These Raiders Seem to Have Made Commitment to Excitement

Just when you think the Raiders are about to sink into the quicksand of mediocrity in the middle of the AFC pack, they up and surprise you.

Like Sunday, when the Raiders returned us all to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Or was it the year before yesteryear?

Anyway, it was showtime at the Coliseum Sunday, where the Raiders returned to the land of the living, playoff-contention wise.

Let’s check in with the heroes down in the locker room.

There’s Marcus Allen, who ran for 173 yards, including a cute 61-yard touchdown scoot that looked like something drawn in the dirt in the huddle. OK, Marcus, you start left. But the whole Denver defense will be there waiting for you, so you stop, like you’re lost. Then cut back right, through the line, pick up a key block from one of the zebras, and run to paydirt, OK?

Linebacker Karl Mecklenburg had a clear shot at Allen five yards into the run, until Karl collided with umpire Rick Stuart.

Let’s hear no more talk about a league conspiracy against the Raiders, please, at least not for another week.

That’s Marcus at his locker, wearing a campy sweater and waving a loaded toothbrush.

“This is a big step and a big confidence-builder for everyone,” Allen says.

It’s a cliche, but true. This is the best team the Raiders have beaten in two months, maybe all season.

Denver was a team on a mission--to introduce itself to Hollywood. The Broncos feel they have a lot of talented players who go unrecognized and unsung. Most of the Denver players think the Pro Bowl is something decided by spares and strikes.

They’re looking for respect in the big media centers, such as Los Angeles. This is a very tough group of players, a grizzled bunch of guys right out of the Rocky Mountains. Ain’t no downstream team.

But Sunday the Broncos’ semi-famous defense couldn’t stop people such as Marcus Allen.

Tell us about the big run, Marcus. When you saw the Denver defense stacked on the left, waiting for you, did you stop and say, “Oh, bleep”?

“That’s exactly what I said,” says Marcus. “Oh, bleep.”

Someone asks Marcus if any coach ever told him he wasn’t supposed to make up his own running routes.

“At USC, coach (John) Robinson and (John) Johnson allowed me to do what I wanted to do,” he says. “They never told me anything I couldn’t do.”

As a result, there’s nothing he can’t do. As Howie Long says, Marcus is the heart and soul of the team.

But what about Marc Wilson, the quarterback who can’t decide whether he wants to be the hero or the goat, so he alternates roles on each series.

Sunday Wilson hit 10 different receivers, seven of them Raiders. He also threw a TD pass, jogged in for a TD score himself, and threw two huge completions near the end of the game to set up Chris Bahr’s two field-goal attempts, the second of which won the game.

“The first quarter was a disaster,” Wilson says. “I was wondering if I was going to complete a pass the whole game. I felt if I could just get started, we’d be fine.”

He did and they were. The big play turned out to be a little sideline pass to Dokie Williams, in overtime, that Williams turned into a 42-yard Bronco buster.

Dokie is a modest fellow who was once almost a star at UCLA. Sunday he made the play, the 42-yard sideline sprint after taking a 10-yard pass, shaking off five or six Broncos along the way.

“It was just a matter of them knocking each other off, and I just managed to get out of the way,” Dokie says. “One guy had a good grip on me, another (Denver) guy came and knocked him off me.”

Don’t listen to Dokie. It was a fabulous play. Ask Marcus.

Marcus says, “I told Dokie, ‘A lot of guys can make that play in the first quarter, but when the game is on the line, to make a play like that is very, very impressive.’ ”

It’s the kind of play the Raiders made when they were winning Super Bowls and putting on a show every week.

Sunday was a mini Super Bowl for the Raiders, and they treated it like one. . . . Bahr recovered his own onside kick. . . . Coach Tom Flores disdained a sure field goal on fourth-and-one at the Bronco five-yard line early in the second half and wound up with a touchdown. . . . Jeff Barnes blocked a touchdown-celebration spike by Denver’s Clarence Kay. Accidentally, perhaps, but so what.

Injured Lyle Alzado, the team’s chief image maker, prowled the sidelines wearing a black silk jacket with a Warner Brothers logo on the back. . . . A fan knocked the head off an effigy of Elway. . . . Lester Hayes picked up three fouls and an Academy Award for best dramatic performance following a dropped interception that could have been a touchdown. . . . Jesse Hester burned the entire Denver secondary deep. So what if he dropped the pass?

Yea, it was showtime at the Coliseum. Even the gutty Raiderettes braved the rain and cold to cheer their team. The Raiderettes bill themselves modestly as Football’s Fabulous Females.

And Sunday the Raiders took us back to the time when they were Football’s Fabulous Males. Sunday they were the most entertaining team in football.

What about the Chicago Bears, you say?

The Chicago whos ?