For the Raiders, an Uneasy Peace : After a Turbulent Season, Shanahan, Davis to Try Again

Last year was a little tricky for marriages. There were the celebrated Tyson-Givens nuptials and, closer to home, there was a kind of domestic-strife dark horse, the troubled partnership of Al Davis and his new coach, Mike Shanahan, which rumbled throughout the Raider season.

And just when you thought it might be safe to go back into the Raider front office, we get the sequel:

A.D. and Mike, II: The Off-Season.

There have been reported firings of two of Davis’ favored assistant coaches; retentions of the same at Davis’ order; actual firings of longtime Raider retainees Charlie Sumner and Willie Brown with Davis’ permission; Sumner blasting Shanahan publicly; the subsequent firing of a “Shanahan assistant”--receiver coach Nick Nicolau--by Davis after Nicolau had asked several old Raider assistants why they were sticking around when they weren’t wanted.

Actual events pale, however, before the rumors that have swept through the front office: that Davis is trying to force Shanahan out; that Shanahan is trying to make Davis fire him; that Shanahan has been calling the University of Florida to inquire about the coaching job there; that Davis and Shanahan are locked in a power struggle.

Are these straits dire, or what?

Maybe not that dire.

“How can we have a power struggle?” says Shanahan, laughing.

“He’s got all the power. I’ve got all the struggle.”

“Seriously, we communicate every day. We talk about the decisions we have to make to improve this football team. No one’s happy about a 7-9 season.”

No one seems to be happy, period. Of all the coaches involved, only Shanahan is talking at all. Davis said through a Raider official that he may be available later but that he will be tied down by the press of business until late this month.

Said one of his intimates:

“I don’t get the feeling there’s anything out of whack going on. For them, there’s a lot of upheaval because they’re not used to this. They’ve never had it before.

“I can see those guys shaking. Al has always been loyal, they’ve always had a job. They see Charlie and Willie go, and they think they might get whacked next.”

It the situation seems to fall short of the worst imaginings of Raider underlings, it still suggests serious problems: a test of wills between the two principal Raiders; an indication that they are having trouble talking directly to each other, and worst of all for the organization, proof that the coaching staff was split and faces an uphill battle to come together.

Aside from that, everything’s peachy.

BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE

The problem centers on the proud Raider tradition, its philosophy of how to play the game . . . and the fact that for the first time, Davis went outside his organization for a head coach.

Why?

He didn’t think he had a suitable candidate on his own staff. Whether Tom Flores resigned, or was nudged out, or was told to fire some of his favorite assistants and preferred to leave himself, it seems clear that Davis wanted to shake things up, bring in some new blood and breathe new life into the Raider system.

But just how much new life?

Evidence suggests--though Davis has strenuously denied it--that he was leaning toward Dan Henning, the Redskin assistant who was just named San Diego Chargers coach by Steve Ortmayer, Davis’ former aide. But apparently negotiations between them broke down late on a wide front of issues, including Henning’s desire to change the offensive numbering system. Then Joe Bugel, the other Redskin assistant Davis liked, immediately took himself out of the picture.

At that point, at the end of a month-long selection process, Davis was left with two candidates: Shanahan, the Denver Broncos’ offensive coordinator, and holdover Tom Walsh. Davis liked Walsh, a protege of Davis’ own mentor, Sid Gillman, but not enough to make him head coach.

Indeed, Davis seemed to make a late try for another option, interviewing Jerry Rhome, a third Redskin assistant, who had just taken the offensive coordinator’s job at San Diego.

Then Davis announced the winner: Shanahan.

The two had agreed on what they wanted to do with the Raider system. Of course, their understanding seems to have been misunderstood.

Davis, according to a source close to him, thought that Shanahan had pledged to keep the essentials of Raider philosophy--power running, long passing--while updating the system . . . and then threw the whole system out.

Shanahan told his own intimates that he had only been asked to promise one thing: that he would take a look at everything before throwing anything out. He said he didn’t, in fact, throw everything out, what with four Raider receivers averaging 17 yards or more a catch.

There was another underlying message in the search process: It wasn’t going to be easy to bring a coach in from the outside who would believe in Davis’ system and accept his participation, as had Flores and John Madden. Davis had just spent a month scouring America and had wound up with a single viable entry.

If problems arose with Shanahan, who else could he expect to find out there, and how?

Problems arose, all right.

THE OUTSIDERS

Of the 12 Raider assistants, Shanahan was allowed to hire three: Alex Gibbs, the highly rated Bronco offensive line coach; Nick Nicolau, another former Bronco, and Pete Rodriguez as special teams coach. If coaches often have coordinators imposed on them, as Buddy Ryan was on Mike Ditka by George Halas, they almost always do better than 25%.

On the other hand, this was the Raiders, and everyone knows who the boss is.

As one of them puts it: “You have to say the Pledge of Allegiance and the prayer, too. There’s no separation of church and state on the Raiders.”

It isn’t easy to merge the staffs of bitter division rivals, and it’s harder when one of the rivals is the Raiders, with their institutional posture of being hated, enjoying it and doing things in their own style--the oft-cited Raider way.

There were suggestions from the start that the Raider holdovers, used to a less structured, more relaxed regime, were rolling their eyes at the new order. There were Raider assistants who took months to start talking to their new brothers from Denver, who were referred to as “the Denver guys.”

