Another Shell game

Thirteen years ago, during Art Shell’s first tenure as head coach of the Raiders, Al Davis sat in the press box at Mile High Stadium in Denver and noticed that Anthony Smith, the team’s best pass rusher, was out of the game.

Davis turned to an assistant and said, “Get down to the field and tell Art to get Smith back in the game.” The man complied and Smith was back on the field shortly.

Ask anyone in the NFL what’s been wrong with the Raiders and they’re likely to reply, “Al Davis,” the man who has been the face of the team for 43 years, first as coach, then as owner.

Davis still thinks he’s the coach and, as he did that night in Denver, doesn’t hesitate to make coaching decisions.

But for four decades, Davis is also what’s been right with the Raiders. Not only has he been coach, general manager and owner rolled into one, but he also served as AFL commissioner, helped force the merger with the NFL and is in the Hall of Fame for his myriad contributions to football. If he is deemed what’s wrong now, he is also why for the first 30 or so of the last 43 seasons Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland had the best record of any NFL franchise.

But things have gone wrong lately – a 13-35 record since a Super Bowl trip following a 2002 season that in retrospect seems like a fluke. When he rehired Shell in February, Davis, who turned 77 on July 4, made a rare acknowledgment that he might have erred when he fired him after the 1994 season.

“I have never forgiven myself and I have talked about it from time to time that I might have made a mistake,” he said.

The record says bringing back Shell was a wise move – from 1989-94, he was 56-41. “Non-Raiders” coaches since then were 95-106.

In fact, Jon Gruden (40-28) is the only Raiders coach with a winning record during that period. He left for Tampa Bay after the 2001 season in large part because he and Davis couldn’t coexist.

Davis remains deeply involved in coaching – he still watches tape of every practice.

Last season, with the Raiders going nowhere, then-coach Norv Turner made Marques Tuiasosopo the starting quarterback as an experiment. Tuiasosopo played poorly but Turner said he would give him another shot – until he talked to Davis.

Shell’s return puts the team back in the hands of “a Raider” or, in Davis’ accent, which mixes his native Brooklyn with the South, “a Raid-uh.” One sign: Shell is running the old Raiders “vertical offense” and some of the same drills John Madden ran in the 1970s.

Don’t discount the heritage.

A Raider – from Fred Biletnikoff and Jim Otto, to Madden, Willie Brown and Ken Stabler, to Matt Millen and Howie Long – is a lifetime label for someone who starred in Oakland – or in Los Angeles from 1982-94. It sticks forever, except for those, such as Marcus Allen, who get into Davis’ doghouse and are banished.

Gene Upshaw, a Hall of Fame guard for the Raiders for 16 seasons, is now the executive director of the NFL Players Association and has all 32 teams within his purview. But he still considers himself a Raider at heart. “It never goes away,” he says. “It can’t.”

The loyalty is returned by Davis and his front office.

But it can work in negative ways.

“Non-Raiders” coaches – Gruden is exhibit A – have bristled at the atmosphere that requires employees to bleed silver and black and, from time to time, take coaching advice from Davis. Mike Shanahan, who became head coach in 1988, tried in his first season to fire a group of career Raiders on the coaching staff, including Shell, who was the offensive line coach.

Davis stepped in and overruled him. Four games into the 1989 season, Shanahan was gone after an 8-12 record, replaced by Shell, who became the first black coach in modern NFL history. (Davis is a social trailblazer – Amy Trask, the team’s current CEO, is the only woman to run an NFL franchise.)

So while the Raiders still call themselves “the team of the decades,” the relevant years are really from 1963-87, when they were 267-121 and won three Super Bowls, often with offbeat characters such as Ken Stabler or castoffs deemed troublemakers by other teams.

The coaches during that era were all Raiders – Davis (from 1963-65), John Rauch, Madden and Tom Flores. Then came Shananan, a non-Raider, then Shell. Since then? All non-Raiders.

Shell has emphasized that Raiders image. An assistant in Kansas City and Atlanta, he left a prestigious job as the NFL’s vice president of football operations to take what many think of as a thankless rebuilding job on a team in chaos.

“It’s coming home to finish what I started,” he said when he took the job. “It’s like going out to the wilderness, you travel around, you learn, you gather experience, new ideas, you evolve as a person and as a coach, and I think I’ve done that.”

Why would Shell leave a prestigious and secure job?

The Raider connection is obviously one reason.

Another is that he has publicly stated his desire to become a head coach again despite almost no nibbles, even after he played a major role in Atlanta’s Super Bowl trip after the 1999 season. In fact, the surprising lack of interest in Shell has been cited as an example of the unwillingness of some teams to consider minorities for head coaching openings – he became the seventh active black coach, an all-time high, when he took the Raiders job.

There’s a common belief that any Oakland coach takes orders from Davis.

That perception contributed to keeping Madden out of the Hall of Fame for more than 30 years despite the best regular-season winning percentage in NFL history – he was finally elected last February. Flores, who coached two Super Bowl winners, has never received a nibble for the Hall and the Davis factor may have hurt Shell in his quest for another job.

Another perception: The Raiders will go nowhere this year.

That’s probably true.

Yes, there are a lot of holes, especially on defense.

But at least a Raider is in charge.

Looking at history, that can’t hurt.