Raiders Go to the Bullpen to Get Needed Relief at Quarterback

A retired ballplayer who hardly ever picks up a baseball anymore except to play catch with his little boy, Raider Jay Schroeder used to get an eyeful of Eddie Murray, or at least an earful about Eddie Murray, back when Schroeder was making his living playing football in Washington before Dan Quayle was the best-known blond backup man in town.

Those days, the Baltimore Orioles were the closest thing the Washingtonians had to a big-league baseball team. (Not too close, but close.) Schroeder got to see a lot of Murray’s work. So, upon hearing Sunday that the Dodgers had pulled off a deal for the Oriole first baseman, Raider Schroeder--who, just like Murray, was beamed cross-country to his native Los Angeles this year--said he thought the Dodgers had done themselves proud.

“Eddie Murray ought to do great things for the Dodgers,” Raider Schroeder said. “Who you going to pitch to now--(Kirk) Gibson or Murray? Who you going to pitch around ?”

Oh, how sweet it can be when a team has more than one person who can hurt you. The Raiders happen to have such a situation in their backfield, with Bo Jackson and Marcus Allen and even Steve Smith carrying the ball. They also have such a situation in their roster of receivers, with Tim Brown and Mervyn Fernandez and James Lofton and Willie Gault catching the ball. (Well, sometimes.) They do not, alas, have this same super surplus at the quarterback position.

Not yet, anyway.

Perhaps a day will come when either of their current quarterbacks, Raider Schroeder or his former understudy turned overstudy turned understudy again, Steve Beuerlein, can step behind the center without the ballclub missing a beat. Perhaps a day will come when both of these guys can hurt you--and by “hurt you,” we mean the opponent. We do not mean self-inflicted wounds.

For now, as they haul themselves slowly from the quicksand and keep alive these startling prospects of theirs of qualifying for the National Football League playoffs, our heroic silver streaks have turned to Raider Schroeder to save the day. Old R.S. got his first start since Oct. 3 and pitched a 21-20 victory over the Denver Broncos Sunday at the Coliseum, hardly playing great, but playing well enough.

There is still some chance, believe it or not, that Raider Schroeder will be the quarterback in the Super Bowl come January. When Washington met Denver in the last one, Schroeder could have been the starting pitcher had he kept Doug Williams from taking his job, or had he at least kept out of Coach Joe Gibbs’ doghouse long enough to stay in the hunt.

Los Angeles took the guy off Gibbs’ hands. This city is getting to be good at that. Wayne Gretzky, Kirk Gibson, Orlando Woolridge, Eddie Murray, Jay Schroeder . . . having a fire sale? Dial 1-800-ANGELES and make us an offer. We’ll throw in absolutely free this popular videocassette of 1987 bloopers. So, come on, call us today. Operators are standing by.

Raider Schroeder expected to be the answer to L.A.’s quarterbacking problems when he was acquired--and we, too, expected him to be a godsend. Instead, doctor Jay was of little aid. He ended up benched, backing up Beuerlein the same way he backed up Williams, while we suffering observers wondered what poor Al Davis would be forced to do next, short of dusting the cobwebs off of George Blanda, to find himself a reliable quarterback.

Given the ball back in mid-game last Monday at Seattle, Raider Schroeder looked like a new man. Not All Pro, but All Right, anyway. He looked more relaxed. He seemed more effective. Reinforcing Davis’ belief that this is the sort of quarterback who, at any three given moments in a football game, will rear back and do something wonderful, Raider Schroeder appeared to be very much in command.

He felt that way Sunday, even though his statistics were sort of semi-mediocre, and even though interceptions by the defense were responsible for arranging many of the Raider points.

“I felt a lot better than I did 6 weeks ago, I can tell you that,” Raider Schroeder said. “There was a lot for me to learn. I feel more aware now of where everybody is, or where everybody’s going to be.

“One thing I know for sure is that I’ve got three Heisman Trophy winners around me (Allen, Jackson, Brown), and all I’ve got to do is spread it around. Get ‘em the ball. They’ll do the rest.”

How would the quarterback grade his own work against Denver?

“Oh, C-plus,” he said.

Well, that’s passing, anyway. Pretty much on the mark, too. Raider Schroeder’s passing statistics were nothing to make John Elway envious, but he didn’t make many mistakes. The Raider offense in the second half was practically non-existent until the very end, when it mattered most, and the quarterback didn’t panic. These days at the Coliseum, we will settle for that.

Who would have thought at this point that the Los Angeles football team with the best hope of going all the way to a championship would be the (gasp) Raiders? It can happen, you know. If they win their division, they get a first-round playoff bye. The Raiders would need to win two games-- two measly old games--to reach Super Bowl XXIII.

We won’t hold our breath. But, how about that, just the same? It’ll be up, in large part, to Raider Schroeder from this day on, if the team is going to overcome all its obvious weaknesses and salvage what could have been an incredibly crummy season. We have here an NFL team with tens of thousands of empty seats at home games and critics aplenty, and it could actually appear in the Super Bowl.

Raider Schroeder said: “We’re all aware of what we have to do. We need to win the rest of our games. We can’t afford another bad day. I think that’s why we had such a fantastic week of practice this week. It was the best week we’ve had since I’ve been here. Everybody was up, everybody was ready to have a big game. Coming off a big loss like Seattle, I thought we might be down, but instead we were up.

“We came right out today and played a solid first half. We put some points on the board and some distance between us and Elway, which was good, because that guy can rack up points on you in a hurry. You can never have enough. The second half, we couldn’t make any plays, couldn’t do anything right on offense. We kept the defense out there the whole half. But, they saved it for us, and the offense did a good job at the very end. Hey, you win any way you can, man.”

That must be their new motto: Win Any Way You Can, Man. For several weeks they were the Raiders of the lost cause, a fairly pathetic lot, but now, here we are, 14 dates into the schedule, and not one Raider has run up the white flag. Especially Raider Schroeder. Now pitching, No. 13. He has got a chance to pick up the save.