Seahawk ‘Spread’ Withers Away : Raiders: Seattle’s run-and-shoot offense will be but a memory in the Coliseum.

If you think Seattle Coach Chuck Knox has dropped some fat on his diet, check out his offense since the Raiders played in the Kingdome a month ago.

The 2-3 Seahawks started the season with big run-and-shoot plans, but have since come to their senses. It just wasn’t them. Knox’s idea of fancy is napkins at the dinner table. He was living a lie.

Seattle threw its new four-receiver “Spread” offense at the Chicago Bears in the opener and failed 10 times on third-down conversion attempts. The Seahawks opened the season with 31 new offensive flavors and christened the era with three consecutive losses, including a 17-13 to the Raiders Sept. 16.

Knox has been around long enough to smell a rat, so he turned back the clock and returned to ringing some bells with a power-back offense led by Derrick Fenner, who is starting to make headlines on the field.

The Seahawks have bounced back with two consecutive victories and are looking to make it three in a row in today’s rematch against the Raiders at the Coliseum.

Knox said he hasn’t chucked the new offense altogether, but it’s safe to say he has pushed it way back on the shelf. “We’ve gone back to a more conventional-type offense, similar to what most teams use in the NFL,” Knox said.

The Seahawks started their retreat against the Raiders, rushing 36 times. Seattle had the lead until Greg Bell scored the winning touchdown with 1:26 left. “You could see that Chuck decided in our game that he was going back to the way he coached before with the two-back offense,” Raider Coach Art Shell said.

The Raiders practiced against the four-receiver set last week, but they’re not expecting a heavy dose of the formation today.

“I think they’ve pretty much gotten rid of it,” Shell said. “They’ve gone back to what they know, and that’s what you should do. Go back to what you know, what you believe in.”

Knox has pulled in the reins on offense, and that’s cleared a path for tailback Fenner, maybe this year’s best football story. Three weeks ago, Fenner rushed for 144 yards in a 34-31 overtime loss to the Broncos in Denver. He leads the NFL with eight touchdowns and has gained 322 yards overall, averaging 4.5 yards a carry.

This by a man with a tainted past. Fenner once spent 44 days in prison in 1987 on first-degree murder charges that were eventually dropped. He did plead guilty to drug possession. In 1988, he was grazed by a bullet while standing outside a bar in Washington, D.C.

Fenner, who gained 1,250 yards as a sophomore at North Carolina in 1986, had been out of football for two years when the Seahawks drafted him as a 10th-round choice in 1989. It could turn out to be the biggest steal since the Raiders snagged Bo Jackson with a seventh-round pick in 1986.

The Seahawks, however, dangled their prize precariously last month, releasing Fenner on the team’s final cutdown day to make room on the roster for an injured player. Knox gambled that no one would take a chance on Fenner, and won. Twenty-seven teams passed on him, and the Seahawks re-signed him the next day for the bargain rate of $75,000 this season.

Fenner, at 6-feet-3 and 229 pounds, has proved to be a human wrecking ball.

“When he carries the ball, he’s a load,” Shell said. “He’s been a big jewel for them, a guy that came out of nowhere. He’s done a heck of a job. You don’t realize how big he is until you walk by him.”

Fenner’s comeback has not been without complications. He was involved in another bar incident after Seattle’s Monday night victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in the Kingdome on Oct. 1. An unidentified man claimed he was attacked by Fenner and filed charges.

Police investigators, however, dropped the case last week and concluded after interviewing several witnesses that the man had actually attacked Fenner and had filed charges 12 hours later, only after learning a Seahawk player was involved.

The Raiders held Fenner to 32 yards in 13 carries in the first game, but the Seahawks generally have been known to give the Raiders fits. Knox is 12-5 against them--10-5 as Seattle’s coach--and might have been 13-4 were it not for a controversial non-call in the first Raider-Seahawk game last month, when it appeared that receiver Mervyn Fernandez had one foot out of bounds on a long reception that led to the tying touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The replay official tried to buzz the field to halt play for a review, but because of a technical glitch, the message never arrived.

“We won’t even mention that this week,” Knox said. “That happened. The game’s over. No one ever said life was fair. We just have to live with that.”

Raider Notes

Seattle is the last team to defeat the Raiders at the Coliseum, winning, 24-20, on Oct. 1, 1989. Two days later, the Raiders fired Mike Shanahan and replaced him with Art Shell, who has won nine games at home. . . . Alcoholic beverages will be banned at the Coliseum today in a one-game experiment resulting from the Sept. 23 incident in which a Pittsburgh Steeler fan was seriously injured when he was struck and kicked by a Raider fan. A week later, 31 fans were arrested and 88 others ejected during a home game against the Chicago Bears. Alcohol sales in subsequent games at the Coliseum will be prohibited after halftime. . . . Security at the gate will be increased to curtail the smuggling of alcohol into the Coliseum.