He’s a Bit Off-Center, but Raider Pickel Comes Back a Long Way

Howie Long has this pal.

Long is brash, outspoken and famous. His pal, the teammate you always see him with, is shy, self-effacing and was going to be a great player himself, if on a different level.

Howie gets movie scripts. His pal almost got to the Pro Bowl once.

Hey, it’s a living. What’s to complain about?

The pal is Bill Pickel, the kid from Queens who spends his season with his wife and son in an apartment down the block from the Raider facility in El Segundo. In the off-season, they move back home, across the street from the house he grew up in.

If it’s been a struggle for all of the Raiders, Pickel is getting back onto his game after an 1987 season he calls--well, he didn’t think it was very good.

Try a drop from seasons of 11 1/2, 12 1/2 and 12 1/2 sacks to 1. Try going from one vote away from the Pro Bowl to nowhere.

What happened?

There were little injuries and the big strike, during which Pickel, a policeman’s son, which is to say he comes from a very pro-labor household, crossed the picket line.

What has happened since?

People healed and forgot. The Raiders traded Sean Jones, floundered and were reborn in a 4-man line with the long-suffering Pickel giving up his nose tackle-sacrificial lamb post.

“Bill Pickel came to this team as a defensive end, a defensive tackle,” Long said. “He’s 6-6, 260, playing nose tackle. Nose tackles aren’t 6-6, 260. Nose tackles are 6-3, 6-4, 6-1; 280, 290, 300. They’re shorter, more compact.

“He’s played out of position since he’s been here. He’s done the job in a selfless manner that I think exemplifies the way an individual should play the game.

“The switch to a 4-man front is a big thing. I think it’s a big advantage for him. From his viewpoint, playing in a 4-man front is like taking a day off.”

Pickel never complained about playing on the nose, and still won’t, nor will he say anything about injuries.

“I had a . . . season,” he says. “I don’t know why. I don’t want to make any excuses.”

Injuries?

“I think everybody’s a little hurt. I don’t think I was any worse than I am right now.”

And the turnaround?

“I don’t know what it was,” Pickel said. “I know this: When we played Miami, when we were behind (24-0) at halftime, we just said, ‘Let’s go out and have some fun.’

“You try and figure out why you play this game. Everybody bitches, everybody complains.

“Pain? It’s like a standing joke. The first day in training camp, that’s as good as you’re ever going to feel all season, and it just gets progressively worse. I don’t think anybody’s 100% from that first day in training camp. You go out and get beat up worse every week. It’s just who can sustain it and hang on the longest.”

And let’s not forget the tedium: hours of meetings, film sessions, practice going through the same plays over and over. And the fragile highs. . . .

And the crashing lows.

Recent Raider history has had more of the lows, and if you want to know what Pickel and Long have in common, they’re a pair of intense Eastern city kids who are haunted by the prospect of failure, personal or collective.

Does Pickel take things hard?

“Real hard,” Long said. “A couple of us do. A great number of us do around here.”

Said Pickel: “We’re both from the East Coast. We grew up in a city environment. Howie’s Irish. My father is German and my mother Irish.

“I never had a childhood anything like Howie’s though. My mother and father were always there. I have three brothers and two sisters.

“Howie has a personality all his own. The guy has played exceptional football for so many years. I think a lot of it has to do with his attitude. He’s outspoken. If you’re outspoken, you’ve got to go out on the field on Sunday and play.”

Pickel was always the quiet one, who made sure everyone’s back was covered. As a team, he and Long worked out OK. They came in for the high times, like the ’84 Super Bowl victory in Pickel’s rookie year, and helped hold each other together in the crash of ’86.

You survive, you think it over and then the answer comes to you.

“You play the game because you love to play,” Pickel said. “You love playing this game.

“You get hurt, you’re standing on the sideline and it comes up and slaps you in the face: You play because you love this. It sounds corny but if you don’t love it, you couldn’t deal with all the . . . You just couldn’t do it.”

He says he’s having more fun, now. He has his game back, and the game has him back.

They hope to live happily ever after, give or take 10,000 blows to his torso.

Raider Notes

Vann McElroy, who has a pull in the area of his ribs, is still listed as questionable but says he’ll play Sunday in San Diego. . . . Center Bill Lewis’ ankle is being re-examined by another doctor. If Lewis can’t go, John Gesek, the utilityman who just moved to left guard to replace injured Charlie Hannah, will move to center; newly-activated Chris Riehm will play left guard, and the Raiders will start their seventh different combination in this, their 10th game.