ANALYSIS : Shanahan Takes Heat, Raiders Warm Up : In Transition Year, New Coach Is Surviving Al Davis’ Second-Guessing

The sun is peeking out from behind the clouds over silver and blackdom, but what a long, dark storm it has been.

After going 8-8 and 5-10, the list of Raiders who didn’t make it could stretch from here to Canton. One coach left, and the new one has learned something about scrutiny, too.

Did someone say there’s a standard 10-year tenure for Raider coaches? That Al Davis has never fired one? Maybe so, but he’s looked them over pretty closely, up to and especially including Mike Shanahan, whose tenure is now officially 11 weeks.

Make that 11 weeks he’ll never forget.

Davis, according to a variety of sources, has called around the league to ask about Shanahan’s philosophies.

He has second-guessed Shanahan loudly during games, and after the loss in New Orleans, the Raiders’ managing general partner hinted publicly at his displeasure.

After the loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, Davis held a meeting with the coaches and threatened to fire two defensive assistants.

Before the victory over the San Francisco 49ers, he allowed as how the Raiders “have a chance down the road to grow . . . and not to grow.”

And the most amazing thing of all?

This isn’t very different from other Raider times of trouble.

Insofar as rationality can be said to be working here, Davis may have been second-guessing himself . . . and third-guessing himself.

Far from the popular image of the maverick mastermind who is always a step ahead of the game, Davis is a suffering artist: obsessive, relentless, tormented--and tormenting.

In the outside world, there’s a management technique called creative tension, but his organization is beyond that. Try creative flagellation.

This isn’t an organization, but a way of life. No one exults as much in victory as this self-styled “Professional Sport’s Winningest Team,” or gets as low in defeat. This is Davis’ peculiar genius, and his burden: The Raiders always come back because nothing else is tolerable.

But this time there were two new elements:

--Until 1986-87, Davis had never gone two seasons without a winning record.

--Until 1988, he had never gone outside the organization for a coach.

Shanahan, the boy wonder from Denver--that’s longtime division rival Denver--arrived bearing a host of departures from standard Raider philosophy.

Thus began the new era.

YEARS OF HUBRIS, DAYS OF RAGE

In the opener, a dull victory over the San Diego Chargers with Steve Beuerlein playing his first pro game, Davis was reportedly angry that the Raiders didn’t throw long at all.

In Game 4 at Denver, he fumed in the press box as the Raiders fell behind, 24-0. He reacted angrily at the play-calling during their comeback victory, snarling such things as, “He doesn’t know . . . about football!”

After Game 5, a blowout loss to the Bengals, Davis ordered a Sunday night meeting with the coaches and threatened firings. Everyone, including defensive coordinator Charlie Sumner, assumed that Sumner was one of the men Davis meant. Shanahan reportedly interceded on Sumner’s behalf. No one was fired.

Before Game 7, a Raider victory in Kansas City, Davis told NBC’s Joe Namath, a longtime favorite, that he had gone outside the organization to discuss what they were doing philosophically.

Was Davis having second thoughts about hiring Shanahan?

“I don’t know,” Namath said from New York shortly thereafter. “But I bet he does.

“I think it’s at an early stage. The answers are not available now.”

After Game 8, a loss in New Orleans, Davis told the Herald-Examiner’s Bud Furillo: “I’ll get it turned around. Write it again, how I feel about the coaches.”

The Raiders haven’t lost since, so he probably feels better about the coaches.

Says an NFC personnel man whom Davis talked to: “If Al was questioning anything, it’s that he’s gone outside the organization for the first time. He’s just not sure he wants the Raiders to play that way.

“I think he’s having a little trouble communicating. Al uses that word a lot, he can’t communicate. They’re not on the same wavelength.

“But I think he likes Shanahan a lot. I think Al feels he’s a good football coach. I think Al’s problem, he’s had a hard time adjusting to the new system.”

And Davis’ railing in the press box?

“That’s just emotion. Al was bitching and moaning when John Madden was the coach. He’s complained about coaches as long as he’s been in the business.”

THE NEW GUY

How much of this did Shanahan deserve?

Let’s put it this way:

--He had a new staff and was overhauling the offense. That alone can take half a season.

In Joe Gibbs’ first season, the Redskins started 0-5, finished 8-8, then won the Super Bowl a year later.

When Don Coryell took over the Chargers during the ’78 season, they went 1-3 in the midst of a 2-6 start, finished 9-7, then won the AFC West title the next 3 years.

--Shanahan was taking over a 5-10 team.

--Marc Wilson took a walk, leaving the untested Beuerlein and the since-waived Vince Evans.

--Two key defensive players, Matt Millen and Stacey Toran, held out through camp.

--Two key offensive players arrived late. Jay Schroeder came in the second week and Bo Jackson with the season almost half over. The play list had to be simplified for each.

