Silver-and-Black Playoff Magic May Fail, but McElroy Still Has His Pride and a Good Season

Oh it’s a long, long time from July to December, but vacation is coming unless the Big Raider in the Sky intervenes in a big way and quickly.

Vann McElroy was asked Wednesday if he had any show-biz projects coming up for the off-season. Since the Raiders are alleged to have gone Hollywood, all of them get asked about it these days, down to the most down-home of them, this bearded urchin from Uvalde, Tex., nattily outfitted in a T-shirt and baseball cap.

“Yeah,” McElroy said. “A sitcom. Home for Christmas.”

It’s silver-and-black humor time among the Raiders, who need a victory, plus a Seahawk loss, plus a Bengal loss, plus a Chief loss. Surprise, they aren’t holding their breath.

“I think the team has accepted the fact that the Raiders are not going to be in the playoffs this year,” McElroy said. “I know I have.

“I’d rather win this game (against the Colts Sunday) to show the Raiders have a lot of pride, rather than to get in the playoffs.

“In my opinion, we don’t deserve to be in the playoffs. If we got there, great, but we’ve talked about that for the last three weeks. We’d say, ‘Well, we’ve got to win this game.’ Then we’d lose it, and it’d be, ‘Well guys, you’re not going to believe this but we’ve still got a chance for the playoffs.’ ”

The chances are down to the 25-1 range. How could it have happened?

Try a key breakdown here and there, like in McElroy’s own secondary. Gossip notwithstanding--its reputation had become such that it was never supposed to get beaten--it has been a big Raider strength through the ‘80s, right up until November, 1986. Then it sagged.

“I thought we were having one of the best years we’ve had for a while,” McElroy said. “And then, in the second half of the San Diego game, things fell out a little bit. But that’s always been the case in San Diego. It didn’t really bother me.

“Then it started a little bit in the Philadelphia game. We shut them out the first half except for one big play (the Eagles were on their fourth possession and were in negative yardage until a 62-yard touchdown pass to Mike Quick, whom Lester Hayes had tried to jam at the line and missed). The second half came along, and they started throwing the ball and making things happen. We just couldn’t shut them down.

“This past week, I thought we got it back. The guy (Kansas City’s Bill Kenney) had 177 yards, and they threw the ball a lot. We totally shut them down in the second half.”

Sandwiched in there was the beating they took in Seattle in which Hayes, shot up for a foot injury, broke a bone in that foot. Haynes had his own injury problems earlier, trying to play after taking an injection in Kansas City and aggravating a calf injury that forced him out again. Al Davis was reportedly unhappy that Haynes stayed out.

Lost in it all was McElroy’s fine season at free safety. His seven interceptions put him among the league leaders, and his tackles were an inspiration to his teammates. When he leveled the Chargers’ Lionel James on a crossing pattern in September, in the game that ended the Raiders’ 0-3 start, the entire Raider linebacker crew ran back to high-five him.

For recognition, that will have to do. McElroy, a Pro Bowl player in 1983-84, his first two years as a starter, missed this time.

“I was disappointed,” he said. “It did hurt. You go into a season, you have some goals. First off, I wanted to make the playoffs. And I wanted to get back some of the things that I felt were mine.

“Last year was really frustrating. I was hurting (a hamstring pull), in and out. This year I was totally healthy. I’m not the kind of guy who sits around and talks about himself but I thought I played good, hard football. It helps to know you’ve played your best. The disheartening thing is it’s all for naught. No playoffs, team-wise or personal.”

Not that he won’t have something tangible to remember the season by. In Houston he was hit in the throat by Ernest Givins’ helmet, and he has been croaking his words out ever since.

The injury was almost lost with everything else. McElroy’s name never appeared on the injured list. When it was discovered, McElroy made a joke out of it, claiming that with his new throaty voice, he finally sounded like a football player.

And may forever.

“It broke my esophagus in two places and paralyzed my voice box,’ McElroy said. “That’s why my voice is like it is now and they don’t know if it’ll come back.

“That particular doctor told me not to play the next week. It’s kinda confusing. You see the specialist and he says not to play. You see everybody else and they say no problem.

“I just said I was going to go out and bust my butt every game. I just put it out of my mind. Someone is watching over me.”

Whoever it is didn’t mind a little realignment of his features, however. McElroy’s Adam’s apple, which used to be in the middle of his throat, now sits off to the left.

So if in his 26th and not his happiest year, he started to sound like a football player, it was overdue. He’d been one longer than that. For pride, that will have to do, for the moment.

Raider Notes The Raiders honored nose tackle Bill Pickel, whose 11 1/2 sacks were high in the National Football League among interior linemen, and center Don Mosebar, their top lineman by a vote of teammates, at a banquet Tuesday night. . . . Further tests found bone chips in Dokie Williams’ left knee, and he will undergo arthroscopic surgery today. He joins Lester Hayes and Pickel, who have gone on injured reserve in the last two weeks. . . . To take Pickel’s spot on the roster, the Raiders signed veteran Elvis Franks for the third time this season. They’ve also waived him three times.