First in Line for Raider Honors

Who has the best pass-completion record on the Raiders, would you guess? Jeff Hostetler? Not even close. Daryle Lamonica? Jim Plunkett? Ken Stabler? Nah. In a sense, they were receivers.

The most proficient passer in Raider history--in terms of numbers, not yardage--might be a guy you never heard of. It might be Jim Otto, “Old Double-Oh,” his teammates called him, but as far as the public at large was concerned, that might as well have been double zero.

It might have been Double D. That would be Dave Dalby. Jim Otto played in 210 consecutive games, D.D. in 205.

Or, it just might be Don Mosebar.

“Who?” you ask.

Well, look at it this way: The Raiders have had, probably, 20 quarterbacks in their history. They’ve had twice as many running backs and even more wide receivers.

They have had three centers--Otto, Dalby and now Mosebar.

A quarterback might get to handle the ball 70 times on a good day. He can throw a few incompletions. A center has 70 too. He cannot afford an incompletion.

He is like the catcher in baseball. The game begins and continues through him. He cannot make a mistake, miss a signal, bobble a ball, miss a block. But, even more than a catcher in baseball, the center is overlooked. Like a lot of offensive linemen, his neighbors probably think he spies for a living. Or he’s a drug lord.

But Mosebar has not only played in 170 games for the Raiders, he has started every one since 1989, 87 consecutive games.

Good centers last a long time in this game for the same reason diamond cutters do. As precision craftsmen, they’re in short supply.

To be sure, their main contribution at the start is the four-inch pass. But this is to be delivered with about one ton of malevolent nose guards and linebackers standing over their heads and salivating at the prospect of grinding them into the ground once the ball has been delivered.

In the old days of the legal head slap, you could always tell the center. He was the one with the wound on the bridge of his nose, often open and bleeding, where the opposing lineman had slammed his helmet down on the protruding bump.

Like every other offensive lineman, the center’s job is to keep this mass of hostile muscle off the quarterback and out of the backfield. His job, though, is a little more complicated because he has to do something else first, snap the ball. And you don’t protect the quarterback by brute strength because everybody in that pileup is as big and strong as you.

You do it by turning a chess game into a blood sport. You do it by shutting off lanes to the quarterback. Your biggest nightmare, next to the bobbled handoff, is the bobbled quarterback.

“It is a highly skilled position,” says Mosebar. “Every other position, you can take a reckless rush, the risk route. We have to know exactly where to take a step, where to put a hand, how to make the play work. You have to rehearse it over and over.”

An offensive line is like a chorus line. The individual effort has to result in teamwork that makes it appear to be a single entity. One guy out of step and the effect--the play--is lost. It is a place for the most disciplined individuals, Good Soldier Schweiks, not the cavalry officers, kamikaze pilots or the urban guerrilla types.

You obey orders. Your job is to neutralize the high-risk blitzers, the charging linebackers, the speedy safeties. You can’t get mad. You can’t even get excited. You are a mechanic.

It’s for sure, you’re not a star. Running backs become Galloping Ghosts and Four Horsemen. Quarterbacks become Slinging Sams and Golden Boys. Even defensive linemen become the Steel Curtain.

You become “Hey, you!” or just “No. 72.” You never get the game ball, the cover of Sports Illustrated. You don’t sell shoes or soft drinks. You just stand there and keep the raging linebackers off the guys who do.

You don’t have to be fast. You don’t have to run the 40 in 4.3. But you have to be as quick as a puff adder for those first few yards. You get your position down to science. You are the accompanist, not the soloist.

Don Mosebar, “Mose” to his teammates, is such an integral part of the Raiders, it’s hard to believe they thought they had made a calamitous mistake when they drafted him No. 1 in 1983.

An imposing physical specimen at 6-feet-6 and 295 pounds, he had been a key factor in turning USC into Tailback U. with his aggressive blocking, tearing open paths for Charles White and Marcus Allen.

But, a week before the draft, Mosebar had to undergo back surgery, unbeknown to the Raiders. Al Davis needed smelling salts when he found out, but the fact is, Don Mosebar was one of the best No. 1 picks in pro football history.

“I played in all the games that year,” he said as he sat in a locker room at Anaheim the other day after the team’s key victory over the Rams. “So how bad could it be?”

He leads the Raider charge and has for nearly 11 seasons now. Of course, the first duty of an offensive lineman is not to get noticed. If he gets noticed, it’s usually because he didn’t pick up the blitz or got bowled over by the defensive tackle or, worst of all, misread the count and bungled the snap.

So far, Don Mosebar, ol’ Mose, has done a fantastic job. Consider this: Fran Tarkenton completed, what, 3,686 passes in his career? Mose is probably working on his 12,386th. Without an interception.

The least they could do is honor him with a nickname. The Secretary of the Interior would be nice. He’s just as anonymous as the real one. For a guy who has out-completed Frantic Francis, that’s pretty dedicated.