Luck Runs Out at the Worst Possible Time for Oilers : Pro football: After leading late in the game, Houston gives up touchdown, then Del Greco’s field goal takes a bad bounce.

And the Raiders thought they had problems.

“If a few inches had gone our way, we could easily be 4-4 right now instead of 1-7,” Houston wide receiver Haywood Jeffires said after the Oilers’ 17-14 dramatic loss to the Raiders at the Coliseum. “It hurts every time you lose, but this is really tough to explain.”

Finding ways to lose is something Houston has done all season and Sunday was no different as the Oilers watched their overtime hopes fall short when Al Del Greco’s 52-yard field goal hit the middle of the crossbar on the game’s last play.

“They say things always find a way to even out,” Del Greco said. “If that’s true, then we should be in for some good luck for the next couple of years.”

To say that the Oilers had their chances for an upset would be an understatement.

After spotting the Raiders a 7-0 lead early in the game, Houston bounced back with several big defensive plays after a fumble by quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver and botched drives to keep the score close in the first half.

The Oilers had key second-quarter interceptions by Darryll Lewis and Marcus Robertson to kill Raider drives and stay within a touchdown. Then, Houston tied the score with 26 seconds remaining before halftime when Tolliver scrambled for a six-yard touchdown run to complete an eight-play, 82-yard drive.

“We were in trouble early when we had a chance to go down by two touchdowns,” Houston Coach Jack Pardee said. “We were able to make some plays and keep the thing close and that was what we were hoping to do coming in.”

The Oilers’ luck continued to improve in the second half when they held the Raiders to one third-quarter field goal despite turning the ball over on two Tolliver fumbles inside their 25-yard line in a span of two minutes.

They did it by forcing two turnovers of their own as the Oilers remained close until 9:54 to play. That’s when Houston took the ball on a 15-play, 86-yard drive that was capped with a seven-yard touchdown pass play from Tolliver to Jeffires to give the Oilers a 14-10 lead with 3:19 left.

For most NFL teams, a lead that late in a game would be a positive. However, not with the bad-luck Oilers.

“We knew exactly what they would try to do and that would be to get the ball into Tim Brown and Harvey Williams’ hands,” Houston cornerback Chris Dishman said. “But we could not come up with the plays to stop them.”

After Jeffires’ touchdown, the Raiders needed only six plays and 81 seconds to drive to the Oilers’ 11-yard line. On the next play, the Oilers came up inches short again.

With quarterback Jeff Hostetler flushed out of the pocket running to his right, Dishman saw Brown breaking free in the back of the end zone.

“I watched Hostetler’s eyes and he was looking at Tim all the way,” Dishman said. “It was my fault because I ran over to make the play but instead, I knocked (teammate) Lewis off his coverage.”

That was all Brown needed as he grabbed the game-winning touchdown pass with 1:50 remaining.

“That play sums up our season right there,” Lewis said. “We had our opportunities but we just didn’t make the plays when we should have.”

To Houston’s credit, it did not give up. With Tolliver directing an offense that was handed to him by injured starter Cody Carlson, the Oilers converted on two fourth-down plays to move within distance for Del Greco’s final kick.

“In my 11 years in the league, I’ve never had the ball hit the crossbar and bounce back like it did,” he said. “That was until this year. It’s now happened twice to me. Once in Pittsburgh and once here.

“It would be better for me to live with if I had just kicked the ball poorly, but that wasn’t the case. I kicked the ball real good right down the middle. I got a lot of foot on it but it was just a couple of inches short.”

With no real chance for the playoffs, how will the Oilers approach their final eight games of the season?

“The only thing I know is to keep on fighting,” Jeffires said. “Of course, this season has not gone like we all had hoped and this is a far cry from when we were winning when we had (quarterback Warren Moon). But this team has pride and I’m sure that we’ll keep on trying.”