Sound of Silence Awaits the Raider Quarterbacks

In that area of the hotel set aside for the Raiders, laboring daily at training camp here, it is quiet at last.

Ron Brown has disconnected the security system that guards his Mercedes-Benz. It isn’t your everyday Mercedes. Glistening silver, it is fitted with bodywork not even known to German engineering. The hubcaps, of superior quality, are custom-done, too.

Pardonably proud of this machine, Mr. Brown protects it from highwaymen with a unique alarm. One strolls within a foot of the vehicle and a recorded voice warns:

“You are standing too close to the car. Please step back or the alarm will sound.”

You retreat a step.

“Thank you,” the voice says.

If you don’t retreat, the voice warns you again to step back, then begins a countdown. . . “Five, four, three, two, one.”

A deafening signal erupts and lights begin flashing. It suggests the old exploding scoreboard of Bill Veeck.

Well, when meetings end after dinner and the players repair to their quarters, they can break the humdrum of evening by watching television or sneaking out to the parking lot, activating the alarm on Brown’s car and running away.

This calls for Brown, who has Olympic speed, to race from his room and disarm the system to avoid (a) a dead battery and (b) execution by others living in the hotel.

He would soon deactivate the alarm altogether. And, naked in the moonlight, the Mercedes would be on its own.

Discussing business with Jay Schroeder, who is attempting to play quarterback for the Raiders, we develop the thought that throwers can use Brown’s alarm system, frightening off poachers coming within a foot of the man with the ball.

Schroeder has suffered more than his share of despair. While playing effectively for the Washington Redskins, he got the feeling he had arrived as an artist to be reckoned with.

The next thing he knows, he is occupying the bench at Washington, not at all delighted with the idea. Traded to the Raiders, he is soon the starter, after which he is back on the bench. He asks himself plaintively, “What did I accomplish leaving the bench at Washington for the bench in Los Angeles?”

Schroeder also has to question his judgment in leaving baseball, having signed as a catcher with the Toronto Blue Jays, who immediately vested confidence in him.

They sent him to Medicine Hat.

Now, on the playing fields of Oxnard, Schroeder is making a new thrust at winning a starting job.

“I have spent the winter practicing with Mike White,” he says, referring to the recently hired quarterback savant of the Raiders. “We have stressed footwork technique. Everything for a quarterback rises and falls on how he sets up with his feet.”

How he sets up with his head counts, too.

Schroeder, who is bright, has proved a slight puzzle to those who have coached him; which is to say, he has every attribute for playing the position, but hasn’t played it with the consistency required.

He has superb height, rising 6-feet-4. At 215 pounds, he has muscle. His legs are strong, and he has what is known in the industry as a big arm.

But when a game gets under way, a quarterback needs a quality not easy to describe. It is called instinct.

“On less than 5% of your passes do you designate a single receiver,” says Mike White. “You usually have a choice of three receivers, sometimes four. The quarterback looks deep and makes a decision. If the decision isn’t to throw deep, he must throw short. And among the short receivers, he must pick the right one.”

The problem is complicated by the fact that rushers are coming at the quarterback, and rushers aren’t people you are eager to introduce to the family.

This is why a quarterback who does it right earns $3 million a year.

If Schroeder can bag the Raider job, he would find himself in the enviable position this season of drawing fewer boos than any quarterback since the team’s arrival in L.A.

That’s because fewer people will inhabit the stadium.

So you are a quarterback, tired of hearing boos? Get rid of the customers.

“I am adjusted to hearing boos coming off the field,” Schroeder says. “What I am now working on is getting used to hearing boos when I am coming out of the tunnel.”

In the last stage, a quarterback learns to deal with what Dieter Brock, one-time Canadian Football League jewel of the Rams, did one night. He got booed in the men’s room.