Raiders Find a Chief in Win Over Redskins : Pro Football: Beuerlein leads until his knee gives out and his teammates follow to a rousing 37-24 victory.

It’s morning in Raiderdom, where they’ve finally spotted a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn’t the headlight of an oncoming train.

It was bright as the rising sun, happy as Steve Beuerlein’s smile, right up to the moment that a Redskin tried to redesign his knee.

Taking over for Jay Schroeder Sunday, Beuerlein came, he saw, he whipped the Raiders into a lead that grew to as great as 37-10 as they cruised to a 37-24 victory over the Washington Redskins before 52,781 in the Coliseum, the largest crowd of this bizarre season.

Was Beuerlein’s enthusiasm the difference?

“Yeah,” Mervyn Fernandez said. “Definitely. He’s a leader.”

On his way to a really big celebration, however, Beuerlein took a hit from Redskin defensive tackle Darryl Grant in the third period and hobbled off on what was diagnosed as a strained right knee.

For caution’s sake, he was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was to undergo a Magnetic Resonance Imaging test and every other space-age technological innovation known to man. This could be the Raider future we’re talking here, Doc.

“I thought I could go back in,” Beuerlein said. “I tried to drop back (on the sideline) and it buckled on me.

“Am I frustrated? Well, it ain’t over yet. I’m hoping I’m ready to go this week. I’ve always been a quick healer. It really is tender now but by Wednesday, I could be 100% better, so we’ll see.”

The Raiders like what they’ve seen so far. This was their best game in, say, two years. Not since the brief Bo Jackson explosion against the Seattle Seahawks and Buffalo Bills late in the forlorn 1987 season have they been truly impressive.

They were all of that Sunday in a performance that included:

--Jackson’s 79-yard touchdown run and 144 yards overall, in his first start. He now has a 6.0 rushing average this season and is on a pace that would make him a 1,000-yard rusher . . . despite having played in only three games, two as a sub, averaging fewer than 17 carries.

He would have had an even bigger day, but his 45-yard touchdown bolt up the middle in the fourth period was called back for holding.

--Greg Townsend’s 3 1/2 sacks, giving him 6 1/2; Howie Long’s 1 1/2, plus two tackles at or behind the line and a fumble recovery; the unit’s seven sacks against the Redskin Hogs, who had allowed seven all season.

--The Raiders holding Redskin rushers, admittedly without star Gerald Riggs, who had an injured ankle, to 21 yards in 14 carries . . . and minus-one in 10 carries in the first half.

--The Raiders forcing eight turnovers, including two interceptions by red-hot Eddie Anderson, the stand-in free safety, one of which he returned 45 yards for a touchdown. In four starts subbing for the injured Vann McElroy, Anderson has four interceptions, two touchdowns and forced a fumble with a jarring hit of Christian Okoye. He also showed off the first choreographed Raider end-zone dance Sunday, the “Fish Out of Water,” and announced his availability for car ads, etc.

--Two touchdown catches by Fernandez in the first period, giving him seven this season.

Ironically, Beuerlein, the catalyst for so much of this, left with modest numbers--11 for 22, 154 yards, two touchdown passes, one interception.

But it was his game. He drove the Raiders 73 yards in seven plays on their first possession, finishing it by zipping an 18-yard slant to Fernandez slashing unattended up the middle of a Redskin zone.

On Beuerlein’s second possession, the Raiders went 50 yards in five plays. This time the outmanned Barry Wilburn, subbing for injured ace Darrell Green, took the inside away on Fernandez and Beuerlein floated a lovely, arching fade, eight yards to Mervyn, who took it easily over his right shoulder.

It was midway through the first period and the Raiders led, 14-0.

“I felt good coming into the game,” Beuerlein said. “I felt a little nervous but I do better when I’m a little nervous at first. We jumped on ‘em right away and everybody just really felt good about everything.”

