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NO NEED TO WEIGHT : Raider Rookie Wisniewski Beefs Up, Earns Job at Guard

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Times Staff Writer

Oooh, those arms!

Are those biceps inflatable, or what?

Level with me kid, is that one of those muscle shirts like Gallagher, the comedian, wears?

Steve Wisniewski, the rookie Raider guard, has arms that jut out of his short-sleeved uniform shirt like Sequoia trunks. Talk about your bargains, he was listed as a lean, mean 265-pounder from Penn State, but when he got off the plane, he was 290 pounds of bench-pressing fury.

This was a good time for a bargain, too. He is all the Raiders got from the top of the 1989 draft, Al Davis having traded the rest of his first-day picks for Jay Schroeder (generally considered a must) and Willie Gault (a controversy), and to move up to the top pick on the second round for this choice. A coup would be welcome among the Raiders, who think they might have one.

“As a football player? He’ll be great,” Matt Millen says. “And I don’t say that about too many guys.

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“He and his brother were the same way. They’re very single-minded. If they say they’re going to do something, they do it.”

Steve’s brother, Leo, played several seasons with the Colts. He was also Millen’s teammate at Penn State, which is where Matt met Steve.

Millen was a full-fledged character.

Steve was 12.

“There are more Penn State stories about Matt than anybody else,” Wisniewski says, smiling. “He was very much a team leader, like he is here, but in a more zany way.

“Tell one? I don’t want to get him in trouble. OK. When players first got there, they had to run a half-mile and do it twice. Matt ran the first one. He was on his first lap on the second one and he just stopped, went over on the infield and sat down.

“Coach (Joe) Paterno came after him screaming, ‘What’re you doing? What’re you doing?’ Matt told him, ‘If I have to chase a back a half-mile, I think he’s going to score.’

“And that was that.”

Millen remembers Steve as a nice, quiet, little kid, and never once wondered if he would be a pro football player.

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“He was an average-size little guy,” Millen says. “The only way you’d have said he was going to be a football player was by knowing his family. If he was going to have that thick body, like his brother and his father, maybe.

“Even three years ago, he wasn’t that big. When he was a sophomore at Penn State, I was back there and I took him out for dinner. He was about 240. He looked very lean.”

Says Wisniewski: “At Penn State, they wanted us light. I could have carried more weight than I did, but Coach Paterno is from the old school. He wanted quicker, lighter linemen. As a senior, I was a lean 270. Coach Paterno told me that any more would be too heavy to play guard. For the pros, of course, they want you as big as you can get.”

He aimed to please.

Single-minded? When Penn State’s season ended, short of a bowl appearance in mid-November, Wisniewski retired to the weight room, with occasional forays to the cafeteria to graze. Voila, he was 282 by the scouting combine’s workout and 290 by April, when the Raiders drafted him.

They actually got him in a draft-day trade with the Dallas Cowboys, but that was only after time ran down with the teams trying to hammer out a deal.

The Raiders gave Cowboy officials the name of the man they wanted--Wisniewski--and Dallas selected him for them. The Raiders subsequently sent their Nos. 2 and 4 picks to Dallas to settle accounts.

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To the Raiders, it was as if they had drafted in the first round, after all. Among offensive linemen, they had Wisniewski rated even with Notre Dame’s Andy Heck, who was chosen 15th by Seattle in the draft, and Boston College’s Joe Wolf, picked 17th by Phoenix.

There are still three more drafted rookies kicking around Raider camp, but they all are long shots to make the active roster. If you want to know how the class of ’89 stacks up, you have to follow only one man.

Wisniewski has been moved to the No. 1 right guard position. A Raider official says he is already as good as any linemen on the team.

“I know I still have things to learn,” Wisniewski says. “Hopefully, I can get some playing time this year. I’m just using camp to try to get better every day.

“With the veterans they have around you, they’ll make you better. Howie Long--he’s so quick. The difference between college and the pros is the quickness of the players. Howie almost beats you off the snap every time, even though you know the snap count.”

One feature of camp used to be waiting for the fight between Long and Wisniewski’s predecessor, Mickey Marvin. Marvin was tenacious, and two-a-days were known to wear down Long’s sense of humor. So far, there have been no problems between Long and the new right guard.

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“Usually he’s running around me so fast, he’s happy,” Wisniewski says.

Millen notes how much quieter Steve Wisniewski is than his brother, Leo, but adds that after he spent more time with Steve, he began to see similarities, to notice that there is more working than humility.

“He’s got the physical tools, there’s no question about that,” Millen says. “Plus, he’s mentally strong. It’s kind of like arrogance, but it’s not arrogance. How can a lineman be arrogant? But he knows what he can do.”

So do the Raiders, they hope.

The newest version of that work in progress, the Raider offensive line, has no one at the position he was in at the end of last season, but now features a blue-chip right side: center Don Mosebar, a No. 1 pick; Wisniewski, a No. 2 at right guard; Bruce Wilkerson, a No. 2 at right tackle.

A year ago at this time, the Raiders may have put together their best unit since the Davis-Hannah-Dalby-Marvin-Lawrence line that won them a Super Bowl in 1984 but aged so quickly and died on the vine after that.

A year ago, the Raiders had Jim Lachey and Mosebar at the tackles, Charlie Hannah and Wilkerson at the guards, and Bill Lewis at center.

However, to deal for Schroeder, they had to give up Lachey.

Hannah blew out a knee in New Orleans and had to retire.

Lewis is holding out. The Raiders say they had already decided to move Mosebar to his position.

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As much as anything else, the new line depends on its non-blue-chip left side.

Tackle Rory Graves, a (listed) 295-pound free agent who played opposite Lachey at Ohio State, was a pleasant find at right tackle last season, but is being shifted to the hot corner.

The left guard position was supposed to belong to Dale Hellestrae, a Plan B free agent who was a disappointment in Buffalo, but he was hurt in camp. The 305-pound Newt Harrell failed a quick audition while John Gesek was recovering from a minor injury, and now the job goes to Gesek, a No. 10 pick from Cal State Sacramento in 1987.

Also, can Wilkerson make the switch to tackle?

Can Wisniewski make the jump to pro ball?

All that rides on those questions is the offense.

Raider Notes

If it’s summer, Mike Haynes’ job must be up for grabs again. Raider officials have been saying that the 36-year-old cornerback, one of the game’s stars at the position, will have to beat out Lionel Washington to keep his job. Tuesday, Coach Mike Shanahan all but made it official, saying the two are “battling at that spot.” The Raiders made similar suggestions a year ago, when Haynes was reportedly one bad exhibition game from the waiver wire, but he played well in that exhibition and went on to play a solid season. . . . Wide receiver Mervyn Fernandez, who separated his left shoulder against the San Francisco 49ers, is running and is expected back in two weeks.

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