These Two Teams Need a Tuneup : Raiders: They try to right sputtering offense against a Buffalo team that is also out of sync.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. —  The once high-powered offense disappears at times. The running game stalls. The passing game stops. The quarterback fumes.

The players are mystified. The coach is vilified. The fans are horrified.

Is this the Raiders?

The Bills?

In recent weeks, it has been both.

The Raiders will step onto the cold surface of Rich Stadium today with a badly sputtering offense that has scored only one touchdown in the last 10 quarters.

If we were talking about a car, it would be in the shop.

But trying to tune up this offense has proved impossible, even for owner Al Davis. He’s out on the practice field at El Segundo during the week, lending his expertise to Coach Art Shell and his staff.

But through a frustrating 6-5 season, nobody has been able to get this offense to run on all cylinders.

The coaching staff got the passing game in shape but couldn’t get the running game going. When the running game finally got in gear, the offensive machine ran for only 30 minutes, shutting down in the second half of games.

Now, the offense has found new ways to self-destruct as the Raiders have lost two of their last three games, including a 16-10 loss to the previously winless Bengals last week in Cincinnati.

The Raiders’ only victory in that stretch was a 12-7 victory over the San Diego Chargers, the points coming on four field goals.

Penalties, fumbles and dropped passes have all come into play as one Raider drive after another has fizzled short of the end zone. The team turned dropping passes into an art form last week, letting six slip away.

Now they must face the three-time defending AFC champions in a stadium where the Raiders haven’t won in a decade.

Since beating the Bills, 27-24, in Rich Stadium in 1983, the Raiders lost here, 37-21, in 1988 and, 38-24, in 1990.

And, of course, who can forget the AFC title game here at the end of the 1990 season, a game the Bills won, 51-3.

But the Raiders’ hopes for a victory today do not appear to be as bleak as the weather.

For one thing, they beat the Bills convincingly last season at the Coliseum, 20-3, with a weaker team.

For another, Buffalo is having offensive problems of its own.

The Bills have been the very image of offense in recent years--either quarterback Jim Kelly confidently surveying the field and then whipping a long pass to Andre Reed or James Lofton, or running back Thurman Thomas threading or banging his way through a defense.

It hasn’t been that way this season. All but Lofton are still here, but the old offense is not.

Through 11 games, Buffalo has scored 202 points, 99 fewer than the Bills had at this time a year ago and the fewest they’ve scored at this stage of the season since 1985, a year in which they finished 2-14.

Scoring is down throughout the league this season, but more so at Buffalo. The Bills led the AFC in points and touchdowns last season and were second in the NFL behind the San Francisco 49ers in yards per game. Yet Buffalo is only ninth in the league in total offense this season.

So what’s wrong?

The old bickering Bills have resurfaced, publicly airing their opinions. Kelly has accused teammates of not putting their full effort into every play; others have also aired complaints.

“It’s a player taking a play off here,” Kelly said, “a player missing an assignment over here. I’ll watch film and say (to a teammate), ‘Hey, you’ve got to run on this play. You can’t be doing that.’ It’s people taking time off.

“When you have a successful offense, everybody does their job.”

Coach Marv Levy thinks some of it has to do with Buffalo’s success in recent years.

“Other teams do get familiar with what you do,” he said. “You do work very hard at finding new ways to do it.”

Some of the old ways still work, too. Kelly ranks fifth in the AFC among passers, but has thrown 12 interceptions along with 15 touchdown passes. Thomas is the AFC’s leading rusher with 987 yards, putting him second in the league behind the Detroit Lions’ Barry Sanders.

But in last week’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the second defeat in three weeks for the 8-3 Bills, Thomas got only 15 carries and rushed for 25 yards.

Kelly left that game early because of an ankle sprain, but he says he’s ready to go this week.

The big question is, are either of these offenses ready to go?

The answer might well indicate the outcome.