Shell Searches for Satisfaction After Turmoil With Raiders : Pro football: Former head coach goes back to trenches as assistant with Chiefs.

RIVER FALLS, Wis. —  There is no way around it, so to speak.

Art Shell looks funny in red.

“My family told him he looks like a Christmas tree,” said Gunther Cunningham, a fellow assistant coach with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Especially when Shell smiles, which is almost constantly these days as he revels in a new life far from the pressures of head coaching.

Far from what had become a commitment to insanity.

And far, far away from Al Davis.

At one point during his 27 years with the Raiders, including his last six as head coach, Shell looked at Raider boss Davis as a hero.

Today, though, Shell paints a picture of Davis as a hypocrite.

As offensive line coach of the Chiefs, a job he received within weeks of being fired as the Raiders’ coach last February, Shell said he has rarely been happier.

“Going back to teaching, to the trenches, to what I love . . . seeing some of these guys respond, I get chills all over my body,” Shell said Tuesday from Kansas City’s training camp here.

When thinking about his final days with the Raiders, though, he gets chills of a very different sort:

--Even though Shell spent 27 years with the organization as a Hall of Fame player and coach, Davis initially refused to pay any part of the final year of his contract, in which Shell was guaranteed $750,000 for 1995.

This was the same Davis who consistently boasts that the strength of the organization lies in loyalty to former players and respect for past glories.

Shell and his representatives were forced to negotiate a settlement with Raider lawyer Amy Trask for an amount that sources say was less than the guaranteed sum.

Shell reportedly went to Chief officials during those negotiations and wondered: “How can I still be loyal to a man who has done this to me?”

Shell would not directly comment on Davis.

But when asked about Davis’ mental stability, Shell just smiled and walked away.

Raider officials said Davis would not be available for comment on any of Shell’s remarks.

--Shell said his Raider head coaching career, which featured three playoff appearances and a 54-38 record, was waylaid by three of his assistant coaches.

Shell said these three coaches would run to Davis with negative reports about him.

Even as Davis was publicly offering his support to Shell, he was heeding the advice of the malcontents.

“Three backstabbers,” Shell said. “Three guys who should have just worried about their own positions but instead were thinking about everything else. Three guys who were really disloyal.”

Shell would not list the names of the accused, but it is known that at the end of his tenure, he was not communicating with offensive coordinator Tom Walsh, who has since been fired.

He was also known to have had problems with Steve Ortmayer, the special teams coach who was also in charge of football operations. His squad was publicly criticized by Shell at the end of the season.

“I was with Art every minute, and I can tell you that not one coach was disloyal to him,” said Ortmayer, now general manager of the St. Louis Rams.

The other “backstabber” is believed to still be a part of the Raider staff.

“The coaches who left for other jobs, they were good solid coaches,” Shell said.

--Davis paraded head-coaching candidates through the team’s El Segundo headquarters after last season even while Shell was still working there and wondering about his fate.

Shell saw the candidates and figured that Davis was prepared to fire him.

But lacking a straight answer from the boss, he could do nothing but wait.

If this had been a game, Davis would have been penalized for taunting.

“There was this procession of people coming through,” Shell said. “But that was Davis’ prerogative. It wasn’t easy. But you live and learn.”

From watching Mike Shanahan’s behavior after he was fired from the Raiders before him--Shanahan kept quiet and eventually became a head coach again this year--Shell said he has learned something else.

“I came into [the Raider] job with class and, like Mike Shanahan, I’m going to leave with class,” Davis said. “I am not going to say anything bad about Mr. Davis.

“After all, he gave me my chance. Not because of my color, but because he said he thought I could coach. I will always be grateful for that.”

But Shell, the NFL’s first African American head coach, was so happy to leave Los Angeles that he has already purchased a house for his family in Kansas City.

And although he says he loved the fans--”They were always good to me, I don’t know what people meant when they said they were thugs”--he will probably never return to Los Angeles.

“My wife said the other day that she could live in Kansas City for the rest of our lives,” he said. “I couldn’t have come to a better situation here. It’s all football. They teach it, they work it, they care about it.”