Even After Victory, Shell Points Finger at Himself

Raider Coach Art Shell did something unusual these days in the world of sports: He pointed the finger of blame at himself Monday.

And this was after a victory.

It would have been easy for Shell to take credit, not blame, for the Raiders’ 16-14 squeaker over the Chicago Bears on Sunday. After all, his decision to let the clock run in the final minute at Soldier Field worked out to the Raiders’ benefit when Bear kicker Kevin Butler missed what would have been the winning field goal from 30 yards out as time expired.

But had Butler made it, the Raiders would have had no time to come back.

“I might have just blown it in not calling a timeout,” Shell said. “In hindsight, it worked out for us, but if that’s a mistake, then I’ll be the first one to admit that I made a mistake on that. I’m not afraid to (concede) something like that.”

At the time, Shell was content to let the clock run and hope time ran out on Chicago. And it nearly did. There was only one second remaining when Butler kicked.

By not giving the Bears a chance to move closer, Shell also forced Butler to kick 30 yards from a poor surface--mud, sand and long grass--with a 20-m.p.h. wind swirling above the field. Butler had missed from 21 yards out at the same end of the field five minutes earlier.

But a day later, Shell’s thinking had changed.

“You play that in your mind,” he said. “I played it in my mind last night and I’m playing it in my mind now. Would I have done anything differently? . . . The normal thing to do is to use the timeouts in those cases and I probably could have saved some time.”

Shell finally did call time when Butler lined up for the field goal.

“I was . . . using the timeout just as I normally do, just before they kick the field goal, to kind of put a little pressure on the kicker,” Shell said.

But it was the Bears who put pressure on themselves by losing control of the situation in that final minute.

After Neal Anderson had gained a yard on first down from the Raider 12, there was slightly less than a minute to play.

With 40 seconds showing on the clock, Chicago sent in a play, calling for quarterback Jim Harbaugh to go down on one knee. But by the time Harbaugh finally did so, only 21 seconds remained.

Bear lineman Troy Auzenne asked for a timeout even though Chicago didn’t have any left.

“You’ve got to give him a penalty for that,” Raider defensive tackle Anthony Smith said.

The penalty in that situation is 10 seconds off the clock and a loss of down.

Instead, the officials let the clock run down to five seconds, then stopped it when the teams started scuffling.

Harbaugh finally spiked the ball with a second left.

“The way they played it out, they shouldn’t have gotten the ball off,” Shell said.

But it all worked out. His explanation?

“Divine intervention came in.”