Raiders Have Met the Enemy and They Wear Black & Silver

The way matters now stand, the Los Angeles Raiders are not yet deceased in the competition for wild-card entrants in the pro football tournament.

But their pulse is weak and they can’t ascribe their problem to anyone except themselves because the opportunity was theirs Sunday night in Seattle and they took a stupendous pratfall.

Losing to the Seahawks, 23-17, to reduce their season record to 8-7, they must hope for a combination of events in the final week too complicated to explain.

It is easier to understand a manual for home assembling of an aircraft carrier.

I mean, in the tiebreaker business, we are talking head-to-head competition, if applicable; best won-lost-tied percentage in games within the conference; best won-lost-tied in common games, minimum of four; best average net points in conference games; best net points in all games; best net touchdowns and strength of schedule.

When all else fails, the principals flip cards into a hat.

The Raiders could have sidestepped all the foregoing by dispatching Seattle, but they played like turkeys and stand on the doorsill of making their exit.

They wasted a whole first half with an offense out of rhythm and a defense bewildered, and they discovered, as guys do in boxing, that you can blow a fight in the early rounds as well the late.

Summoning their skills in the second half, they actually took the lead, 17-13, but flamed out in the closing stages with passes that had everything except aim.

So, in their conference, with their modest record of 8-7, they join in the struggle Buffalo, Miami, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, all 8-7, too.

Separating the foregoing for the wild card may require a meeting of the Common Market countries, if not Manny, Moe and Jack.

To add to life’s complexities for the Raiders, you note the signing by the Kansas City Royals of Mark Davis, baseball’s most accomplished relief pitcher today, and you can’t help believe that the Raiders, who walk about with arched eyebrow normally, now suspect an international plot.

They see a foreign government conspiring to get the Royals into the American League playoffs--maybe even the World Series--and delay delivery to the Raiders next fall of Bo Jackson, the multientrepreneur.

As it is, Bo isn’t ready to perform in football until six or seven games beyond the start of each season.

Now Kansas City tenders a treasure of $3 million, or more, a year to capture Davis, who joins a 23-game winner there named Bret Saberhagen.

The irony is even greater. The owner of the Raiders has only one child. His name, Mark Davis.

Beating up on Houston Sunday, 45-0, Cincinnati attempts, and recovers, an onside kick.

Soon, beating up on Houston, 58-7, Cincinnati attempts, and makes, a field goal, expanding the score to 61-7.

Instantly, the plaintive cry is heard of “pouring it on.”

But you never want to buy that complaint in pro football in which the principals are supposed to be big enough, and tough enough, to look out for themselves.

This isn’t Notre Dame matched against Pomona-Pitzer.

“Pouring it on” is the cry of amateurs. In pro, whatever happens to you is business as usual.

And if Houston is offended, let it remember the words of the late football savant, Frank Leahy, who always reminded the victim, “Don’t get mad, get even.”

In Cleveland, where the Browns were matched against Minnesota in a game of vital importance, the temperature at kickoff turns up 10 degrees. The footing is frozen, the entertainers miserable, the quality of the game reduced.

Surveying the scene, you couldn’t have found a better argument for a dome, defeated by Cleveland voters.

Some dramatize football as an all-weather game, a contest of the rugged, but the truth is, the football season was designed to end by Thanksgiving.

Those putting the sport together never pictured mid-December or January, when games could be most critical, and playing conditions the worst.

It isn’t logical, but then nothing in the book says you have to make sense.

If you did, would you arrange for some of your most important games in football to be played under circumstances least conducive to skillful performance?

That’s the way it works in the playoffs. So you give them Cleveland, or Buffalo, or Meadowlands, or Denver, or Philadelphia or even Green Bay, and throwing a log on the fire, you applaud the league for its greatness.

You also submit that man invented the roof for a good reason.