Starting Over : After Successful Careers as Devoted 49ers, Free Agents Lott and Craig Learn the Raider System

Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig shared Super Bowls and super stardom. They broke sourdough bread together.

They were San Francisco 49ers forever. They didn’t merely give to the organization, they all but sacrificed themselves. Lott donated the tip of a finger when forced to decide between surgery to save the top knuckle and suiting up that Sunday.

Craig offered the whole of his body, weekly. No moment was more revealing of his character than a 190-yard performance against the Rams on a sweltering day three years ago in Anaheim.

Craig ran through six would-be tacklers on one 46-yard run. One of the linebackers who gave chase, Mark Jerue, afterward lay face-up on the trainer’s table, dehydrated, an intravenous needle in his arm. His body temperature rose so high that his skin blistered. Another linebacker, the late Carl Ekern, lost 15 pounds in pursuit of Craig.

Craig? Well, he acknowledged being a bit winded.

With the exception of quarterback Joe Montana, no two players better personified the 49ers’ dominance in the 1980s than Lott and Craig. True, they were creeping toward the back nine of their careers, but Plan A was always clear: Exit the game with dignity and grace. No one told them about Plan B.

With a few bold strokes, though, it was over.

The cause of the breakup might be traced to a singular moment, when Craig made a rare fumble in last winter’s NFC Championship game with the 49ers clinging to a 13-12 lead. It helped the New York Giants to a winning field goal as time expired, and they went on to win the Super Bowl.

Two days later, Craig, one of the franchise’s all-time greats, was summoned to Coach George Seifert’s office and told he was being placed on a list known as Plan B, making him a limited free agent. Several NFL players have filed lawsuits to achieve similar freedom, yet Craig was shocked. He didn’t want to be a free agent. He was a 49er.

The team figured that it had to expose Craig to protect younger players on the roster. It was business. Craig, 31, was coming off a season filled with injuries. He finished 44th among NFL rushers with a career-low 439 yards. He could go out and make a better deal for himself. If not, the club would welcome him back to fight for his job in training camp.

Craig was left to wonder: If he doesn’t fumble, and the 49ers go on to win a third consecutive Super Bowl title, is he sitting there in Seifert’s office? Was this the payoff for eight years of service?

Lott had signed a three-year contract extension before the end of the regular season. But then he, too, was placed on Plan B. Lott was 32, a hobbling hero down the stretch of the 1990 season, but still heart and soul of the 49er defense.

Lott wanted to play another two seasons, bad knees and all. Hadn’t he earned the right to try? Lott swallowed his pride and offered to take a salary cut to well below $1 million.

“I guess loyalty has an age limit,” Lott would say later of his bitter parting with 49er management.

Hurt, confused, scared, Lott took a deep breath and made the Plan B plunge in March, signing a two-year deal with the Raiders.

Craig waited until the 11th hour to make his painful decision, then signed with the Raiders minutes before the Plan B signing period ended April 1.

In the end, both players accepted salary cuts for the privilege.

Craig felt as thought he had been through a divorce. He stripped his home of 49er mementos and memories. He sold his car and bought another with a different color: Raider black.

“It was an interesting off-season,” Lott said sternly.

Fans of the 49ers and reporters chose sides. The pragmatists held one view: Teams can’t stand still in this league; sentiment has no place between the yard markers. The 49ers had watched the Pittsburgh Steelers’ great teams of the 1970s carry their aging heroes into the ‘80s, only to drop out of contention.

Many 49er fans drew up petitions and flooded local air waves with their outrage. Where, in all this, was Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the benevolent, back-slapping owner?

Craig has not heard from DeBartolo since his departure. Not even a final farewell phone call.

“Sure, you’re going to have resentment after all the hard years you put in, then you get treated that way,” Craig said. “But for me, it’s another challenge in life. I’m excited as hell to be with (the Raider) organization, for them to believe in me. They gave me the opportunity, the chance to redeem myself, to show people that they didn’t make a mistake by bringing me here. I don’t want to let them down.”

Lott still sorts through bundles of supportive fan mail from the Bay Area. He is a Raider now, but sometimes he still can’t believe it.

“The thing with the ‘Niners,” he said, “was that everyone talked about family. But when it all came down, well . . . . People asked me, ‘Why did you leave?’ I say, ‘Why did they put me on Plan B?’ You talked about family and loyalty. I told them I’d take a salary cut and all those things. What more can you ask?”

