Raider line, the young receivers, the old-fashioned offensive scheme, and wonder if things might not have been different.

At the least, Wilson represented something of a known quantity, which alone made him valuable in this transitional season.

Instead, he has only to beat out Packer incumbent Don Majkowski, the No. 10 draft pick who won the job from Randy Wright last season.

Get the picture?

Below are the versions of the two sources on the Raider-Wilson talks. They are similar, there are differences between them, but they end the same way.

From the source close to Davis:

“Al has never been a big Marc Wilson fan. He traded him to Philadelphia in 1985, shortly after Wilson threw four interceptions in the playoff loss to New England. Tom Flores came in the next day and asked him to abort the trade. Al had to call back and ask Philadelphia not to let the trade go through.

“I don’t think Al ever forgot how Wilson and Howard Slusher put the wood to him (Davis retained Wilson with a $4-million contract when Donald Trump was about to sign him for the USFL). Then Trump got a little zinger in at Al. He called him ‘the great Al Davis.’ He said he’d mouse-trapped him, that he didn’t really want the guy, some silly thing like that.

“But Mike Shanahan liked Wilson. Al talked to Shanahan and talked to Wilson. He told Wilson, ‘Listen, I’m not going to pay you a million-one. (Unless Wilson waived his collective bargaining rights, or was waived, $1.1 million was the least he could sign for, a 10% raise.) You’ve made a lot of money here, you didn’t really earn it.’

“I think Al offered about $700,000. They said no.”

At this point, the Raiders didn’t send Wilson a new contract, making him an unrestricted free agent, able to sign elsewhere without compensation. This was surprising enough, but it was explained at the time as a mere technicality by sources close to Davis.

Wilson found one interested party, Green Bay.

“I know at the time, Green Bay only put $350,000-$400,000 on the table,” the Davis source says. “When Slusher and Wilson came back, Al said, ‘I’m not going to pay you more than Green Bay. You’ve just established market value.’

“So Wilson obviously decided to go to Green Bay.”

The Wilson source tells a different story: that though they were close to a deal with the Raiders, Davis hung back; that they got $750,000 a season for two years in Green Bay, counting easily attained bonuses, which Slusher decided was more than Davis was going to come up with; that Slusher and Wilson never came back to Davis.

Caught in the middle of all this was Shanahan. Wilson told several friends that Shanahan had called him repeatedly at home when Wilson chose to boycott mini-camp.

“About 10 times,” the Wilson source says. “He told Marc, ‘I’ll pay you from my own salary if you’re ever cut from this football team.’

“He said, ‘You’re my quarterback. Under the system you had, you couldn’t succeed. Under this system, you will succeed.’

“Mike Shanahan wanted him in the worst way, but Al Davis couldn’t stand to have him around. Davis’ first offer was $500,000, $200,000 of it guaranteed.

“Al kept saying, ‘Would you take 700-750? Howard kept saying, ‘Guarantee it.’

“I think Al was caught by surprise. He didn’t want Wilson. But now he hires a coach who wants Wilson.

“Now he can go back to his coach and tell him, ‘I never had an opportunity to get into the war, Howard Slusher took him away.’ ”

Neither Wilson nor Slusher would return calls.

The prevailing sentiment around the Raider front office is: “At least that’s over. No more years of debate. Can he? Can’t he? Let someone else worry about it.”

Thus ends the unlamented saga of Marc Wilson, Raider. It was an ordeal all around, and all those striking writers working together might not have been able to imagine a happy ending.