Raiders Still Wait for Davis : Pro football: AWOL defensive end fails to make good on vow to return to team.

He told Raider management he was coming.

He told several players he was coming.

He even told a reporter who ran into him at the airport Saturday that he was coming back to the team on Monday.

But Monday came and went at the Raider training headquarters in El Segundo and there was no Scott Davis.

The defensive end has now been missing for 14 days, absent since he left camp Sept. 6, the day after the Raiders’ season-opening loss and right after he had fought with teammate Greg Biekert.

Raider officials will only say that personal problems are causing the 29-year-old Davis’ absence. None blame the fight for Davis’ walk-out.

Monday is traditionally reserved for reviewing game films. Today is a day off. So Davis could conceivably return to El Segundo Wednesday, the week’s first full day of practice, and still be prepared for Sunday’s home game against the San Diego Chargers.

“We kept hearing, ‘He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming.’ ” linebacker Winston Moss said. “I’m going to wait until I actually see him.

“If he wants to play on Sunday, it would be nice if we see him on Wednesday. If he got in a couple of practices, that would be cool. He needs those practices to get up to speed.”

Davis told a Raider official last week that he was ready to return, then called several teammates to explain his absence. “I don’t speculate,” Coach Art Shell said when asked if he was expecting Davis. “He hasn’t talked to me about it, so it’s still the same.”

If and when Davis does return, it will be his second comeback with the Raiders. His first absence lasted two years. After starting every game in both the 1990 and ’91 seasons, he retired to go into business.

Then, he returned as suddenly as he had left, saying he thought he could still contribute to the team.

Davis signed a four-year, $5.3-million contract this summer, then slowly played himself into shape on the second unit. He was promoted to the starting lineup for the Monday night opener against the San Francisco 49ers, then was gone less than 24 hours later.

Thin in the defensive line with the retirement of Howie Long and the release of Greg Townsend, the Raiders are not expected to give up on Davis.

A week ago in a loss to the Seattle Seahawks, when linemen Chester McGlockton and Aundray Bruce were ejected, and fellow lineman Jerry Ball suffered a pulled hamstring, the Raiders were down to four defensive linemen, including John Duff, a converted tight end, and Austin Robbins, a fifth-round draft choice.

Sunday against the Denver Broncos, Ball played, although he still was hurt, and the line was effective, keeping the pressure on Denver quarterback John Elway in a 48-16 Raider victory.

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Fullback Napoleon McCallum, who suffered a season-ending leg injury in the opener, came around to visit his teammates and receive the game ball awarded him after Sunday’s victory over the Broncos.

McCallum, who suffered a severed artery and a dislocated kneecap when tackled by San Francisco linebacker Ken Norton Jr., was on crutches Monday. When he had visited the Raiders a week earlier, he had been in a wheelchair.

Shell spotted McCallum from his office window, then joked to reporters that “He’s late. He’s going to be fined.”

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It has already been a strange season for the Raiders, even beyond the Davis affair, and it’s less than a month old.

The Raiders went through the summer and the exhibition season picked by many to survive all the way to the Super Bowl. They did nothing to dissuade their believers by winning four of five exhibition games.

But then the season opened and the Raiders were stuck in neutral, if not reverse, getting outscored in two losses, 82-23, before finally breaking through Sunday to play the way many had envisioned.

Shell certainly didn’t script it that way but, in retrospect, says it might have been a good thing for this team. “Reality has to set in,” he said. “You’ve got to play the game. You can’t talk it. You can tell them. But sometimes, you’ve got to get burned like a kid. (You can tell them), ‘Don’t touch the fire. It will burn you.’ But they don’t believe it until they stick their hand in the fire.”