PRO FOOTBALL : Brown Drops Gloves and Catches Passes : Raiders: He makes up for disappointment against the Bengals with big game against the Bills.

Raider wide receiver Tim Brown prides himself on his ability to catch the ball and make big plays.

His ego, however, was somewhat bruised when he dropped several key passes while wearing gloves in the Raiders’ 16-10 loss at Cincinnati last week.

To bounce back, Brown decided to go glove-less in the Buffalo cold against the Bills on Sunday.

It’s a decision Buffalo defensive backs wish he never made.

All Brown did was catch 10 passes for a career-high 183 yards, including a game-winning 29-yard fourth-quarter touchdown.

“It was important for me to come back and play well with a lot of intensity,” said Brown, who has a career-high 54 catches for 838 yards this season. “I don’t think I did that last week.”

And the gloves?

“No matter how cold it was, I was going to play with no gloves,” Brown said. “It’s one thing to wear gloves, but last week, I went with the big scuba gloves. So, I decided to go back to playing without them because I felt that I had wimped out last week.”

From the Raiders’ opening drive, Brown ripped through the Bills’ secondary with ease. It didn’t matter if Buffalo used cornerback James Williams to cover him solo or relied on a two-deep zone coverage, Brown played catch with quarterback Jeff Hostetler all day.

Whenever the Raiders needed a big play, Hostetler looked for Brown. And with every catch, Brown’s confidence grew.

With Buffalo ahead, 7-3, in the second quarter, Brown caught consecutive passes of 19 and 37 yards that set up Hostetler’s 11-yard touchdown run.

“Timmy is such a great competitor and receiver,” Hostetler said. “He’s the guy we look for when we really need things to get going.”

By the half, Brown had four catches for 90 yards, but he was only warming up.

In the third quarter, Brown had four catches for 56 yards.

Yet, the Raiders still found themselves down, 24-19, with five minutes left.

After not catching a pass on the Raiders’ first two fourth-quarter possessions, Brown felt that he could get open against the Bills’ soft zone defense. So, he suggested a play and the Raiders listened.

“A couple of times, Timmy said that he could beat the guy on this or I can beat him on that,” Raider Coach Art Shell said. “So, we called the routes for him and he did an outstanding job catching the ball and making things happen.”

With the ball on Buffalo’s 29-yard line, Brown glided into a seam inside Williams and safety Matt Darby and caught a perfectly thrown pass by Hostetler for the Raiders’ first passing touchdown in three games.

“Jeff threw the ball in the only place where I could have caught it,” said Brown, who has three 100-yard receiving games this season. “He threw it low and behind me in a place where the safety could not get over to it.”

After his fifth touchdown catch of the season, Brown put the finishing touches on the best game of his NFL career with two key plays when the Raiders needed to run out the clock.

The first came when he drew a pass-interference penalty on Williams. He then came back three plays later with a third-down catch good for eight yards and a first down. From there, Hostetler needed only to kneel three times with the snap.

“I take my hat off for Tim and the type of game he had,” Raider fullback Steve Smith said. “He took control of things when we needed it.”

Thanks to Brown, the Raiders kept their playoff hopes alive.

“The way we looked at it was, that if we lost this game, our season would have been pretty much over,” Brown said. “Hopefully, this game will give us the momentum to go into our last four games flying high.”