Another Season, Another Choice : Raiders May Have to Leave Quarterback Spot to Dreamers

If it’s July, the Raiders must be trying to select a quarterback. Thus, every time one drops back to pass in this camp, the writers whisper among themselves and the odds on the quarterback tote board blink again.

Vince Evans, 3-2. Heartwarming tale, as long as it lasts.

Steve Beuerlein, 2-1. Quarterback of the future, which may have to be now.

Jim Plunkett, 5-2. They sort of suggested that he retire, but they didn’t actually drive a stake through his heart, and he’s rising from his crypt again.

Rusty Hilger, off the board. Last season’s quarterback of the future, already scratched from the practice rotation. The future doesn’t always last a long time around here.

There’s a new flash daily. Plunkett, 40, was all but written off in May--they wouldn’t let him take a snap in mini-camp, the pro football counterpart of putting a dead flounder in his locker to tell him his career sleeps with the fishes--but he’s suddenly back in the picture in a big way.

“If he can just buy us a little time,” a Raider official said with a sigh.

And the team hasn’t even played its first exhibition game. The Raiders have pretended to run competitions at this position before, but this looks like the real thing.

Evans, scar tissue all over his heart, can hardly believe his luck.

Beuerlein, glowing with promise, is getting an early call and knows it.

Plunk is Plunk. He has seen it all before, almost.

This story is about his two rivals, the dark-horse would-be quarterbacks.

“I believe there are many people who are right on the brink of fulfilling their dreams, who give up. I felt like I was RIGHT ON THE BRINK, man! I just felt like it. It’s just an intuition that makes you go that extra mile.”

--Vince Evans

Intuition? Is that what you call that voice that wakes you up in the middle of the night to scream that nothing has worked out, and it looks as if it never will, and no one may ever see this gift you know you have?

That was Vince Evans at 31: eight seasons with the Chicago Bears, a 49% career completion average; two seasons in the United States Football League, watching it fold and his Lloyd’s of London-guaranteed $4.5-million contract get un-guaranteed.

No prospects.

Two tryouts before the 1986 season, with the Denver Broncos and Buffalo Bills, each about an hour. See you later.

A trip to Los Angeles from his home in Denver--at his own expense--to see Coach Tom Flores, who explained politely he didn’t fit into Raider plans. Thanks but no, thanks.

“I don’t know what the toughest thing you had to go through in your life in terms of wanting something so bad and knowing you were talented enough . . .” Evans said.

“Listen, I would write letters to every team. I would make phone calls to the ones I was really interested in. I don’t recall how many letters I’ve sent to this particular organization. God knows, I don’t know how many phone calls. Mr. (Al) Davis’ secretary, I think she knows me pretty well. (Laughing,) It was a real pleasure to meet her once I got out here. She said, ‘Oh, I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.’

“I hadn’t stopped working out since the (Chicago) Blitz and the (Denver) Gold. You go out there and throw the ball every day and you try to find anybody you can to work out with. Other guys are going to camp and you’re still sitting at home, having to round up just anybody to throw the football to--kids, friends.

“It was really tough, but I had a lot of encouragement. I’m a Christian, so I utilized a lot of my faith in the Lord. Fortunately, I had some good solid people around me who loved me for me, who encouraged me to continue on. Because, I tell you, in the natural order, from what I could see, it looked absolutely impossible.”

And then came the strike.

Evans became a Raider after all, the hard way. The officials making up the substitute team sneaked his name past Flores, fearing he’d strike it if he saw it.

Evans arrived, looking unlike any 32-year-old the Raiders had seen lately: strong, quick, mobile. In his debut, on that 106-degree day, before a crowd of 10,708 in the Coliseum, he tore the Kansas City Chiefs’ replacements apart, passing for 248 yards and 2 touchdowns, running for 63 more yards.

You might say the mood changed in a hurry.

Hilger was already struggling. Flores looked as if he’d turned around, to the point of arguing that letting Evans quarterback the regular team posed no problems.

“Won’t it be a hard for a replacement quarterback to work with the regular team?” he was asked after the game against the Chiefs.

“Only if you make it one,” Flores said.

It never came to that. Evans threw three interceptions the next week at Denver. A week later, he threw an interception in the waning seconds to the San Diego Chargers’ Elvis Patterson, who returned it 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown.

After that, Evans watched. Davis was still intrigued, but Flores lost interest.

When Marc Wilson bolted for Green Bay a couple of weeks ago, Evans was No. 2 on the off-season depth chart, so look whose dream is on the verge of coming true.

Is he happy?

Ecstatic?

Thankful?

Humble?

All those and more than we have room for.

“Man, I tell you, I still haven’t been able to come up with the right words to adequately describe the position I’m in right now,” Evans said.

