Within the Shadow of His Doubt : At 32, Raiders’ Howie Long Still Is Driven by Need to Prove Himself

It was a moment to savor.

It was a situation in which defensive linemen lick their chops and offensive linemen lick their wounds.

It was Howie Long’s moment.

It happened last Saturday at the Coliseum, Raiders against the Houston Oilers in an exhibition game.

With the Oilers stuck on their three-yard line, running back Lorenzo White took a handoff from quarterback Warren Moon, felt the football tucked safely in his gut and started out of the end zone on the right side.

He never made it.

The next thing White felt were the arms of the 6-foot-5, 275-pound Long wrapped firmly around his body.

Long had blown past Houston right guard Doug Dawson for the safety.

Time to gloat?

Not for Long.

It’s not that he wouldn’t like to savor such moments. And there have been more than a few in a career that has stretched over 11 seasons.

It’s just that he can’t .

Anybody who has seen or heard Long talk knows about the confident aura of an accomplished athlete.

Well, don’t believe it.

Underneath it all beats the heart of a perfectionist who, a dozen years after being a surprise second-round draft choice, is still playing like a guy trying to justify the pick and rid himself of insecurities.

“My phrase walking off the field every day is, ‘We fooled them another day,’ ” Long said.

Never mind that he was voted first-team defensive end on the all-NFL team of the 1980s. Forget that he was voted to the Pro Bowl six times in seven years. Or that he has been voted NFL defensive lineman of the year by both the NFL Alumni Assn. and fans across the country.

“I think I’ve been happy with two or three games in 12 years,” Long said. “I’ll never enjoy my career until I’m done playing.

“At some point, I’ll be able to sit back and say, ‘Hey, you are first-team all-decade. You’ve been to the Pro Bowl. You’ve been a world champion. You’ve done pretty good for someone who wasn’t supposed to make it.’ ”

Long was All-East and an honorable mention All-American after his senior season at Villanova.

Impressive enough, but hardly the kind of credentials that prompt agents to line up.

So when the Raiders made him a second-round pick, Long remembers, the TV analysts went searching through their lists for his statistics.

The Raiders were criticized for wasting a second pick on someone they could have gotten during the 10th round.

But most of all, Long remembers their summation of his selection: “It’s a bust pick.”

And his reaction?

“At 20 years old, that can be quite a devastating commentary on you,” he said.

It took a while for Long to feel worthy after that.

Three years, to be exact.

At the end of the 1983 season, with the Raiders headed for the Super Bowl, Coach Tom Flores pulled Long aside and told him he had made the Pro Bowl in his first full year as a starter. Long had also missed by only a few votes being selected NFL defensive player of the year.

“It was a shock,” he said of the honors. “Although I had played the entire season at a very high level and had been very successful, I focused in, as always, on my many mistakes, making them more catastrophic than they really were.”

Earl Leggett, Long’s defensive line coach, probably understands him better than anyone.

For one thing, he has been Long’s position coach for a decade. For another, Leggett knows what it is like to try to live up to high expectations. He had a few thrown on him 35 years ago when the Chicago Bears made him a first-round pick.

So Leggett merely smiles when the subject of Long’s insecurities come up.

“He’s probably his own worst critic,” Leggett said. “But all the good athletes I’ve been around have some insecurity. That’s what drives them.”

Long channels those insecurities into hard work.

“People don’t realize how much hard work goes into this damn thing,” Leggett said. “It’s hard, physical work. I try to point out to the younger guys how hard he works.”

Practice doesn’t hold any special allure for Long. But then, it never did.

“It (stunk) when I was 20,” he said. “And it (stinks) now.”

Long isn’t one for leaving his work at the office, either. Because of his demand for perfection, he studies tapes of games. And then he replays the games in his mind. Over and over.

He is not the first guy to replay games far into the night. But Long even replays practices. “I remember every play of a game,” he said. “I can remember plays from three or four years ago. Like, they’ll put on a film from last year’s first Denver game, which was the second game of the year, and I’ll call the plays before they happen. I can remember the call the offensive guard made.

“It could be a good play. It could be a bad play. I’ll remember what I did right. I’ll remember what I did wrong. I’ll remember if I was on the fringe of making a great play, but I didn’t trust myself.”

Even when Long believes that he has had a good game, it doesn’t mean anything if the Raiders don’t win.

“I had five sacks against the Washington Redskins one year and we lost,” Long said. “By no stretch of the imagination did I feel like smiling in the locker room. I just had one of the highest sack totals in the history of the game, and I’m not happy with the game at all. What I do individually bears not at all on how I feel if we don’t win.”

Bruce Matthews, veteran offensive lineman of the Oilers, marveled at Long’s play.

“He’s not slowing down at all,” Matthews said. “He played like a young guy.

“His main asset is how quickly he gets off the ball. He gets in trouble sometimes by jumping offsides, but for every time he jumps offsides, there are three or four times that he is causing havoc by busting up plays. He penetrates so well.

“He has a pretty good ability to guess the snap, too. I can’t think of anyone in the league that hits (the snap count) as well. We spend a lot of time preparing for him.”

Yet for all the praise and all the honors he has received, Long has never had a high profile in Los Angeles.

He came here with the Raiders from Oakland in 1982 and, over the years, has had to share the town with the likes of Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Fernando Valenzuela and Bo Jackson.

Long shrugs off the idea of celebrity.

“You’re not a big deal in L.A. because there are so many big deals,” he said. “So you become a little deal. Which is no big deal.

“If you were in Kansas City or Denver, or even San Diego or Dallas, you’d be more of a local celebrity. I’m more popular, more sought after getting off the plane in New York, Dallas or Denver than I am in L.A. You can walk through the airport in L.A., and nobody cares. Which is fine. I’ve never really been comfortable with the whole celebrity status thing.”

Spoken like the kid from the streets of Boston he still is in many ways.

But there is another side of Long that might someday make him an even bigger celebrity.

His agent, Leigh Steinberg, has had offers from movie and television producers who want to put Long in his own action series.

Long has taken acting classes, but won’t seriously consider anything until his playing days are over. And when might that be?

“I feel good,” he said. “I keep waiting to slow down. When you’re not nervous before a game or when you can’t physically perform, that’s when it’s time to go. I don’t ever want to be bad.”

There were many who thought he would be bad on that draft day 12 years ago. But what if someone had told him then that he would become a star in the league, live up to the Raiders’ hopes and still be a star at 32?

“I’d think they were crazy,” Long said.