Raiders Knock the Shuffle Out of Bengals, 38-14 : Pro football: Decisive victory puts Los Angeles into a tie for first place in the AFC West.

The game was so Raider dominant and Cincinnati dismal that Ickey Woods scored on a one-yard run in the second quarter and didn’t shuffle. He could no more shimmy Sunday than crash a funeral wearing a clown’s mask.

The Raiders took their opponent out early, with a Mike Tyson tenaciousness. No jukes, no jabs, just roundhouse punches.

They scored seven points in the first quarter, landed 21 more in the second to make it 28-0, waited around for the white towel and left Riverfront Stadium with a 38-14 victory before a crowd of 52,044.

The Raiders (8-4), who weeks ago ranked among the league’s undistinguished, leaped past Kansas City into a first-place tie in the AFC West with Denver. The Chiefs and Broncos lost Sunday.

The Raider victory was so decisive that Bengal Coach Sam Wyche could not find an official to blame or a greater wordly cause to rant and rave about.

“It wasn’t even fair to the Raiders,” a subdued Wyche said. “They didn’t have a chance to get a contest in the first half.”

What did you expect from a 1-11 team, a game?

It was, conversely, so encouraging for the streaking Raiders that one could approach quarterback Jay Schroeder, who completed four of 10 passes for 30 yards, and congratulate him.

“Ten passes,” Schroeder said. “That might be the fewest passes I’ve ever attempted. In a game like today, there’s no sense doing something you don’t have to do.”

No sir, no sense wasting a good arm on the Bengals. Or a pair of valuable legs. With the game so decided, the Raiders spared Marcus Allen’s recovering right knee from the dangerous artificial turf, limiting the tailback to spot duty.

Allen stuck around long enough to score his first rushing touchdown of the season on a three-yard run in the third quarter. He then retired to the sideline with other Raider starters, trying to find a warm spot.

Coach Art Shell could not so much utter a disparaging word about his team’s performance. But it was still early.

“I’ve got to watch the film to find something,” he said.

Shell will find that his team exploited, early and often, some obvious mismatches, which doesn’t require a needle in the haystack search when involving Cincinnati:

--Donald Hollas vs. Ronnie Lott. When Bengal quarterback Boomer Esiason was ruled out of the game with a injured pinky on his throwing hand, it left the rookie Hollas, making his first NFL start, alone and helpless to match air strategies and nuances with a future Hall of Fame safety.

Lott entered the game with four more Super Bowl rings than Hollas had touchdown passes in his career, 4-0.

It took Lott less than five minutes to pounce. In the first quarter, he read Hollas’ eyes like a neon road sign on a pass over the middle and promptly intercepted, returning the ball 20 yards to the Bengals’ 44. It set up the Raiders first touchdown, a one-yard run by fullback Steve Smith.

In the fourth quarter, Lott intercepted another Hollas pass and returned it 27 yards, setting up a field goal that gave the Raiders the lead, 38-7.

Hollas, who showed some running skills when he fled a Raider defensive front that would sack him four times, had three passes intercepted.

His second interception, in the third quarter, was returned 25 yards to the Cincinnati three-yard line by linebacker Thomas Benson, setting up Allen’s scoring run.

Lott, the gracious elder statesman, was kind to the young quarterback.

“It’s not so much (that) we were able to read him,” Lott said. “He probably threw into a couple of coverages he shouldn’t have thrown in. I don’t want to take anything away from him.”

Except his passes, of course.

--Elvis Patterson vs. Greater Cincinnati. To stop the Raiders’ special teams’ warrior, the Bengals assigned multiples of hit men to take Patterson out, apparently even if that meant gang tackling or performing the Heimlich maneuver.

“That was the whole day,” Patterson said. “They tackled me, clothes-lined me. They did everything they could do to get me out of the game. . . . It gets frustrating to the point that, with some of the shots, my career could have been easily ended. They’ve been doing it the whole season. At some point, you’ve got to take notice.”

Elvis was slugged and slowed, but not denied.

In the second quarter, he somehow escaped a holding call when he grabbed punter Lee Johnson on Tim Brown’s 75-yard punt return for touchdown.

“I was thinking, ‘Elvis, let him go!’ ” Brown recounted later, ‘ “he’s not going to catch me.’ ”

Later in the quarter, Patterson might have secured a Pro Bowl selection when he picked up a fumbled punt and ran three yards for the touchdown that put the Raiders up, 28-0, with 3:55 left in the half.

On this one, give Patterson credit for being in the area. The score was created when Johnson fumbled a low center-snap. When the punter relocated the ball and peered up, Aaron Wallace met him with a crushing tackle, forcing the ball loose for Patterson to grab.

--Raiders’ rushing game vs. Bengals defense. Defense and special teams left the offense with great field position, so the Raiders pounded away with the run, amassing 157 yards on the ground.

The Raiders’ offense engineered only one scoring sequence that did not require Cincinnati help, a 54-yard drive that spilled into the second quarter and led to a five-yard touchdown by Roger Craig.

It was Craig’s first touchdown of the season and as a Raider. He led the Raiders with 51 yards in 10 carries.

Craig almost forgot how to act after a touchdown.

“It was fun,” he said. “I waited a long time to get in there. . . . At first I started to spike (the ball), then said ‘Wait, I haven’t spiked in two years. Then I gave the ball back to referee.’ ”

Craig’s judgment captured the Raiders’ general feeling of immediate elation, followed by restraint.

The Raiders have won three in a row, true, and four of their last five. But these were Bengals that were defeated, not Bears or Bills.

“Once we got up by 21 points, they definitely had some doubts in their minds whether they were going to finish the game,” Raider guard Steve Wisniewski said, assessing his opponent’s will.

Teammate Lott, who handled Hollas so well, also knows how to handle winning.

“We’ve got a long ways to go,” Lott said. “I’ll be the first one to tell you I’ve been in this situation before. You just have to continue to build the momentum. It’s not over. We’re a long ways from saying we’re a great football team. We have a long way to go before we can put a signature on this team.”

Raider Notes

Napoleon McCallum lives. The once-forgotten tailback gained 40 yards in 10 carries against the Bengals. McCallum was the first reserve back in the game, ahead of Marcus Allen. Allen said Coach Art Shell didn’t want to play him very much on the artificial surface. . . . Ronnie Lott’s two interceptions give him six for the season, most on the team. . . . Jeff Jaeger’s 29-yard field goal in the fourth quarter was his 24th of the season, setting the team single-season record. . . . With two more sacks Sunday, Anthony Smith has taken over the team lead with nine and one-half. Greg Townsend, who had one sack Sunday, has nine for the season.