SPORTS WEEKEND : AROUND THE AFC / WEST : His Past Comes to Pass

If lightning starts, move away from this guy. Denver linebacker John Mobley has recently totaled his Jaguar and been ticketed for driving under the influence, strained his hamstring on the opening day of training camp, angering Coach Mike Shanahan, injured his knee in the second game of the season and is lost for the season.

“The year started off and steamrolled downhill ever since,” Mobley said. “It kind of makes you wonder. I guess the Lord’s paying me back for all the wrong I did in the past. . . . I wasn’t bad bad. But I was bad enough to be reaping what I’m reaping.” Good thing he wasn’t bad bad.

If Bam Morris looks fat, it’s because he is. Morris, the Chiefs’ starting running back, weighs 260 pounds according to Coach Gunther Cunningham because of the medication he takes for an attention deficit disorder.

“I will not use it as an excuse for him to keep his weight up, yet it’s a difficult thing for him to overcome,” Cunningham said. “He’s got to battle it constantly. I know my daughter goes through that and she battles it constantly. I talk to her the same way I talk to him about it.”

Consider the thrill of that first home football game, even if it is the Raiders, but what’s going on in Oakland? The Raiders are coming off two stellar efforts, one a logic-defying victory over Minnesota, and they can’t sell out the Oakland Coliseum.

The Raiders haven’t sold out a regular-season game there since Sept. 8, 1997, when the Chiefs won on the final play, 28-27. People take defeat hard up there. This will be the 16th consecutive regular-season game blacked out on local TV, slightly more than 40,000 tickets having been sold so far.

“The reality of the situation is there are some people out there sort of looking cross-eyed right now to see if we are for real,” wide receiver Tim Brown said. And that’s tough to do when you have a patch over one eye.