Forgotten Man of Raiders Makes Most of a Chance

Vince Evans was not at home when I phoned him there the other night, and now I regret not having tried back later. Vince is a prince. He is one of football’s kinder, gentler people, the type who says “God bless you” on his answering machine. That is why I was sorry to miss him . . . because I’ve missed him.

He was a sweetheart of a guy back when he was most valuable player of USC’s 1977 Rose Bowl victory over Michigan, and he was every bit as charming when he came to Chicago to be a professional quarterback and took his sweetheart into a deserted Soldier Field one starlit night to propose marriage to her.

I have seen Vince Evans quarterback everybody from the Chicago Bears to the Chicago Blitz, from the Denver Gold to Los Angeles’ silver and black. He has been up, down and all around. When that World League of American Football gets going, you watch--Evans will turn up quarterbacking Barcelona or Bangkok or some such franchise.

For the time being, though, old Vince doesn’t play much. He is 35. He is one of those dinosaur NFL quarterbacks--a Steve Grogan, a Joe Ferguson, a hanger-on. His NFL career is pretty much past-tense. Evans did not play in the first 10 Raider games. He played one game in 1989. No games in 1988. No NFL games in 1986, 1985, 1984.

Rusty? Yes, you could say Vince is rusty. If Judy Garland were around, she would squirt oil on his hinges.

Yet when Jay Schroeder went down with a knee injury Sunday at the Coliseum, with six minutes remaining in a game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Raider coaches did not know where else to turn. They had no quarterback other than Vince Evans. They had not activated Steve Beuerlein or anybody else. Evans was their bullpen. Their quarterback had a flat tire, and Coach Art Shell carried only one spare.

Evans limbered up. Threw about 15 warm-up tosses. And nobody had to dust any cobwebs off him. With a summer’s worth of workouts and an autumn of daily drills, he had prepared himself for such a crisis. He was the second-string quarterback of a first-place team. He was not merely hanging on. He was hanging tough.

“That’s the role of a backup quarterback,” Evans would say afterward. “Only, I don’t know that you can prepare. You never know when the opportunity will present itself. But when it does, you don’t have time to think about being jittery or anything else. You just . . . play. “

And oh, did Vince Evans ever play Sunday.

Four plays.

--Handoff to Marcus Allen, 11-yard gain.

--Pass to Ethan Horton, 36 yards.

--Allen over left tackle, 13 yards.

--Allen over right tackle, five-yard touchdown.

Took him fewer than two minutes to take the Raiders 65 yards. Bam, bam, bam, bam. There was no backing up from the backup. The Raiders went straight forward.

And, given a break or two, they could have celebrated V.E. day.

If only Evans could have gotten his hands on the football one more time, taken one more snap, maybe . . . well, you never know. But he didn’t. Kansas City kept it, controlled it. After waiting all season to get into a game, Vince Evans never got back into the game.

“Whether or not they rallied around me or rallied around the situation, I’m not sure,” Evans said. “If I was a part of it, I’m glad. It’s just disheartening to know that you’ve given all you’ve got, only to come out of it with a loss.”

For more than 3 1/2 quarters--for more than 3 1/2 weeks --Schroeder had experienced difficulty in leading the offense to the end zone, in demonstrating precision, in taking precaution with the ball. Schroeder’s two costly fumbles Sunday soured him so much with the Coliseum crowd that his injury was met with cruel cheers.

That made him unhappy. It would anyone.

But Vince Evans’ effort did not make Schroeder unhappy.

“I was the first one out there to congratulate him,” Schroeder said. “I know he can play. We don’t lose anything with Vince at quarterback. He doesn’t miss a beat.”

Had Schroeder healed sufficiently to return to action if the Raiders had regained the ball?

“They never really asked me if I was ready to go back in,” said Schroeder, who therefore presumed that he wouldn’t have.

And next week?

“I think I can play,” Schroeder said, “provided they want me to.”

Evans will simply do what he has always done: Work hard, wait and see. He wants to be respectful and patient. Wants to be appreciative that he is working at all. Wants everybody to know that he knows his role, that “I came here with the understanding that I was to be a security to Jay or Steve.”

The reason I called Vince recently, though, was that I knew he was concerned about being ignored. That those who wanted Schroeder replaced spoke only of Beuerlein. Like Evans wasn’t even here. Wasn’t even a factor. Wasn’t even worth considering.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting to be the starter,” Evans said. “But I wasn’t going to be complacent with that thought, either. Nobody likes being overlooked.

“I still think I can play.”

That makes at least two of us.