THE NFL PLAYOFFS : Well Worth the Wait : Shell’s Patience With Raiders Is Rewarded

Less than two seasons after Art Shell became head coach of the Raiders and led them back to a championship game, you wonder what took owner Al Davis so long to hire him in the first place.

Shell had been standing there since 1968, first as a Hall of Fame left tackle for 15 seasons, then as an assistant coach. Shell was tough, smart, commanding.

Instead, Davis got tricky after Tom Flores resigned in 1988. He thought maybe the game had passed him by after a decade of litigation and decided on a professorial outsider from Denver, Mike Shanahan, who could whip up offensive formations with the best of them. What Shanahan lacked was the essence of being a Raider.

Real Raiders, most of them anyway, suffer internal damage after exhibition losses. Real Raiders throw their arms around Jim Otto when he visits. Real Raiders understand the eccentricities of their owner, Davis, however Machiavellian his motives.

A real Raider finds it difficult to describe how it feels to bring a franchise back from the ruins.

A real Raider, Art Shell, was standing there all along.

“I love this organization,” he said recently. “I love what it stands for. I understand this organization. I understand what it means to win. I think I understand how to go about winning, how to instill in the players the pride it takes to win. My whole professional career has been here. It’s all I know. I understand what Raider football means.”

Hard to imagine why Davis ever picked up the phone and dialed Denver. Since taking over on Oct. 3, 1989, Shell has led the Raiders to a 20-9 record and a spot in Sunday’s AFC championship game against Buffalo.

Simply put, the Raiders are the Raiders again. No more shotgun formations or boarding-school regulations. The Raiders have taken on the characteristics of their coach, an old left tackle. They have reduced the playbook to bare essentials. They run the ball a lot and don’t mind playing in mud.

Shell’s spell over his players is something to behold. Some coaches punch out chalkboards to get their points across. Shell commands with soft tones and hard looks. His physical presence--he’s 6 feet 5 and 285 pounds--is enough to keep a team in check. When things don’t go his way, Shell has threatened more than once to put his helmet on again and explain things more clearly.

Veteran players know when a team meeting isn’t going well.

“He doesn’t scream,” nose tackle Bob Golic said. “His voice just drops down another octave, which is hard to believe. There are subtle little facial changes. As a veteran player you pick it up quickly. Some of the young guys you nudge and say, ‘Shut up.’ ”

Defensive end Howie Long remarked once that it was comforting to know that your coach could beat up every other coach in the league.

The players respect Shell more because he was a player, they say, although that has never been a prerequisite for greatness in the profession. The game has had plenty of celebrated coaches who couldn’t practice what they preached. Bill Walsh comes quickly to mind.

Golic said the difference is that Shell is not that far removed from the game, having retired in 1982.

“A lot of us still almost look at him as a player,” said Golic, who once played against Shell. “That’s where the respect comes from. It’s the way he played the game. He loved the game. He played with fire. He was so competitive. That translates well to him as a coach because that’s the way he was.”

They say Shell knows when to back off in training camp sprint drills because he can remember at what point he grew tired.

Still, no one could have imagined that Shell would have turned it around so quickly, with essentially the same cast he inherited in 1989.

“I’d like to think I’ve been around the game long enough to know how to treat players,” he said. “What to demand from those players, understand what makes them tick, understand when to push a button, when to ease off, when to jump on them. All these things go into the idea of coaching a football team. There is no master plan. These are things I learned along the way. I just monitored the coaches I had and incorporated some of my own ideas.”

Raider players and coaches also appreciate Shell’s humanness. Washington Coach Joe Gibbs sleeps at the office during game weeks. Shell goes home.

Not that Shell takes his job lightly.

“I take losing as bad as anyone in this country,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”

But Shell does prefer to get his work done and go home.

“You don’t have to stay here all night to get it done,” he said. “You really don’t. I want my coaches to go home and sit with their families, see their kids at night before they go to bed. I think it’s important your wife sees you before she goes to bed. It doesn’t always work that way, but I think it’s important. It creates a wholesome atmosphere for everyone involved.”

As a player, Shell remained in the background. In the locker room after games, reporters used to stand in his stall to get into listening range of teammate Gene Upshaw, a prolific talker who later became the players’ union leader.

Shell was always patient and quiet. He knew he didn’t have to talk to get noticed. But he also knew it would take longer.

“I remember the first time I made the Pro Bowl,” he recalled. “Some people felt I should have made it the year before. I didn’t, but it didn’t bother me, because I knew somewhere along the line I would make it and eventually people would understand that I was a pretty good football player.”

Shell applies the same principles to coaching, refusing to take the credit for turning the franchise around. He accepts that he is the first black coach in modern NFL history and knows it didn’t happen by accident. Shell’s concern is holding up his end of the bargain for Davis.

“It’s gratifying that we have a guy in this country who decided he was going to do the best for this organization and hire Art Shell,” Shell said. “Nobody ever really knows Al Davis, but if you did know anything about Al Davis, you’d know all he cares about is winning. So when he chose me to be the head coach, it was very gratifying at the time.

“But being as competitive as I am, I wanted to be sure that I could do the best possible job to show that he didn’t make the wrong decision.”

Davis hadn’t. In 1990, Shell finished second behind Dallas’ Jimmy Johnson for coach of the year and was voted AFC coach of the year by United Press International.

Shell, as usual, took it in stride.

“It’s wonderful,” he said of the award, “but those things are done because of what players do on the field. I helped John Madden win one. I helped Tom Flores win one. The players get it done for you.”

Under Shell, the Raiders have gotten it done.