--Jim Lachey, who’d only arrived in mid-August himself, was traded for Schroeder, meaning the offensive line that had been reassembled during camp had to be reassembled again.

--Schroeder couldn’t handle his crash course, necessitating the switch back to Beuerlein.

-- Then came the injuries.

By the second week, three-fourths of the secondary were gone. By the ninth, the Raiders were using their seventh offensive line. This was even before the losses of Marcus Allen, who came back with a broken wrist, Howie Long and Todd Christensen.

In other words, if they lost, it couldn’t fairly be laid at Shanahan’s doorstep.

Fair or not, these are the Raiders.

THE RAIDERS?

Actually, they hadn’t quite been the Raiders lately.

A couple of theories get trotted out every so often--Davis was distracted by court fights; the players went Hollywood.

The real answer may be simpler: They just ran thin on players.

Davis was surely distracted, but Raider officials were saying last season that he was back on the case, after which he embarked on more distractions, like Irwindale. After that came the strike, Davis’ decision to lure his veterans back across the picket line, continuing problems on offense and the real fall to 5-10.

Davis was a smart guy on a cold roll. He had fallen into the trap of believing that his 1984 Super Bowl champions were a dynasty, instead of merely a strong team that got hot--like the champion 49ers, Chicago Bears and New York Giants after them. He reacted slowly to problems at quarterback and the offensive line. His 1985-86 drafts were busts.

Hollywood?

Is it sabotaging anyone else around here?

It doesn’t seem to have ruined the Lakers, who are up to their eyeballs in tinsel and have to usher the glamorati out during the playoffs to hold a meeting. Or the Dodgers. Or, indeed, the Raiders, who won 1 of their 3 Super Bowl titles here, giving them a better percentage as a Los Angeles team than they had in Oakland.

By the end of the ’87 season, when Tom Flores left, the Raider reconstruction was still incomplete. Davis’ short list of coaching candidates--Dan Henning, Joe Bugel and Shanahan--got shorter. There was a welter of private comments and public corrections, but Henning and Bugel appeared to entertain changes in the offense and Davis didn’t appear enchanted.

This would have been awkward because Shanahan, whom he was leaning to, ran a different system, himself.

A source says Davis asked Shanahan only to look at everything first, rather than throwing it out for the sake of change.

But there were fundamental changes: basic blocking schemes, pass routes, looking short-to-long in passing situations, rather than long-to-short, multiple formation shifts and tricks like quarterback draws.

Davis conceded that some updating of his scheme was necessary but there’s a limit to his concessions. Put it this way: If the Raiders run a quarterback draw on third and 7, A.D. is probably gagging somewhere.

One player highlights their differences: Willie Gault.

Davis, who yearns for the here-it-comes-see-what-you-can-do-about-it long pass--”to strike terror in opponents’ hearts”--gave up next year’s No. 1 pick for Gault, a high price indeed for a team that had just finished with the sixth-worst record and had question marks all over.

In Davis’ philosophy, he could have made no finer gift to his new coach.

Then Davis watched with dismay as Shanahan only occasionally went deep to Gault.

Shanahan had new quarterbacks and ever-changing offensive lines and seemed loath to throw long, take the necessary incompletions, and put them in a hole.

In Davis’ mind, Shanahan wasn’t adapting his system to his personnel.

“In football, there are three styles of play,” Davis told the San Francisco Examiner’s Art Spander last week.

“There is scheme. That would be football the way North Carolina coaches basketball. You make the player fit. You never knew how good a Michael Jordan or a James Worthy could be in the Carolina system, did you?

“There’s a combination of scheme and matchup. The 49ers use that. Bill Walsh takes one or two great individuals and exploits them.

“Then there’s matchup. That’s what the Raiders believed. We got a Willie Gault or a Cliff Branch, put them out there. You’d better cover them.

“Our coach is young and tremendously bright. He believes in scheme. We’re changing from matchup. We’re not great. But we have a lot of excellent athletes and we have a chance down the road to grow . . . and not to grow. It’s a year of adjustment.”

There are several questions you could ask:

--Did the Bear-style blitzing defenses doom the Raider-style long-strike game? For one reason or another, it hadn’t been putting up any big numbers recently.

--Did John Elway look muted playing the system Shanahan brought with him?

Shanahan declined comment for this story. Davis did not return phone calls.

It’s a year of adjustment, all right. By any measure, Davis is coming off a terrific off-season. His draft--Tim Brown, Terry McDaniel, Scott Davis--looks fine, or better than that. He took John Clay, turned him into Lachey and turned him into Schroeder. If the Raiders aren’t there yet, they look as if they may be on their way.

Adrift on his sea of troubles, the 36-year-old Shanahan has been cool throughout. There have been no private snap-outs or peevish days. He has taken the heat, his hair unmussed.

If the Raiders are on their way back, it has been a team effort, starting at the top.

Even if it did almost kill them all.

That’s the Raider way.