Raiders, Oilers to Rumble in ‘Dome

Will the real Raiders stand up, please?

They’re holding a macho-off in the Astrodome today between the Oilers, who consider themselves the living embodiment of the Raider ideal, and the Raiders, who consider themselves the living embodiment of the Raider ideal.

All that hangs on the outcome is the Raider hope of making the playoffs after a three-year absence.

The game they shouldn’t have lost at San Diego last Sunday has left them in precarious shape. If they lose today, they’ll be 5-6, two games behind the 7-4 Oilers, with Houston holding a key tiebreaker. Another wild-card contender, Miami, starts today 6-4 and has no game remaining with a team that’s .500.

The Oilers are five-point favorites.

Other than that, this is everything the Raiders could ask for in an opponent.

As a warmup, they spent the week being asked if they would be scared playing in the House of Pain. Since they think of themselves as the intimidators, not the intimidated, it wasn’t their favorite line of questioning.

“Let me say this,” Coach Art Shell said. “We play hard-nosed, tough football. It’s not a macho thing. It’s just the way the game is played.

“We won’t back down from anybody. We’ll meet the challenge. We won’t do anything stupid, but we will not back away. You can’t intimidate us. That’s not what this team is about.

“You don’t intimidate by taking cheap shots. We’re not about cheap shots.”

Are the Oilers? “I don’t know. . . . I think sometimes they border on it, just a little bit.”

Maybe they’ll have just a little bit of a rumble.

There’s a powerhouse in this maelstrom somewhere.

Check out the Oiler offense: eight No. 1 picks; a line with three players who went in the top nine selections of their drafts--Pro Bowl guards Bruce Matthews, a former Trojan, and Mike Munchak, and tackle Dean Steinkuhler. Fullback Alonzo Highsmith--”that truck wearing No. 32,” Howie Long calls him--was the third overall pick in 1988.

Tailback Mike Rozier was a Heisman Trophy winner who would have gone atop the 1984 draft if he hadn’t gone to the United States Football League. And to get quarterback Warren Moon out of Canada, the Oilers had to win a multimillion-dollar auction, and they have since re-signed him at twice that rate.

So why doesn’t this colossus just haul off and run the ball down peoples’ throats, as every coach who lacks such riches dreams of doing?

“It’d be easy if we did it that way. It’d be boring. We like to live on the edge.”

Meet Coach Jerry Glanville.

He’s famous for his country-style comedy; for feuding with the Houston press; for his “1 Elvis” license plate; for leaving tickets for Elvis, James Dean et. al.; for his recent snake-bite incident.

Then there’s his coaching.

Let’s say the jury’s out.

In his second full season, he took a team that hadn’t done better than 5-11 in five seasons and made the playoffs.

Detractors see him as macho, cocky, volatile, given to too many hotdog flourishes and basically getting the minimum out of a truckload of blue chips.

Oiler owner Bud Adams is said to be warming up a spot for Jackie Sherrill if Glanville doesn’t deliver more than one playoff victory.

“We are volatile and we react that way to each other,” Glanville says. “It’s funny. Some days we fight each other. We had a fight in training camp where 75 people took part. Fact, we filmed it and graded it. Various people who didn’t fight, I think we cut.

“We were a terrible group of people (when he became coach). They were all so nice. I was afraid that if we wore blazers on the airplane, everybody would think we were a choir. It wasn’t what you’d want to go to war with. Every guy on the team--I don’t have a daughter but if I did, I would want my daughter to marry them.”

And now?

“I wouldn’t let her near the Oilers.”

The Oilers are kamikazes with a flair for unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. They’re the second-most flagged team in the NFL (fear not, the Raiders are still No. 1, though mostly on holding calls).

Even some Oilers--such as Moon,--are trying to call a halt.

Moon has twice taken it on himself this season to tell defensive back Chris Dishman to knock it off.

“I think on the other side of the ball, the defensive side, there’s probably a couple of guys who kinda keep it going,” Moon says. “If we can get those guys straightened out, I think we’ll be OK. All in all, we play pretty hard-nosed, clean football, except for the guys we have to tone down once they get a little too excited during a game.”

Blessed are the peacemakers.

They may be needed today.

Raider Notes

Jay Schroeder is expected to start at quarterback for the Raiders, though Art Shell wasn’t saying. Steve Beuerlein split time in practice and is expected to dress, but he is still feeling twinges of pain. The Raiders are unlikely to risk their future on AstroTurf. . . . The Oilers are No. 2 against the run but have sprung a leak in their secondary, allowing seven touchdown passes of more than 63 yards in seven games. Cornerback Patrick Allen got burned so often that they have gone zone.

Classic matchup: Bo Jackson continues on his 1,250-yard pace. He has a 6.8 average and is sixth in rushing in the AFC, with 41 fewer carries than anyone in the top five. . . . The top Oiler deep threat, former Ram Drew Hill, has a back injury and won’t play. The Oilers spend half their time in a four-receiver set and still have the dangerous Ernest Givins and Haywood Jeffires.

Shell says this isn’t a must game, but: “It’s getting down to the time where we have to have wins. We can’t afford a win here, a loss there. There’s only six games left.” . . . Former Raider Bruce Davis, the Oilers’ left tackle, has slimmed to 315, though the Raiders never listed him above 285. Jerry Glanville says Davis lost “half a person.” Says Howie Long: “We go back back a long way, to when I was making 48 grand and he weighed 295.”

Glanville, on Shell’s characterizing the Oilers as Raider clones: “People say, are you the new Raiders? I say no, we’re the new Oilers. Is (Shell) saying that in a complimentary way? (Yes.) That was n-i-i-c-e. You can tell he’s new on the job. You can tell this is his first job because I think he’s the first coach that’s ever said anything nice about us. I just love these new guys.”