The first drive was perfection itself, no play gaining fewer than five yards, a lightning-bolt strike for a team that had one first-half touchdown in three games.

“It was pretty nice, wasn’t it?” Beuerlein said. “You can’t draw it up any better than that. Bo was running the ball real well. The pass routes were clicking. The timing was there. The right calls were made.

“People were on the same page. When you’re on the same page like that and everybody’s in cahoots and people are holding off up front like they were the whole game, it makes it a lot easier. I’ve just got to get it to the open guy and these guys get open.”

After that, it was fireworks.

Moments after the Raiders took their 14-0 lead, they kicked off to rookie Joe Howard, who stepped into an alley the size of Pershing Square and went 99 yards for a touchdown.

It was 17-10 one play into the third period when Jackson, who’d scuffled for 14 yards in his preceding seven carries, found running room at last. Starting wide to the left, he cut back inside middle linebacker Greg Manusky, turned upfield, took a hit from the normally sure strong safety, Alvin Walton, who slammed into his hip . . . and fell off like a mosquito hitting a bulldozer. Bo got a downfield block from Fernandez and it was see you later.

Catch Bo? Remember, he was timed at 4.18 in the 40-yard dash as a college senior, the fastest clocking for any football player ever to that date. Bo knows speed, for sure.

“Well, it’s just one of those things,” Jackson said, smiling. “I’m just doing what they ask me.”

The Raiders weren’t about to be caught, either.

Townsend sacked Mark Rypien, who fumbled for the 10th time this season, and the Raiders recovered at the Redskin 14. Jeff Jaeger kicked one of his three field goals, from 29 yards, and it was 27-10.

Anderson intercepted his first pass. Jaeger hit from 37 and it was 30-10.

Redskins reliever Stan Humphries threw Anderson’s second interception. Like the first, the ball skipped off a receiver’s hands to Anderson, who scooped it up just before it hit the ground. As on the first, Anderson took off toward the right sideline, with a convoy of blockers. Unlike the first, when he tripped over his own blocker just as he saw daylight, he made it all the way, 45 yards into the end zone. Dance fever ensued and the Raiders led, 37-10.

After that, the Redskins threw the last 29 of their 63 passes, making it not only one of the Raiders’ finest games in recent history, but at 3:45, one of the longest.

These routs can be tough, too, but it had been so long, nobody remembered.

Raider Notes

Howie Long: “I think Steve Beuerlein is a very exuberant, energetic guy who’s got a real fever for the game. And I think it flows to the other people around him.” . . . Tale of two quarterbacks: Jay Schroeder replaced the injured Beuerlein in the third period, was booed loudly and showed that his struggles continue. He went one for eight, the lone completion on a screen pass. “I don’t think it was a hard week,” Schroeder said. “It was a disappointing week. You know you aren’t going to start the football game but you still keep working.”

Middle linebacker Jerry Robinson intercepted a pass thrown by Mark Rypien in the second period and took a fearsome hit from 290-pound Jim Lachey, separating him from the ball (Lachey recovered it) and his senses (Robinson left the game and recovered them much later.) Did Raider physician Bob Rosenfeld ask Robinson where he was? “He asked us where he was,” Rosenfeld said.

Greg Townsend, the “linebacker” who is actually an end on the Raider base defense, a 4-3: “I’m 99.9% lineman. I haven’t been in coverage yet and this is what, the eighth game? I did stand upright once. I was told to. They told me to get back down the next play.” . . . Townsend on the injured Gerald Riggs, the NFC rushing leader: “We were watching the film and he was making big things out of little things. We thought it was more him than the Hogs. I’m just glad he didn’t play.” . . . Going deep, continued: Beuerlein’s numbers would have been better but Willie Gault, seven yards behind the nearest Redskin, dropped Beuerlein’s pass in the second period, on what would have been a 63-yard scoring play. . . . The yardage in the first period: Raiders 161, Redskins minus seven.