Hope They Just Talk Bad Game

I went up to several Raiders to ask if they’d had a hard time putting that 44-14 whipping from San Francisco out of their minds once they got to bed Monday night.

“No,” Nolan Harrison said. “I conked right out.”

“No,” Tim Brown said. “Those are the easy ones to forget. The close losses are the tough ones. We’re fine. We didn’t just lose the Super Bowl or something.”

Forty-four to fourteen. On prime-time TV.

I thought at least one Raider might express some anger. Or some sorrow.

“No,” Steve Wisniewski said. “We’re professionals. We’re not going to panic. We’re not going to give up. We’re not going to despair.”

“No,” Anthony Smith said. “You’ve got to take the bad with the good. We’re men. We’ll handle it.”

It wasn’t embarrassing, then?

“No,” Jerry Ball said. “People called us and San Francisco two potential Super Bowl teams. And I won’t say that praise was unwarranted. They just played like one Monday and we have to start playing like one.”

“No,” Albert Lewis said. “The good news is, this happened to us early. With any luck at all, we’ll see them again.”

One or two Raiders even went so far as to suggest that anyone who brought up that 44-14 49er thing was being too negative. Stirring up trouble.

Brown said, “You guys are putting emphasis on Monday night. We’re not.”

Harrison said, “That loss is out of our heads. No one’s going to talk about it among ourselves.”

So, this was just one of those things?

“No!” Winston Moss said.

No?

“No, it was not ‘just one of those things,’ ” the Raider linebacker replied, loudly. “When you go out there and play like that, with everybody in the damn world watching, you can’t just explain it off as ‘just one of those things.’ You’ve got to get a little mad.”

Thank you, Winston.

That’s what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that the Los Angeles Raiders were mad as hell and not going to take 44-14 anymore. I wanted to hear that nobody beats the Los Angeles Raiders by 44-14 and gets away with it. I wanted to hear some of the pride and passion and swagger and fire for which the Los Angeles Raiders are famous.

Because this was supposed to be that kind of team. I thought these were the kinds of players who would get rip-snorting mad and say: “Nobody beats us, 44-14.”

I thought these guys would do what Andre Rison of the Atlanta Falcons did after his team lost its season opener. I thought they would promise to take it out on somebody else. I thought they would talk like Mister T and say: “I pity the fools that play us next.”

Poor sportsmanship?

Hey, the Raiders aren’t about sportsmanship. Never have been. Never will be.

The Raiders are about kicking butt.

The Raiders are about having pride.

The Raiders are about greatness and excellence and winning.

Nobody’s going to talk about that 44-14 game among themselves? I want everybody to talk about that 44-14 game, to talk among themselves. I want the team captain to step forward and warn everybody in the room that 44-14 is never going to happen again. That 44-14 will . . . not . . . be . . . tolerated.

Instead, the Raiders are trying very hard to be businesslike. To be diplomatic.

Phil Villapiano would have said, “Tell Seattle to be afraid.” John Matuszak would have said, “We’ll rip their little Seahawk wings off.” Ben Davidson would have said, “Grrrr.” Lester Hayes would have said, “We’ll put our phasers on ‘stun’ and treat them like Klingons invading our galaxy.”

Thank goodness a couple of Raiders sound hot.

Eddie Anderson said after Monday’s mess, “We stunk up the place.” Right.

Tom Rathman said, “This was really a shaky performance.” Right.

Brown even said, “When you look at the film, we’re lucky we didn’t lose by 50 points.”

Good. Get mad.

Jeff Hostetler suggested, “I didn’t get caught up in the hype, personally. I never read the stuff. Maybe some of the guys got caught up in it, I don’t know.”

Nope, Hoss, I’m sorry, but the Raiders vs. the 49ers isn’t hype. It isn’t something you read. Don’t hint we oversold the opponents. Either you considered yourself a great team or you didn’t. We presumed that you did.

If you prefer no hype for the rest of this season, lose to Seattle next Sunday.

If you prefer that the hype goes to, say, the 49er-Chief game or the 49er-Cowboy game, fine. We thought the Raiders were ripe for some hype.

“No,” Ball said. “Don’t get off us now. One game does not a season make.”

“No,” Wisniewski said. “Offer any kind of challenge to good players, they’ll come out firing. Come out this week. You’ll see a better team, I promise.”

Now that’s more like it.