PRO FOOTBALL REPORT WEEKDAY UPDATE : RAIDERS : Who Keeps Saying These Things?

Coach Art Shell told his team before Sunday’s game that people were calling the Raiders the worst 3-0 team in football. What people? That’s where it gets tricky. No one in the Raider media corps could recall reading, writing or hearing the remark.

“I’m not going to get into who it was,” Shell said. “You read and you hear things. . . . Everyone is an expert. Everyone has his own opinion about you as an individual and you as a football team. But it doesn’t matter to us. We just care about each other.”

Shell’s message got through to his players. Respect, or lack thereof, was the rallying cry in the locker room after Sunday’s 24-10 victory over Chicago.

Said Greg Bell: “Evidently, I guess now we’re the worst 4-0 team.”

Now that the Raiders are drawing big crowds again at the Coliseum, a few helpful reminders from the team’s head coach.

“We were really conscious of the crowd,” Shell said. “But a couple of times we had the ball and they started going to that wave. The wave has to come when the other people have the ball, not when we have the ball. . . . The fans get caught up in rooting and yelling. Maybe they lost track of who had the ball.”

One year ago today, Shell was named head coach of the Raiders, replacing Mike Shanahan. Under Shell, the Raiders are 11-5 overall and 9-0 at the Coliseum.