Shell Tries to Downplay Kingdome Effect : Raiders: After years of frustration in Seattle, L.A. must find a way to win an important game in the noisy Dome of Doom.

There are places the Raiders would rather go for their biggest game of the season: Mongolia. Death Valley. Hell.

No such luck. They get the Seahawks in the Kingdome.

What’s a poor coach like Art Shell to do?

Consult his predecessors?

Try Tom Flores. He has a different perspective now, as the Seahawks’ general manager. He says he doesn’t think crowd noise is that big a factor and swears that the Seahawks never put the decibel counts on their scoreboard.

As a Raider, Flores used to take a dimmer view of the din. With good reason. He lost 38-36 in the Kingdome in 1983; 17-14 during the regular season and 13-7 in the playoff meeting in 1984; 33-3 in ‘85; 37-0 in ’86.

In ‘85, the Raiders tried practicing while giant concert speakers played garbage noise at maximum volume.

“All that did was give me a headache,” said Flores Monday from Seattle. “And make the neighbors mad.

“I can remember coming here for the playoffs in ‘83, when it was really wild, and not being able to hear in pregame warmups. You were screaming at each other in pregame warmups.”

Just when you thought the Raiders would never win there again, they showed up with a 3-7 team in ’87 and Marc Wilson at quarterback, and bombed the Seahawks, 37-14. That was the Monday night game in which Bo Jackson ran for 221 yards.

Last season, Mike Shanahan got his DoomDome baptism from Curt Warner and John L. Williams, who gained 130 and 105 yards, respectively. That was a shoot-out with Tim Brown scoring a touchdown on a 49-yard pass and getting hauled down at the goal line on his last-play-of-the-half 95-yard kickoff return. The Seahawks came back from a 27-21 deficit in the fourth quarter and won, 35-27.

That made five Seahawk victories in the last six there.

Shell, with the playoffs in sight and a team that has struggled while winning three straight, was taut and mostly mum Monday. He said he planned no gimmicks, on the theory that nothing works anyway and they might psych out his own players.

“I’m not going to do anything differently,” Shell said. “The key thing is, you’ve got to go up there prepared to play.

“In my mind, you can make too much of certain things, whether it’s the noise or the AstroTurf. If you make too much of it, it becomes a big problem. We know we have to play on AstroTurf. We know we’re going to hear the crowd noise. Those are givens.”

The Seahawks are 6-8, but on a little roll. They’ve won two games in a row, including Sunday’s ambush of the Bengals. Dave Krieg, a notorious hot-and-cold quarterback, has reclaimed his job from Kelly Stouffer and completed 22 of 33 passes at Cincinnati.

The Seahawks would have to finish with two victories and climb over seven other wild-card contenders to make the playoffs.

However, they’re not struggling for motivation.

“One of the coaches, who shall remain nameless, said, ‘I’d rather win these last four and get fired than lose the last four and get rehired,’ ” said Seahawk broadcaster Wayne Cody. “It’s still not known what (team owner) Ken Behring will do with Chuck Knox.”

Flores says such talk is ridiculous, that Knox is safe.

Things-are-tough-all-over Dept.:

Quarterback--Steve Beuerlein is 22 for 53 in his last two games, including two touchdown passes and no interceptions. He’s a young, inexperienced quarterback, playing on a bad knee, but people are diving off his bandwagon.

Shell, who waffled when Jay Schroeder was in similar straits, says steadfastly he never thought of removing Beuerlein Sunday, nor of replacing him for next week.

“I’m just going to challenge myself to get better,” Beuerlein says. “ . . . The knee is not where it needs to be but that’s not why I was throwing bad passes. That’s not why I was making bad reads out there. My head’s where that is, not my knee. Sure, you’d like to be 100% but I was making some very shaky decisions out there.”

Offensive line--Shell said they’d had “a little problem in pass protection.” Try four sacks and six holding calls--Bruce Wilkerson had three, Mike Dyal, John Gesek and Don Mosebar one--including four in one series.

This all on a day when the running game was blazing and the Cardinals should have been at their mercy. Bo Jackson had 103 yards by halftime.

Bo?--Numbers notwithstanding, he still didn’t look as awesome as he did a month ago. The one exception was his last carry on the game-winning drive, when he tore around right end for nine yards and vaulted the last four of them.

Aside from that, he looked OK but not like vintage awe-inspiring Bo. His second half totals were 11 yards in 10 carries.

The 1,000-yard club?

Mervyn Fernandez had five catches for 119 yards Sunday. This season he has 43 for 871, a 19.3 average.

If he gets 129 in two games, he will be the first Raider receiver to reach 1,000 since Todd Christensen in 1986, and the first wide receiver since Cliff Branch in 1976.

Jackson has 846 yards and a 5.6 average in nine games. He has a chance to become the Raiders’ first 1,000-yard rusher since Marcus Allen’s league-leading 1,759 in 1985.