PRO FOOTBALL ’88 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : It May Be Long Season for Raiders

With apologies to a great Raider, who is still procuring interceptions for those game-winning sixes, but now only in his dreams:

I tell you, scoopmen, it’s very, very intriguing. Coach Davis has hired the young Dan Reeves to bring the IBM age to silver and blackdom, where we have long preferred a distinct kick-gluteus-maximus mentality. I’ve been tracking Mike Shanahan since I was watching the Tom Landry show and playing with my toy soldiers, and he appears auspicious. Yes, scoopers, quite auspicious, indeed.

But it’s very, very baffling, too. Why won’t Coach Davis procure Jay Goose Gooden Schroeder? I fear that without a proven quarterback, the silver and black destiny is about to run a gantlet of pit bulls wearing pork chop underwear with brown gravy cologne.

So be it. I’m going out to Santa Monica Pier to rearrange some fishes’ family trees. If Vance Johnson needs his eyelids dusted again, call me.

Thank you, Lester Hayes.

The old order has been plowed so far under, you’ll have to go to China to find it, giving way to prospects more uncertain than the Raiders have known in this decade or any other.

Coach Tom Flores, 5-10 in his final season, is gone. So are Marc Wilson, Jim Plunkett, Sean Jones, Dokie Williams, Frank Hawkins, John Clay, Rusty Hilger, Bob Buczkowski, Jessie Hester, Henry Lawrence, Mickey Marvin, Shelby Jordan, Curt Marsh and Jeff Barnes, and that’s just since last season’s start of camp.

Newly arrived are Coach Mike Shanahan, Willie Gault, Jim Lachey, Tim Brown and Terry McDaniel, all glowing with promise. But which of them is going to take the snap from center?

For the second straight season, the Raiders are pinning their hopes on a youngster whose opening-day appearance will coincide with his first pro start. Steve Beuerlein, a second-year player who spent his first season on injured reserve, ascends to the red-hot silver and black throne, and you Raider fans had better cross your fingers.

Remember, the top quarterbacks in recent history foundered as rookies:

--Bernie Kosar, headiest of the heady, as accurate a thrower as there is in the game and coming out of a pro-style passing offense at the University of Miami, couldn’t get above 50% completions in six of his first eight starts.

--John Elway completed 47.5%, with 7 touchdown passes, 14 interceptions.

--Terry Bradshaw came in at 38.1%, 6 touchdown passes, 24 interceptions.

Plus, that’s a brand-new offense the Raiders are all trying to learn, a task that generally takes longer than one training camp.

There are new starters at six positions on offense. A year ago, there were five. Only Marcus Allen, Todd Christensen and Charley Hannah have been at the same position longer than two seasons, and only Christensen hasn’t been moved or benched in that time.

Plus, the defense was uncharacteristically beaten up last season.

And they’re still auditioning successors to punter Ray Guy.

Are they battening down for heavy weather, or what?

In camp, even Al Davis, who used to deliver an annual

ave-a-rebuilding-season-like-everyone-else-but-we-can’t;-we’re-the-Raiders speech, started asking for time and patience.

So what remains of the faithful (season tickets are down from 47,000 in 1986 to 38,000): Tilt your hard hats back and mellow out. Your heroes have to walk before they can swagger.

DEE-FENSE?

Before the annual discussion of the untested quarterback’s prospects, which inevitably dominates attention, there is an even more important area of concern.

That’s the defense, and its two key components, the line and the cornerbacks. If they come back to what they were, then this is a competitive team, which can afford its offense some time to come together.

If they don’t, it’s like last season: bombs away.

For the five seasons from 1982-86, it was the Raiders, not the Bears or the Giants, who led the National Football League in sacks, never coming in lower than third in any of them. This was the more remarkable, since the Raiders rarely blitzed more than one linebacker. They got tremendous pressure from their young front four, which in turn made it possible for their cornerbacks to play man-to-man.

Last season, they dropped to No. 8 in sacks. There is little doubt that Davis’ effort to lure Howie Long and Bill Pickel back across the picket line made them the object of teammates’ resentment, messed up their minds and backfired badly.

Long’s sacks fell from 10 in 1985 to 7 1/2 in 1986 to 4 in 1987. Pickel’s went from 10 in 1986 to 1. A top personnel director, watching the Raider-Viking game last October, said that Long was showing flashes, but Pickel just looked ordinary.

And whatever happened to the right end? Once it was Lyle Alzado. Then it was Sean Jones, who was the American Football Conference sack leader in his first full season as a starter. Then, when Jones was traded, it was supposed to be Buczkowski, who wound up on waivers, instead. Now it’s Mike Wise, a No. 4 pick in ’86 who is combative, if unaccomplished.

