COMMENTARY : Shanahan Wasn’t a Stroke of Genius

You know, I wouldn’t admit a mistake even if there was one. --AL DAVIS

Al Davis didn’t start selling out Mike Shanahan the day he hired him.

He waited until Shanahan’s first game, a 24-13 victory over the San Diego Chargers in the 1988 opener. Shanahan was 1-0 but word filtered in that Davis was storming around during the game, moaning that the Raiders hadn’t thrown long to Willie Gault.

This was mildly surprising--what honeymoon?--but no shocker, since Davis second-guessed every Raider play that went nowhere since John Rauch. Raider insiders tell of Davis dressing down Tom Flores in the coaches’ room, in front of his assistants.

The price of Davis telling everyone you are one of the game’s great coaches is suffering through his rages, his impatience with anything that doesn’t work, his volatile second-to-second involvement.

Among the Raiders, that is what passes for support.

It was not Davis’ involvement, however, that raised this 19-month debacle to classic heights. As Davis noted, he did all this with John Madden and Flores and it worked out magnificently.

The problem was not that Davis had doubts about Shanahan. He was the owner, he was entitled.

The problem was that he confided his doubts to what seemed to be half the personnel directors in the league. Davis spends his life on the phone, garnering intelligence. Of course, most of those guys told some agent or writer and by midseason, everyone knew Shanahan was already on shaky ground.

There was Shanahan, two months into his head coaching career, and already his future, not the rebuilding of the Raiders, had become the issue.

Of course, Davis, who is only interviewed in circumstances under his control, made no public comment.

Among the Raiders, that is what passes for discretion.

Let’s cut to the off-season.

The Raiders had just collapsed in the stretch, missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season. Davis had never been out for two before 1987, so his mood, which isn’t sunny in the best of times, couldn’t have been tiptop.

Shanahan clearly intended to purge his staff, which should have been his prerogative. He had only been allowed to hire three assistants and encountered resistance from some of the Raider holdovers.

That, of course, should have been easily predictable.

The Raiders are the most informal of organizations; their style is kind of like a motorcycle gang on an outing. Shanahan came from Denver--at Davis’ invitation to invigorate the Raiders with his “fresh implementation of ideas”--where the Broncos ran the standard corporate, up-tight show.

Moreover, the Raiders and Broncos are bitter division rivals . . . and the Broncos have recently been drubbing the silver-and-black regularly . . . and now these Musketeers waltz in and tell Raider players they can no longer sit on their helmets during practice?

For starters, Shanahan wanted Tom Walsh, Joe Scannella, Charlie Sumner and Willie Brown gone, and probably several others.

He fired Walsh and Scannella. When Davis heard about it, he rescinded the order, humiliating Shanahan publicly.

It is not unusual for a head coach, who runs the offense, to be saddled with a defensive coordinator--Mike Ditka inherited Buddy Ryan--but it is remarkable when a coach can’t control the assistants on his own side of the ball, some of whom have been grumbling loudly.

Sumner and Brown were fired, almost certainly with Davis’ blessing. Sumner said later that Davis asked him what his problem was with Shanahan, as if Shanahan had insisted on the move, but Davis, himself, almost fired Sumner at midseason. Brown, a Hall of Famer and a Davis arch-favorite, could never have been let go without Davis’ consent.

Perhaps Davis became persuaded that Brown really wasn’t a great secondary coach. Lester Hayes used to call him Fred Flintstone.

For good measure, and to illustrate the holdovers’ resentment, Sumner ripped Shanahan publicly, blaming him for his firing and charging that he wasn’t ready to be a head coach.

And it wasn’t over yet.

One of Shanahan’s ex-Denver assistants, the pugnacious Nick Nicolau, asked a holdover--Art Shell--why they were sticking around when they weren’t wanted.

When Davis heard that one, he axed Nicolau on the spot.

Davis said at Tuesday’s press conference that he was pained by Shanahan’s “interest” in canning seven or eight assistants.

Of course, after Flores’ departure, Davis personally ordered the firing of half the offensive staff, including Bob Mischak, whose Raider tenure went back to 1973.

Shanahan was getting wobblier by the moment. In spring, the Raiders put together a ticket brochure and word went out that Shanahan’s picture was not to be included.

Among the Raiders, this was what passed for the off-season rebuilding effort.

Their camp was enlivened by rumors of a franchise move, by the Marcus Allen holdout--Davis, who used to be aces at signing players, began having one impasse a year with some agent he previously got along with--and the revamping of the defense.

Without Allen, the offense was a joke.

With the new staff, the injuries and the Plan B linebackers, the defense was a shambles.

So they started 1-3, which could hardly count as a surprise, since the defense was giving up 163 yards rushing a game and starting linebackers were being fired weekly. Shanahan’s offensive unit was promising, if not a finished product, but Shanahan was all but history.

By now, Davis really had no choice. Having undermined his coach until he was as stiff as a mackerel, it was time to stick a fork in him.

“I think everybody expected it,” Jay Schroeder said Wednesday. “I think Mike expected it. I think everybody around here was looking over their shoulder, waiting for it to happen.”

The problem wasn’t that Davis sacked a coach.

The problem is that, in 1987, after two bad seasons, Davis allowed Flores to leave--or gently pushed him out, in either case gaining a fall guy--and then wasted two years of his team’s precious time in a project he, himself, couldn’t see through.

Marcus Allen, Howie Long, Don Mosebar, Mike Haynes and Vann McElroy are two years older now, Matt Millen, Rod Martin, Lester Hayes, Sean Jones and Todd Christensen are gone and the rally hasn’t started yet.

Guess who agrees? “My biggest worry is that we’ve lost time here with the Raiders,” Davis said. “And we might have affected the life of a fine young man.”

If you want a word to encompass this disaster, try:

M-i-s-t-a-k-e.

Among the Raiders, this is what has been passing recently for genius.