He Finally Got Day in the Sun

You might say the Raiders have about as much chance of going to the Super Bowl as going to the Moon. It would be like asking for the Moon, is what it would be.

Except that, if they could get to the Moon, they would get to the Super Bowl, all right. So, probably, would the San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears or even the Green Bay Packers. But getting it would be a Moonshot.

For a trip to this Moon, you would fittingly go to Houston, not Houston Control, Houston’s Oilers.

Warren Moon is, unarguably, the premier quarterback in the game today, given the decline in the great state of Montana (as in Joe), the problems of John Elway and Dan Marino, and the unraveling of Jim Kelly in Super Bowl XXVI.

This Moon broke the all-time single season completion record last season with 404. This Moon really glows.

It seems hard to believe now, but National Football League franchises, which would now send company jets and suitcases full of money for him, could have had him for a phone call in 1978. But Warren Moon was so certain he wouldn’t be drafted, he signed with the Canadian Football League (Edmonton).

He had such brilliant seasons there, he led the Eskimos to Grey Cup (Canada’s Super Bowl) victories five consecutive times before he moved south.

It was not so much the since-discredited notion a quarterback had to be blue-eyed and Caucasian. (“It wasn’t that,” Warren Moon disclaims. “Tampa Bay drafted Doug Williams No. 1 that same year.”) It was the fact he played for the University of Washington, which was a ball-control team. This, despite the fact the 1978 New Year’s game in Pasadena was a case of Moonlight and Roses with Warren defeating Michigan with his passes and walking off with the player-of-the-game trophy.

If the level of play in the NFL was supposed to be a notch above the CFL, you couldn’t prove it by the Moonglow Warren brought to Houston. He began instantly producing the same number of yards, completions and touchdowns in the NFL as he had in the CFL.

The pressure in the pro game is always greatest on the quarterback. Under any system, it’s his game to win or lose. But, two years ago, the new Houston coach, Jack Pardee, landed on the Moon with a new wrinkle--the run-and-shoot offense.

This is an NFL refinement invented by a coach named Mouse Davis at Portland State in which, instead of having two burly running backs and tight end servicing your attack, you go to four spindly, shifty wide receivers.

By and large, Warren Moon reveals, these are undersized but tricky little fellows who try to be invisible and streak downfield to undefensed positions at the snap of the ball.

The advantage is a kind of blitzkrieg attack which forces the defense, grudgingly, to lift two or more bull-sized linebackers and replace them with a pony backfield of six or so mid-sized defensive backs. “They go into a semi-zone (station defenders with responsibility for sectors, not people to take care of),” Moon explains.

The good news is, you don’t get homicidal linebackers blitzing (coming unblocked through seams in the line) the quarterback. “But the bad news is, you can’t give the ball off to a Marcus Allen 25 times a game. The run is not really a weapon.”

To counteract the onslaught of the killer-bee wide receivers in this offense, Moon notes “a lot of teams will let us complete those short passes and then tear up our little receivers as they get the ball. Nothing illegal but very discouraging.”

It can get so that catching the ball seems inadvisable, he acknowledges. The New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV and the Washington Redskins last year used this intimidating tactic on Buffalo’s receivers, Moon notes.

The run and shoot, which is really the pass and shoot, increases the time of possession for the team when it has the ball, Moon points out. “A running play uses up the clock, but the clock is always stopped after (an incomplete pass). We get off 72-74 plays a game versus 60 under the old system.”

It takes the trench warfare out of football. If anything can make the run and shoot work, it will be the light of the Moon.

When Warren Moon first traveled South to play football in the States, he became the first client of the agent Leigh Steinberg. It was more than a business arrangement. It was a meeting of the minds. It was the notion of both of them that signing a lucrative contract was, in a sense, a pact with society, an obligation, as well.

Steinberg has always insisted that his athletes earmark a percentage of their monies--and their time--to charitable works. Moon wholeheartedly concurred.

“When I was growing up in Los Angeles, I was the beneficiary of these organizations’ goodwill, everything from Cub Scouts to Bible school, to self-help groups,” Moon said. “I was raised in mid-city but I was able to go to Hamilton High. I was kept away from bad elements by caring people.”

He decided to join the caring people. Warren Moon’s activities range from his own scholarship fund for underprivileged children in the Houston area to involvement with Special Olympics, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and cerebral palsy foundations.

Tonight, Warren Moon will be in town as the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith celebrates its 79th year as a bastion against bigotry, and honors his agent and colleague, Leigh Steinberg for his charitable activities. The dinner will be held at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

“There is no better feeling than doing something for others,” Warren Moon explains.

The Raiders wish they could put him to the test. The Oilers would give them the Astrodome first.