If everyone maxes out, the Raiders have a chance to be again what their conference lacks, a dominating team.

If not, don’t ask what comes next.

OK, if not, the rest of the program is in trouble deep.

Raider cornerbacks are routinely issued the toughest challenge in football, so they have to be great. Last season, Hayes was pensioned off but his replacement, the fleet Lionel Washington, wasn’t the second coming. On the other side, the once-legendary Mike Haynes had so much trouble, the coaches doubted he’d even make the team again. Opposing receivers had 7 100-yard games, most in the AFC.

Haynes, however, rededicated himself in the off-season, survived and even retained his starting job. But now, for the first time in his career, he may be on a short leash.

On the other corner will be rookie Terry McDaniel. He was a controversial choice when the Raiders took him with the pick they got for Jones, but he has looked great on man-to-man coverage.

The linebackers are much discussed but generally competent, or at least they became so again after Matt Millen was finally brought back after a month-long holdout over chump change.

The safeties, Vann McElroy and the just-signed Stacey Toran, are star and coming star, respectively. This unit has been great before, but now it has to prove that greatness is not just a memory.

SCHROEDER, THE RAIDER?

How can they not make this deal?

Jay Schroeder, the disowned Redskin, is big, young, mobile, and he has a cannon. He has received his experience in big games in the most physical, quarterback-pounding division in football, the NFC East. Shanahan’s offense, built on an Elway-type who can maximize options by running, would be custom-made for him.

But the price is high--reportedly Lachey and a No. 1 pick--and trade talks have stalled, as did those for Doug Williams and Neil Lomax. Whenever everyone is sure that this time Davis just has to trade for a quarterback, he doesn’t. Davis deals as he does everything else, on his own terms or not at all.

So it looks as if the Raiders will open the season as constituted.

If you want a reason to be optimistic about Shanahan, you have only to see how fast his scheme and his new assistant, Alex Gibbs, have turned the offensive line around. The Raiders gave up a club-record 72 sacks in ’86 and 53 last season, but they allowed only 9 in 4 exhibition games.

Skill positions?

Dynamite.

Marcus Allen, who played banged up last season and looked it, has run with his old elan.

And Bo Jackson showed last season that the NFL is much less a mystery to him than American League pitching. Jackson is expected to be back in October.

Gault’s price tag makes you wonder. How does a team with the sixth-worst record, question marks galore and no established quarterback trade its No. 1 pick in the Troy Aikman draft? But Gault, himself, has looked nothing but great--5 weeks in camp, 4 exhibitions, 6 catches, 3 touchdowns, a 30.7-yard average. Then there are James Lofton, Tim Brown and Mervyn Fernandez, fanning out of those four-receiver sets.

But can the Raiders field a team their receivers can be proud of?

It all goes onto Beuerlein’s young shoulders.

Shanahan’s system is as new to the rest of the offense as it is to Beuerlein, but he will be the one expected to pull it together. As much as anything else, quarterback is a leadership position. He has to be the man who gives everyone else a reason to believe, and that flows from performance as well as character.

Beuerlein has all the character you could ask for, genuine poise and a good arm. His mobility is decent but not outstanding. His Notre Dame career didn’t do much for his development, since the offenses he ran were neither pro-style nor pass-oriented, but it did give him a taste of life on the hot seat.

His pro experience?

You’ll be looking at it.

“Steve has great ability,” Shanahan said. “He’s got great leadership, the charisma and poise you look for in a quarterback.

“The thing he doesn’t have is experience. There’s nothing you can do except gain it like he’s gaining it now.

“Any time a person hasn’t proven himself, especially at the quarterback position, there’s always going to be that question--can he do it when it counts?

“At the same time, we have some excellent people surrounding him. We don’t ask the quarterback to win the football game. What he has to do is his part. We have the skills to take the pressure off the quarterback, where he doesn’t have to make the big play.”

They also plan to forgive his first 100 or 200 mistakes, hoping they can work around them, and he can live through them.

You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows: Tough times are coming, scoopers.

Raider Notes

The Raiders cut to the required 47 players Thursday, waiving cornerback Sam Seale and tackle Steve Wright. The Raiders once bragged about the speedy Seale, converted from wide receiver in 1986, as the next coming of Darrell Green, but it didn’t happen. Thus, of the four Raider cornerbacks, two are rookies: Terry McDaniel and UCLA’s Dennis Price. . . . Raider players elected Marcus Allen offensive captain, Rod Martin defensive captain and Andy Parker captain of the special teams.