Davis, meanwhile, was trying to do what he had promised everyone he would do--keep his hands off, give his new coach some freedom.

Of course, once the season started and results weren’t forthcoming, he kept his hands off in his way--with much anguish and gnashing of teeth, private and otherwise. Obsessive, tormented and not keen on identifying himself with any kind of failure, Davis is less like Marlon Brando as the outlaw biker in “The Wild One,” and more like Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick,” imposing his demons on his crew.

Of course, word spread far and wide that Davis was unhappy. In case the crew had missed it, Davis made it formal after the fifth game of the season, a blowout at home by the Cincinnati Bengals, after which he convened a late Sunday night meeting and threatened to fire two assistant coaches on the spot, one of them Sumner.

Said Davis that night, in his peculiar Brooklyn-Dixie accent, according to a source: “This is mah . . . lahf they’re . . . with.”

Shanahan, low-key and soft-spoken but a young man who thinks he knows his own way and intends to follow it, weathered the storm. The Raiders made a late run but fell apart down the stretch. Needing only to beat the Seahawks at home in the finale, the Raiders lost and missed the playoffs for the third straight season, a record dry spell for the team under Davis.

Disappointment revealed the old splits. A source said that during the Seattle game, Nicolau and Art Shell, the Hall of Fame-bound Davis favorite, got into an argument on the sideline and continued it later that week, with Nicolau saying to Shell, “Al owns you.”

On this note, the off-season began.

THE INSIDERS

Shanahan says he told all the assistants that he would evaluate things, but they were all free to talk with other teams in the meantime.

This is something more than the usual postseason address, and there can be little doubt that Shanahan intended to make changes.

Sumner said he thought over what Shanahan had said, wasn’t sure what it meant, and went back in to ask about it.

Walsh isn’t saying what he was told, but even if Shanahan said no more, Walsh had reason to believe he was history. Walsh, the quarterback coach and the man on the other end of the headset, hadn’t had a good working relationship with the new head coach.

The story broke in the newspapers that Walsh and Joe Scannella, the running back coach, had been fired.

Suddenly it broke the other way. The firings of Sumner and Brown were announced . . . as the only ones. Walsh and Scannella were still on the staff.

Walsh had reportedly called Davis to thank him for the opportunity, etc. Davis was reportedly surprised at the news and declared that Walsh and Scannella were staying.

Shortly thereafter, defensive line coach Earl Leggett resigned and went to work for the . . . Broncos?

Right you are, Dan Reeves.

Leggett was a valued assistant, the man who had scouted, recommended and developed Howie Long, Bill Pickel, Sean Jones and Greg Townsend, all long shots from obscure programs, all of them selected after the first round of the draft.

Leggett, however, is thought to have been the other assistant Davis was threatening the night of the Cincinnati game. After that, there was pressure from upstairs to play a four-man line, even while some of the players were pleading with Sumner and Leggett to let them go to a three-man front on running downs.

Then, after all the heads that were supposed to roll had rolled, Nicolau was fired.

Nicolau had asked Scannella and one or two other old Raiders why they were staying on when they weren’t wanted. Davis had found out about it, been incensed and fired Nicolau.

No one else has been fired, but the year is still young.

RAIDERS ALL

And then there were the rumors.

Shanahan’s three-year contract supposedly had a clause that said that if he resigned, he couldn’t work anywhere else, so he was trying to get himself fired. Shanahan was supposedly calling Florida weekly to see if Galen Hall would be fired. He wasn’t.

Shanahan said that his contract has no such clause, and that he hasn’t called Florida.

“I’m the one who recommended Galen to Charley Pell (then the Florida coach),” Shanahan said. “I called up Galen to tell him I never talked to anybody. I just wanted him to know, I never have called.”

Davis was reported to be trying to force Shanahan out.

Said a Davis intimate: “Al doesn’t operate that way. Force him out? If Al had definitely made up his mind he’d made a mistake, he’d fire him. Al doesn’t have to apologize for anything.

“Al thinks Mike is an extremely bright guy, a guy with a lot of ability. He didn’t do as well as Al thought he would do, but he thinks that maybe if they change some things, they’ll be all right.”

Does Davis, in the cold light of day, think he made a mistake hiring Shanahan? That one has gotten out and been published, too.

“I think he considers it a mistake that he went outside his organization for the first time, because of the way the Raiders are structured,” said another Davis confidant.

“With the Raiders, everything was done according to their system. Player acquisition was done with a view to how they’d fit with the way the Raiders played. Al finds it disruptive that they’re not philosophically together.

“I don’t think he thinks Shanahan is not a good football coach. I think Al probably blames himself for what happened as much as he blames anybody else. But he’s willing to see what happens next season.”

Indeed, Davis and Shanahan might not have been as philosophically different as last season suggested. There were inexperienced quarterbacks who required a simplified game plan, and a late-arriving Bo Jackson and a re-simplification, etc. That’s what they have this season for, to see which way it will go.

What we’re left with doesn’t quite add up to everyone smiling for the team picture. If there was no more to do except finally get everyone on that same hallowed page football people always talk about, it would be work enough for a dozen off-seasons. But they are going to have to get it done in one.

That’s your Raider way.