“Hey, it’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful feeling. And, I tell you, I just thank God that I’m here, that I’m associated with this football team, for everybody that’s around me.

“I thank God for the writers, the coaches, Al Davis. I’m serious, though, man. Because two years ago, I was like prostrate on my face .

“It’s good to see you guys. (Laughing.) You’re laughing, but I’m dead serious.

“I just think it was a miracle.”

Once he was young and innocent. Then came all those years in Chicago, running Walter Payton left and Walter Payton right for what seemed like a new offensive coordinator every year. There was the can’t-miss opportunity with the new league that missed, and the forced retirement, when the phone stopped ringing and the people he thought were friends slipped away.

He has lived and died in football and suddenly he lives again.

“It’s a lot more in perspective,” he said. “I’ve got a beautiful wife and a kid. I want to do well. I’d love to do well. I hope to play and just go out on a good note. I just want the end of this book to be better than the beginning of it.”

The sad thing is, not everybody’s dream can come true.

Evans’ dreams sit athwart Beuerlein’s.

Beuerlein is 22, and if this isn’t his last chance, as it may be for Evans, he has seen some hard times of his own. It’s one reason the Raiders dare to hope.

He was the centerpiece of a glamorous Notre Dame program that foundered spectacularly. This was probably more attributable to Coach Gerry Faust, but Beuerlein got his share of the blame.

By his junior year, which he played hurt, he had 14 touchdown passes, 37 interceptions, had undergone surgery on his right shoulder and lost the starting job he’d had since he arrived.

Aside from that, everything was OK.

“A lot of people were saying I was washed up and I never was worth anything,” Beuerlein said.

“You’d hear it from the students, thinking they knew everything when they really didn’t know the person. I was hurting. I never bitched or complained to the press or anything. I didn’t want to be making excuses. I just kept going and going.

“It was tough. Here are people who one day are really nice to you and the next day they’re going to say something behind your back. It was the same with the media. They’d be real nice to me during an interview and then they’d write an article back-stabbing me the next day. That’s just the way it is and you can’t get around it.

“There were times I was on the verge of tears because it hurt so much--after games in the locker room, sometimes early in the week after a tough loss, reading the newspapers the next day. It hurt. But I was never once on my knees. I never once thought about quitting.”

Mercy intervened, carrying off Faust.

Beuerlein had a good senior season under Lou Holtz, completing 58% of his passes for 13 touchdowns and throwing only 7 interceptions. Scouts liked his arm but marked him down as erratic and unpolished. He went to the Raiders in the fourth round of the ’87 draft.

What Beuerlein has is poise. He radiates confidence, something that couldn’t have been unwelcome to Davis, who was fond of observing that the great failing of the withdrawn Wilson was that he couldn’t stand the heat in the big city.

A year ago, Davis turned to Hilger, the audacious, fast-talking kid from Oklahoma State, but Hilger’s road was different. Beuerlein was a star at Anaheim’s Servite High, one of the nation’s most-recruited players. Hilger was a late-blooming ugly duckling and his enthusiasm had a definite manic edge, suggesting the fear that lay under it.

Now, the next kid may get his chance ahead of schedule--say two years ahead of schedule.

“You know, a lot of people were trying to prepare me,” Beuerlein said. “Coaches were saying, ‘You know, it might not happen overnight.’ People were saying the Raiders take a long time to develop their quarterbacks.”

Surprise, they’re already looking him over.

Of course, it’s a little warmer behind the Raider bench than it was at Notre Dame.

Those hecklers in South Bend?

Amateurs. Children. Philanthropists.

“When I came here, the one thing people kept saying was that L.A. is a very tough place to play,” Beuerlein said. “I knew Marc had been through a lot of tough times ‘cause I was from the area. I had followed the Raiders and I knew what was going on.

“I started preparing myself any way I possibly could, saying, ‘Hey, you know I’ve been through situations that have been pretty intense at Notre Dame.’

“I learned a lot last year while I was on IR (injured reserve). You know, I was on the sidelines for all the home games, when the people sitting behind the Raider bench--I probably shouldn’t say this--they’d say some of the most brutal things to Marc. I was just keeping the stat board and I couldn’t believe it.

“I looked back at those people and I was just like--’What the heck? What would motivate you to say something like that? Jiminy Christmas, the guy’s out here trying his hardest, doing the best he can. He wants to win. What the hell?’

“Marc had to hear it. He’d go back to get some water and he’d be 10 feet away from them. He wouldn’t react at all.

“I wouldn’t say it was intimidating or scary. I just looked at it and said, ‘Wow, these people are pretty brutal.’ But what the heck, you still got to go out and do your job.”

It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

There is someone here who can, isn’t there?

Isn’t there?

You two with the stars in your eyes, dream and the Raiders dream with you.