Longevity Starts With This Raider

Howie Long would be perfect for that battery commercial. He just keeps going and going and going. . . .

When Howie Long first got down in a defensive stance for the Raiders, they were still in Oakland, Reagan was in the White House, there was a Soviet Union, Reggie Jackson led the majors in home runs, Steve Carlton was the top pitcher and Henry Fonda won an Academy Award.

Howie was a strange choice for the Raiders. Raised in Massachusetts, educated at Villanova, he hadn’t been picked out of a pool hall or a police blotter, never punched a cop or stole a stereo, he never had been a malcontent where he was.

He lined up alongside Lyle Alzado and John Matuszak and some heavy-duty renegade types for which the Raiders were famous. The Raiders of the day were football’s Statue of Liberty team--”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” They were the Foreign Legion of football. No questions asked, Just win, Baby.

Howie managed to fit in, even though he never got picked up for punching a passing motorist on the Sunset Strip or for trashing a bar or needing bail on a Saturday night.

Howie just won. He was big, tough, fast and he sacked quarterbacks and stuffed running plays with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Teams usually picked the other end to run around when Howie was in his prime.

He prowled the line of scrimmage like a lion on a hunt. He lined up at different places because the coaches didn’t want the opposition to know where he was coming from. Not that it helped much to know. Long was as unstoppable as tomorrow. He made sacks, hurried passes, caused fumbles. He was Howie Havoc to the league.

He’s the only Raider left who played in Oakland. A couple of years ago, the defensive lineman’s occupational hazard--a bad back--began to hamper Long. He was still hard to stop, just not impossible anymore. Teams began to run at him. It wasn’t a terribly good idea. But neither was it a good idea to run at Greg Townsend. The team feared Long had lost a step.

But, all of a sudden, this year, here comes Long banging the drum again and marching into the picture--strong and healthy again for the first time in a couple of years. Offensive linemen flinch when they see him coming. Quarterbacks hurry their throws again. Running backs start the other way.

Long thinks football is fun again. He takes his assignments with an old gusto. He rolls up the guy blocking him--in the old days, there were two--like a guy rolling carpet. He’s in the quarterback’s face. Guys have stopped asking him, “Is this your last year?” or “When are you gonna retire?”

He has 6 1/2 sacks this season. He has 76 in his career. His role has changed slightly. Although he still is listed as a defensive end, Long frequently takes on the defensive tackle role. His job then is to pile up the play, jam the execution, road-block it and let someone else swoop in and scoop up the statistic.

It was Big Daddy Lipscomb who once summed up defensive play best: “You crash in and grab people by the neck and shake them till you find the one with the ball. Him, you keep.”

Long has been doing this for 11 years now. He has gotten the guy with the ball several hundred times. He has made the quarterback change the play at the line of scrimmage or call time hundreds of times. His presence has sent enemy coaches to the blackboard on countless nights.

Part of the rejuvenation is mental, Long figures. It takes experience to play in the pros.

“You come into this league a mental midget and a physical Goliath,” he says. “You think because you lift weights, you can handle anybody. At some point--age 25, or 27, or 30--you find out how to do it. Then, you’re a mental genius. Only, your back hurts.”

In Sunday’s game against Denver, the rookie quarterback, Tommy Maddox, had little chance against Long, Townsend, Willie Broughton and Aaron Wallace.

“Aaron Wallace is the best athlete on the defense,” Long says. “We try to turn the play into him.”

But in mid-game Sunday, the Broncos tried to find the Raiders out of position with an end-around play. It’s a schoolyard play, and when the ballcarrier came around to find daylight, he found Long instead. Howie just wrapped him up and laid him gently to earth.

Long husbands his energies. In the Seattle game a week ago, his pass rush found the quarterback, trapped, trying to get rid of the ball with a shovel pass. It hit Long right in the mask.

“Why didn’t you intercept it?” he was joshed in the locker room.

“I probably should have,” Long countered. “But did you see where the ref ruled the QB was ‘in the grasp’ and the play was dead? If I’d have caught it, I would have run 65 yards for nothing. I don’t want to be doing that at my age.”

Long is only 32. He still runs very fast for a guy 6 feet 5 and 270 pounds.

It’s the age-old question. Is it better to be smarter or younger? God evens up. He doesn’t give it to you both ways.

For the present, Long will settle for just being able to keep going, and going, and going.