So, Lott and Craig are Raiders. Now what? Lott’s role appears well defined; Craig’s is less so. The Raiders pushed Mike Harden into retirement to clear a path for Lott at strong safety. It marks the third position change in Lott’s 10-year career. He has made the Pro Bowl at cornerback and free safety.

The position switch is intended to use Lott’s skills as a fierce hitter and disguise his shortcomings in pass coverage, the area of his game affected most by chronic knee problems.

No one knows how Lott can affect a game better than Raider middle linebacker Riki Ellison, a teammate of Lott’s for seven years in San Francisco.

“He can light the fire,” Ellison said, “initiate the spark. When you have a great hit, it stimulates the whole team, on the field and on the sideline.”

The Raiders are expecting no less from Lott.

“We expect him to play all 16 games,” Coach Art Shell said. “No, we expect him to play more than 16 games.”

Lott, in his all-black practice jersey, is a throwback to the days of the great Raider intimidators, safeties Jack Tatum and George Atkinson.

“Those are the guys I watched playing,” said Lott, who grew up in Rialto and starred at USC. “I remember meeting both of them. I thought they were heroes. I met Atkinson my rookie year, he was doing some television work. I met Tatum on his book-signing tour; he was signing at USC. I just had to go get my book and get it signed.”

Lott remembers being barely able to form words in Tatum’s presence.

“It’s one of those things,” he said. “You meet people like that, you kind of, you know, stumble for your words. You watched him for years. You tried to emulate his play. That’s what you always wanted to be. You wanted to be able to hit like him.”

While Lott still wears No. 42, Craig has traded in his famous No. 33 for his old number at Nebraska, 22. It takes some getting used to.

In early training camp practices, Craig was running with the third team. That takes some getting used to, too. The Raider plan is to implement a running game by committee. The team has considerable depth in Marcus Allen, Steve Smith, Greg Bell, Napoleon McCallum, Vance Mueller and now, Craig.

“No way you can just throw me ahead of Marcus,” Craig said. “He’s well established. He should be there. It’s a slow transition. I’m just trying to get better.’

Gone is the familiarity that comes with playing an entire career with the same team.

Lott, for his part, is desperately trying to learn a new position. “It’s like going to a new school,” he said. “Or going to a new job. (It means) getting acclimated to new teachers and new kids. Growing up as a military kid, you get accustomed to that, you move every four years. So I’ve been in this situation.”

Craig must adjust to a running game that is not designed around him. He must know he will never relive the glory of 1985, when he became the first player in NFL history to gain more than 1,000 yards both rushing and receiving in the same season.

How much of the old Roger Craig remains is the question.

“I feel like I’m a rookie again,” Craig said. “Being with the 49ers for eight seasons, everything was natural. I knew the system. I didn’t have to study as hard. The system was built around me. Now, I’ve got to learn a new system. I’m trying to have fun with it and not get frustrated. If I make a mistake, the main thing is that I can’t totally go into a stupor.”

One thing Lott and Craig say they won’t miss about San Francisco is the boot camp mentality: Long practices, punctuality, regulations.

Ellison, who left the 49ers for the Raiders in 1989 under circumstances similar to those involving Lott and Craig, thinks his new teammates will be rejuvenated in Los Angeles.

“These guys are probably going to have the best years of their careers here,” Ellison said.

“It’s so fresh here, just a different attitude toward the game. You’ll see these guys prosper. They’ve been under a real strict-type atmosphere. For me, it was great. I spent seven years in a whole other system. You get new life. You come here and you’re fresh. It’s a challenge to your career. It makes you push a lot harder.”

If Lott and Craig weren’t excited by their new challenge, there was always the NFL schedule to consider. As fate would have it, they will face the 49ers in their first game as Raiders. The Raiders open the exhibition season next Saturday against San Francisco at the Coliseum. The teams will also play a regular-season game Sept. 29 at the Coliseum.

“It’ll be kind of an eerie feeling,” Craig said. “I know I have some buddies over there who are going to try to take my head off. They don’t want me to look good. It’s going to be funny, though, because I never dreamed of being on another team. It’s going to be exciting for fans, for everyone, to see how this turns out.”

Lott might soon face a collision with his former quarterback and confidant, Joe Montana, the only remaining 49er with four Super Bowl rings.

Lott knows what has to be done. “Of course,” Lott said. “(Montana) knows that. We had dinner. We talked about it. We played against each other at Notre Dame. The fact is, (the 49ers) would be more teed off at me if I didn’t do that.

“I mean, if I didn’t, they probably wouldn’t even have dinner with me the next off-season. They’d say, ‘That’s not the Ronnie we know.’ They expect to see me at 100%”