Raider Is No Night Train Lane, Just Lionel : Pro football: Nightmare in Buffalo haunts Washington, who leads NFL with five interceptions.

Lionel Washington, home alone, wore out his video machine last winter. He is a cornerback by trade, not a masochist, but it was difficult to tell sometimes as he forced himself to sit through the Raiders’ 51-3 loss to the Buffalo Bills in the AFC championship game.

“I watched the game film over and over again,” Washington said.

Nothing ever changed. Buffalo won every replay. On tape, Bills’ receiver James Lofton tormented Washington in January, February and March.

The title game was the lowest point in Washington’s eight-year career, a performance that left him in tears. Washington played the game with a sore hamstring that tightened up in the cold weather, but he gets paid to cover opposing receivers, not his backside.

“I was out there,” he said, “Any time you step on the field you have to be ready.”

Some corners don’t recover from such shellings. Lofton, a veteran with sprinter’s speed, pulled out all his tricks against Washington. They were Raider teammates in 1987 and 1988, so Washington should have known better.

Lofton finished with five catches for 113 yards and two touchdowns. Washington tried to bump his receiver off his routes, but Lofton would counter with discreet tugs to Washington’s jersey as he launched himself into his patterns.

“Nine times out of 10, the officials don’t call it,” Washington said. “Lofton was just incredible that game. You have to give him credit.”

Instead of wallowing in the defeat, though, Washington attacked the film, looking for clues on the road back to redemption.

“It stuck with me the whole off-season,” he said. “Any time you face adversity, you learn from it. You try to pick out the things you did wrong. I told myself I was going to correct it. I worked hard early in the off-season to correct it.”

Eight games into the 1991 season, the new-and-improved Lionel Washington leads the NFL with five interceptions, equaling his combined total for the last three seasons.

Since the Raiders’ opening-game blowout in Houston, Washington and cornermate Terry McDaniel have been worthy of Pro Bowl consideration.

Being a Raider was never easy for Washington, a soft-spoken man who was acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals in 1987 and soon found himself starting at right cornerback in place of Lester Hayes, who was injured and backpedaling fast toward retirement.

Washington was nothing like Hayes, who intimidated opponents with various combinations of talk, talent and--in the early years--giant scoops of Stick ‘em.

Can anyone replace Lester Hayes?

“All cornerbacks live on the edge, but Lester, he’d take it to the extreme, to the max,” Washington said. “He was hanging by the thread, man, that’s how he played. He lived on the edge, and he’d take it to the edge.”

At first, Washington didn’t know why the Raiders wanted him. They already had two of the best corners ever in Hayes and Mike Haynes. Washington is almost apologetic about replacing Hayes.

“It’s not that I took his job,” he said. “Lester was hurt. You hate to fall into a position like that, especially with a guy like Lester. He was an All-Pro I don’t know how many years. I didn’t take his place. It was unfortunate he couldn’t finish his career the way he wanted to.”

Washington never had the mouth to match Hayes, but he played the same brand of tough man-to-man coverage.

“I don’t make my challenges with ‘OK, sucker, I’m going to knock your head off,’ ” he said. “I just go out and play as hard as I can. If a guy catches a pass, I try to hit him as hard as I can without hurting myself. I’m even going to help you up sometimes. . . . If you ever hear me talking in the papers about some other receiver or another cornerback, saying he can’t play, you’ll know it’s fabricated. It’s not me. I always try to say something nice about a person. A lot of times I keep myself out of trouble that way.”

Washington is having his best statistical season since his rookie year with the Cardinals in 1983, when he intercepted eight passes in the team’s last nine games after becoming a starter.

Washington’s falling out in St. Louis came in 1986, when Gene Stallings took over as coach. Stallings, a former Dallas Cowboy assistant, tried to convert Washington from a man-to-man cornerback into a zone defender.

“It was like the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ ” Washington said. “I got along with everybody that ever coached me. I never had any problems until I met that guy. He wanted me to play like Everson Walls. That’s not my style. At that time in Dallas, Walls would sit back 10 or 11 yards and clue on the quarterback and make the break from there. I was an aggressive man-to-man player. We got into a couple of arguments about that.”

One day in 1987, Washington picked up his morning paper and discovered he had been traded. Stallings won that battle.

“But I’m still playing,” Washington said. “And he’s coaching at (the University of) Alabama.”

Lester Hayes would be proud.