A Jekyll-and-Hyde Outfit Gets Kick Out of Ending

“I don’t care if it hits the upright or if a bird falls out of the sky,” Raider tackle Chester McGlockton said of the football that could have been the downfall of the Raiders, had a kicker from Seattle kicked it straighter.

Escaping by the hairs of their chinny-chin-chins, the Raiders ran their winning streak to three, defeating the Seahawks, 17-16, Sunday night in a game at the Kingdome that they were very lucky to win.

When a perfect spiral from Hostetler went right through Andrew Glover’s fingertips on third down with scarcely two minutes to play, forcing the Raiders to punt, even Al Davis sat in the press box pounding his fist and saying, “That was the game! That was the . . . game!” seven or eight times. Meaning they could have locked it up right there.

But, as Al’s coach, Art Shell, said afterward, “This team doesn’t do anything easy.”

Fifteen games into a 16-game season, we still don’t have a clue whether the Raiders are ready for the playoffs or for layoffs.

Where do they go from here? They go home, where this Saturday’s date with Joe Montana and the Kansas City Chiefs could be the last game the Raiders play this season . . . or the last NFL game anybody ever plays at the quakey-breaky Coliseum . . . or the game that catapults the Raiders into the playoffs with a mean little four-game winning streak.

Most of us have given up trying to outguess the Raiders. They might very well open and close the season against the San Francisco 49ers, beginning on a Monday night and ending at the Super Bowl. Or they might go belly-up against the Chiefs, who have beaten them eight of the last nine times they met.

This is such a schizoid team. Good one minute, evil the next. Sane one week, nuts the next. Sharp, dull, strong, weak. Would the real Raiders please step up?

Here they were, playing a Seattle team riddled by injury.

Did they dominate? For a while they did, taking the crowd out of the game. Raider fans made more noise than Seahawk fans during the opening quarter. They got to cheer a beautiful pass from Jeff Hostetler to Rocket Ismail and a slashing run by Harvey Williams into the end zone on the next play.

This was the only appearance on artificial turf for the Raiders all season, and it appeared they were going to enjoy it.

But after that, they dominated nothing. Seattle’s defense came breathing down Hostetler’s neck on every play, pushing L.A.’s offensive line all over the dome.

Hostetler became so frustrated that he again hauled out his new favorite move--throwing the football at an opponent. And offensive tackle Robert Jenkins became even more frustrated, throwing punches at a Seahawk who came steamrolling right over him on the way to sacking Hostetler.

The foolhardy Jenkins got himself ejected from the game. Which put the Raiders in a serious hole, because offensive tackle Gerald Perry already had been knocked out of the game, suffering a head injury on a play that later Perry could not even remember. “I was all about giving it a try,” Perry said, “but doctors didn’t feel we should chance it.”

That meant the Raiders had to move Kevin Gogan to an unfamiliar side and summon 38-year-old Max Montoya.

“Little difficult,” Montoya said, laughing, “when you get tossed in there in the middle of the third quarter, stiff as a banjo string.”

As if the offense wasn’t having enough problems, the defense had one also. His name was Chris Warren and he kept running right through the Raiders, even though he supposedly still had two cracked ribs from an automobile crash.

“That guy ran like he has extra ribs,” admiring Raider lineman Anthony Smith said.

“His ribs aren’t broken, man,” Nolan Harrison said.

“Think you’re right,” Smith told his teammate. “I want to find out who Chris Warren’s P.R. guy is, so I can hire him.”

In all honesty, the Raiders played another splendid game on defense, once again holding their opponents to a single touchdown. But there was one serious lapse, late in the game, that nearly cost them their whole night’s work.

Fourth down, Seattle buried deep in its own end, and somehow Kelvin Martin slipped free in the secondary for a 19-yard catch to keep the drive alive. There wouldn’t even have been any drive had Glover snagged that third-down flip from Hostetler, who had taken pains to aim carefully in a tricky situation.

McGlockton couldn’t believe it when Martin got loose. All night long, big Chester had been tackling everyone and everything in sight. He truly is turning into one of the great defensive players in the game. But when Martin caught that pass, nothing felt great.

“Makes you want to cry, just cry,” McGlockton said. “One play, one damn play, the guy pops one.”

About all the Raiders did thereafter was backpedal, until finally John Kasay lined up the field goal to win the game.

Asked what he was thinking about at that moment, McGlockton said, “Him missing.”

Nobody in the Kingdome jumped higher than Glover on the final kick, trying his best to redeem himself for that dropped pass. He didn’t block it, but like his teammates, he did get to see it sail wide to the right.

“The Raiders were real tired at the end,” Seattle Coach Tom Flores said. “Thought we had ‘em.”

They were ready to be had.

But McGlockton rushed to the Raiders’ defense, saying, “Tell you what, people have been writing us off all year, saying we ain’t this and we ain’t that. But we’re still here. We ain’t going away until we’re ready to go away.”