Hands Empty Yet Players Are Full of Hope

All right, confess. Secretly, you thought Art Shell might pull a Cito Gaston. You thought when the Raiders hung out their “Under New Management” shingle with the football season already in progress, they might truly start taking care of business. You considered the possibility that they would do a complete flip-flop, same as baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays did under Gaston, and win, win, win.

Well, they have.

We realize that Shell’s ledger after three weeks on the job actually reads win, win, lose, including Sunday’s 10-7 setback, but the Raiders did more at Veterans Stadium than just prove that they can play as well as the Philadelphia Eagles. No, the Philadelphia story for the Raiders was not that they lost, but that they left this place feeling like winners.

They sure did sound like winners, anyway.

“We’re on a roll, man,” linebacker Jerry Robinson said. “It’s an attitude. There is definitely a different attitude around here. We are growing as a team. We care about each other. We are playing some damn good football now and we’re going to start playing some damn better football real soon.”

Added nose tackle Bob Golic: “I know we lost. I know we lost. But we’re back playing the Raider style of play, and that’s what I came here from Cleveland for--to feel like a Raider. We’re aggressive again, tough again. Go ask the Eagles, they’ll tell you the same thing. We’re like a new team under Art. We’re turning this thing around.”

“A lot of it has to do with Art,” defensive end Howie Long said. “I’m happy to go to work again. It’s not just banging your head against the wall.”

Said wide receiver Mervyn Fernandez: “We played good football against Philadelphia. No, I take that back. We played great football against Philadelphia. We should have beaten them. And they’re a good team. Nobody had better take us for granted, because I believe we’re going places.”

Once again, as a public service, we remind you that these people lost Sunday’s football game. Just in case anybody has forgotten.

Shell has the Raiders so upbeat, they stay upbeat even when you beat them.

These guys changed quarterbacks in mid-stream Sunday because the offense couldn’t score a point in the first three quarters . . . and they also committed ruinous penalties that cost them several chances to win . . . and they also missed a couple of semi-easy field goals that could have at least sent them into overtime . . . and still they accentuated the positive.

They praised emphatically a rigid defensive effort that limited the classy Randall Cunningham to eight completed passes and gave the Eagles less than 200 net yards of total offense. They stressed the importance of getting injured people back--Robinson, Long and defensive end Scott Davis, principally--as well as the annual tardy arrival of Bo Jackson, who carried the football on 20 of 34 Raider rushing plays.

And, loudly and clearly, they let it be known that it is Art Shell who has been a very large influence in this new-found belief in themselves.

“See, Art’s been there,” Robinson said. “Art knows what it takes. Not many people have Super Bowl rings on their fingers. Even fewer people have football Hall of Fame rings on their fingers. You know what I mean? That man’s among an elite group of people. He’s been through the battles, been through the wars. He knows how to get the job done. He had us believing we could win the football game today, even when it was 10-0 and time was slipping away.”

To a man, the Raiders were sorry to see Shell take his first loss as a head coach. They would have preferred to delay the inevitable a little longer, maybe ride the magic carpet a while, make the league sit up and take notice that the Raiders were the Raiders again.

The coach, well, he just shrugged it off.

“They all hurt,” Shell said. “I don’t like it anytime we lose. You always hate to lose, especially when you have a good chance to win, the way we did today.

“We played a tough game, kept it close. I told them if they kept it close, we’d have a chance to win, and we kept it close. That’s why I’m proud of them. We’re going to get better. We’re going to get much better.”

You say the Raiders lost?

Lost what?