Perspective on a Screen Pass

By Tom Callahan

Best Raiders team either Al Davis or the Redskins ever saw

IRATE REDSKINS FAN KICKS IN TV SCREEN. According to the story under that headline in the Washington Post, he also fired a handgun into the furniture. His family fled. Police surrounded the house. After a siege, officers noticed all the lights had been turned off and rushed inside. "He was sound asleep in bed," said a police spokesman. "It could very well be that he never knew we were out there."

The Washington fans took last week's 38-9 Super Bowl loss harder than the players, who found comfort in knowing that the Los Angeles Raiders had at least killed them. "We would be much more depressed if we had lost on the last play," Safety Mark Murphy said immediately afterward. "We're embarrassed now, but we had enough time in the second half to put it all in perspective."

At the Super Bowl, gains in perspective represent the toughest yardage of all. Lining up in a prevent defense for 18 years, perspective has been conceding huge slabs of ground to outlandishness. During the early days of Roman numerals, President Nixon was content to recommend flanker-reverse plays. Now President Reagan appears on a split screen to express his nuclear reaction to a 191-yd. performance by Raiders Running Back Marcus Allen. Because of the Super Bowl, the stock market in New York goes down, some bookies in Las Vegas go broke and a water main in Salt Lake City goes blooey (when too many toilets were flushed at once). In Chicago, a Raiders fan stabbed by a neighboring Redskins fan refuses to leave his TV set until the game is decided.

Such are the forces at work here.

Still, by Super Bowl standards, this one did have a modicum of reason. Like the man who shot up his own home and then blithely retired for the evening, every loud noise seemed to have its calm counterpoint. "Just win, baby!" Al Davis, the pirate king, repeated a rallying cry to his Raiders as he stepped up to accept the trophy from Archenemy Pete Rozelle. All week the National Football League commissioner had been asked how he would feel presenting silverware to a man who keeps suing the league, and Rozelle bravely replied, "I've said repeatedly over the years--in court and out--that I have tremendous admiration for his work in putting together a football team."

Davis declared this particular Raiders team to be the best of many fine ones, modestly rating it among "the greatest teams of all time to play any professional sport." And he nominated Coach Tom Flores as this year's genius. But Tom just smiled and said, "Einstein was a genius; I'm a football coach." To Flores, football is not mysterious. "The Raiders play attack football: with the bomb or the threat of the bomb on offense, with man-to-man coverage on defense. We draft and trade for toughness."

As the game was winding down, the coach could look away from the field for a moment to the men on the sidelines. "Here was big, tough, mean, nasty, vicious Lyle Alzado with tears in his eyes," Flores said. "I had to turn away or I would have cried too." After 13 seasons on defensive lines all around the league, it had suddenly struck Alzado, 34, that he was a world champion. "It's the ultimate in sports," he said. "There's nowhere else to go. This might be my last game."

Had the Redskins won, Washington Fullback John Riggins, 34, said, he was thinking of quitting too. But Riggins is not inclined to go out on a fourth-and-one play for no gain. Matt Millen, the Raiders linebacker, said, "We wanted to give him just one way to go all day: sideways. Their center, [Jeff] Bostic, is a good player, but [Nose Tackle] Reggie Kinlaw ate him up. All we did was herd everything to Reggie. That was the whole game."

To others, possibly including Washington Quarterback Joe Theismann, the whole game seemed to be Cornerbacks Mike Haynes and Lester Hayes. Referring to Washington's pass-catching cartoon characters, Hayes pronounced that "Smurfs just can't function without breathing room." When the Raiders knew Theismann had to pass, he was obliged to throw quickly. But Hayes and Haynes do not permit that. The Redskins, the freest scorers in N.F.L. history, were reduced to the likes of a flea-flicker that produced 1 yd. and, with 12 sec. left in the first half, a screen pass that Reserve Linebacker Jack Squirek intercepted at the 5-yd. line and lugged two steps for a touchdown.

Not since Cypriot Place Kicker Garo Yepremian's attempted pass for Miami in Super Bowl VII could anyone recall a play so indiscreet. "I didn't like the idea of falling on the ball," explained Coach Joe Gibbs, who after all is not Einstein. Theis mann said, "It just proves I'm human." After Washington won Super Bowl XVII, or so the story goes, Theismann happened upon retired Dallas Quarterback Roger Staubach, who had won and lost Super Bowls.

"Hey Roger, what's it like to lose the Super Bowl?" Joe wondered. "Oh, I don't know," Staubach replied.

"But I can tell you what it's like to win the Heisman Trophy." Thirteen years later, Theismann is still finishing second to Raiders Quarterback Jim Plunkett, who was in splendid tune with his receivers, particularly Cliff Branch.

Some 2,100 working-media credentials were is sued for the game, but most of the pre-game attention to Illinois Alumnus Squirek came from the Daily Illini. Special-Teams Player Derrick Jensen, who smothered the Redskins' first punt and collapsed on it for a touchdown, had been similarly ignored. This delighted the Raiders' Howie Long, a defensive end from Villanova, the first player heard to call for a cutback on Super Bowl build ups. "Aren't all those stories wearing everybody down?" he sighed.

Long and Millen guarded each other's perspective. Millen was annoyed with Washington's Dexter Manley over some earlier insult. "Did that guy graduate?" Millen asked. "No, no, let's not say that," Long cautioned. "Dexter is a nice guy. He has a mother too." At the mention of the Redskins' famed offensive line, Long said, "I never had Hog before. Tasted good." But Millen said, "Come on, let's try to keep some perspective here." It is easier to throw a screen pass on the 12-yd. line.

-- By Tom Callahan