‘Complete’ Raiders Have the Look of a Contender

Some AFC people are starting to promote the Oakland Raiders as the NFL’s next Super Bowl champion, although, confidentially, they say that before they’re surer of that, they want to see if Raider quarterback Rich Gannon can throw the long ball Monday night against Denver.

The Broncos have usually won the two-game Raider series lately by playing Gannon not to throw deep. Their focus has been instead on the Oakland short game while their defensive players stay just within but not closer than shouting distance of a big play--which is an Oakland rarity.

Again in Philadelphia last Sunday, Gannon directed one of the NFL’s best-designed and most effective short-pass offensives since the days of Joe Montana to lead the 5-1 Raiders past the Eagles, 20-10. It’s not that the wiry, wily Oakland quarterback can’t get the long one out there. But when, now and then, he does lay it up, you’d swear the football will never come down.

The Broncos, aware of the half-speed nature of an Oakland long-pass play, shorten in on Gannon in Raider games and cut off all the near threats, leaving such artistic catchers as Tim Brown and Jerry Rice with few places to run. For Oakland, that’s the next problem, possibly their only problem.

Winnable Schedule

A complete team this year except for the absence of a bomb threat, the Raiders, without scoring much, dominated East-leading Philadelphia all day Sunday.

Knowing that to seize control of the game, they would have to sustain a long, long drive or two, they did.

Knowing they’d have to convert a bunch of third-down plays, the Raiders also did that, parlaying Gannon’s flips with halfback Charlie Garner’s dashes on Coach Jon Gruden’s calls

Knowing they have a winnable schedule from here in if they could get through Philadelphia and Denver, they took care of the Philadelphia business vigilantly with workmanlike defensive and special-team performances that matched their steady offensive effort.

The Raiders’ goal is to win another Super Bowl for owner Al Davis--his fourth--and if they’re ever going to do it in this generation, this is the year. For their young coach has an old team: Gruden’s nucleus leaders, Brown, Gannon and Rice, can count 13, 14 and 16 years in the league, respectively.

Moreover, the young coach is expected to take off shortly for Notre Dame, which reportedly is working out an all-time financial package for Gruden that might not quite match his NFL covenant while leaving him as comfortable as a determined college administration can manage. Meanwhile, if Gruden’s old quarterback can work his way into the red zone Monday night, things should be all right for the 2001 Raiders. Short stuff is their specialty.

Costly Injury

Their seventh turnover beat the Rams Sunday, 34-31. Because turnovers are overrated as a cause for losing, the Rams could with ease survive their first six interceptions and fumbles this time--as the San Francisco 49ers used to in the age of Montana and Steve Young--but the clock ran out on them after No. 7.

With only four minutes left, the sparkling Ram offensive team, shrugging off six turnovers, was at the New Orleans 10-yard line and going in for the winning points in what was then a 31-31 game when young halfback Trung Canidate fumbled again--ending Warner’s last drive from midfield.

The Saints picked up the fumbled ball where Canidate left it and ran it all the way out to the Ram 36-yard line, close enough to assure the winning field goal of a strange, wild St. Louis afternoon.

So the Rams lost because they had lost running back Marshall Faulk to injury. His replacement, Canidate, is likewise a superb runner and receiver who, however, has yet to master the art of protecting the ball from the defensive people who keep trying to strip it away.

He knows how to do it. He talked about that before the game. But it’s something that can be really learned only in the heat of combat--as Faulk had to learn it long ago.

Thus, the most influential plays of the Ram-Saint game weren’t quarterback Kurt Warner’s four interceptions--for passing teams all throw interceptions--but the Rams’ three fumbles, two by Canidate. (A fourth fumble, technically their eighth turnover, came on the final kickoff play as time ran out.)

Big-Play Start

The Ram offense, as designed by Coach Mike Martz, started 14-0 against New Orleans on his team’s fifth big play of the game’s first five minutes. Alone in the NFL, Martz uses conventional runs to set up unconventional big plays. For instance, with a 7-0 lead and a first down in the Saints’ red zone, Martz called two Canidate plunges to set up the scoring play he had in mind all along, a tight end-around by Ernie Conwell on third and goal as the Saints deployed to stop either Canidate or Warner.

Every NFL team could make moves like that, but only Martz’s team does. Every team fumbles, too, and Canidate’s first fumble put an end to the Rams’ early show for another week.

Still, if it hadn’t been for their 24-6 first half, the Rams wouldn’t have been in the game at the end.

The Saint who helped Canidate change the momentum was young passer Aaron Brooks, who, on the second play of the second half, whipped a long one to wide receiver Joe Horn on the 46-yard scoring play that got New Orleans going. With two good catchers, Horn and Willie Jackson, Brooks could be regularly doing what Warner does each week except for one thing: The New Orleans coach, Jim Haslett, a good one, would rather run the ball with Ricky Williams. So the 4-2 Saints have lost to two teams they should have beaten, Atlanta and the New York Giants.

Saints Can Pass

Most losing coaches use turnovers as an alibi because, in their view, fumbles and interceptions take them off the hook for their own inadequacies. But there are two exceptions to this unwritten and untrue rule, Martz and Bill Walsh, who have rarely used such plays as an excuse.

In fact, when Walsh was putting together San Francisco’s five-time NFL champions, he won his biggest non-Super Bowl game on a day when the 49ers lost six turnovers. That 1981 game, still identified by two words, “The Catch,” was won over Dallas, 28-27, on Montana’s last-second touchdown pass after he had thrown three interceptions and lost one of the 49ers’ three fumbles.

Throughout their careers, the two most famous 49er quarterbacks, Montana and Young, both threw some interceptions, for that’s what passing teams do. But as the field leaders of the team that first showed the NFL that the most certain way to win football games is with a lively pass offense, they also threw some touchdowns.

In time, Saint James Haslett might well learn that in New Orleans, as, before him, such coaches as Martz, Walsh, Sid Gillman and Clark Shaughnessy learned. The Saints have the first required tool, a sound passer, Aaron Brooks. To beat Martz in three of four engagements, it has been necessary for Haslett to let Brooks throw. Clearly, the Saints could even win some Super Bowls that way.

A New Payton

The Cincinnati Bengals, suddenly a 4-3 team this season, are harboring, for the fifth year in a row, a running back who might be not only the best in the league but one of the two or three best since Walter Payton.

He is Corey Dillon, of course, who started with a 96-yard touchdown run Sunday in Pontiac, Mich., and finished with 202 yards rushing and receiving as the Bengals let the Detroit Lions down with their sixth straight defeat, 31-27.

The comparison with a former NFL standout is meaningful because Dillon, like Chicago Bears Hall of Fame runner Payton, has labored on losing teams for most of his NFL career. Since arriving from the University of Washington as a second draft choice in 1987, Dillon has done some amazing things for Cincinnati while proving, again, that one man can’t influence the course of an 11-man sport.

Payton demonstrated this almost annually in his Chicago years (1975-87). Though over the hill in 1986, the winter the Bears won the Super Bowl, Payton, long before that season, was up there with the most effective running backs the league has had.

The most remarkable thing about him was that he could gain so many yards so often on a usually mediocre team that normally had no other threat to take the pressure off him. The same was later true of Hall of Fame running back O.J. Simpson in his Buffalo seasons (1969-77). And it has also been true of Dillon.

When contemplating the achievements of NFL running backs, and comparing the better ones, one category is perhaps the most meaningful: What kind of team did the guy play on? That’s one reason why, down the road, the Hall of Fame people should give a lot of thought to Corey Dillon.