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Blacked Out Posted: Tuesday January 28, 2003 2:58 PM
For Raiders Haters everywhere, 1/26/03 shall be blessed: The day the big, bad Raiders turned into a lukewarm tub of Metamucil. 'Twas the day all the helmet spikes went limp. The day the Silver and Black came in like a checkpoint doberman and left like Joan Rivers's poodle. Tampa Bay 48, Oakland 21. In the Black Hole that was the Raiders' postgame locker room, 73-year-old owner Al Davis ambled from locker to locker in his black silk sweat suit with silver lettering, and with enough oil in his hair to lubricate a 1978 Chrysler New Yorker. He shook hands and whispered to each player, as if at a wake. Maybe it was. It had been 19 years since the Raiders were last in a Super Bowl. And now, weaknesses laid bare, a projected $45.4 million over next season's salary cap and with more aging veterans than the local VFW, it may be 19 more before they're back. Just when, baby? The Evil Emperor doesn't get around like he used to. Staffers say Davis takes a lot more naps. Still, his mind is sharp, and he's as charming as ever. When a sportswriter approached his dinner table one night last spring with hand outstretched, Davis snarled, "I'm not gonna shake ya hand. I got food comin'." But even Davis doesn't deserve a weekend like this last one. On Saturday morning one of his least favorite people, Marcus Allen, was voted into the Hall of Fame. Then his Pro Bowl center, Barret Robbins, who had missed a Friday-night team meeting, was AWOL for a walk-through. When the Prodigal Son finally showed up less than an hour before the Saturday-evening team meeting, looking disoriented and shaky, he was not forgiven. Raiders coach Bill Callahan "dismissed" him from the game and sent him home. Reportedly Robbins, who has been treated for depression, then entered a San Diego hospital. According to the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, four teammates, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Robbins spent Saturday in Tijuana. Who among us, after achieving our lifetime dream of finally making a Super Bowl, wouldn't disappear into Mexico 48 hours before the game? Maybe bring back a colorful ceramic burro with a clock embedded in its belly? Robbins's teammates were torqued. "I ain't welcoming him back," said guard Frank Middleton. "I thought we had a bond on the offensive line. I thought we lived and died for each other. And then he goes and does that? Man, that's like spitting in our faces." In 1996 the 320-pound Robbins was found staggering around a Denver hotel the night before a game against the Broncos. He was hospitalized and was said to be suffering from a chemical imbalance complicated by the flu. On Sunday night Raiders guard Mo Collins was asked whether he would have more compassion for Robbins if he knew that Robbins was suffering from an illness. "Like what?" Collins answered. "Bad tequila?" Once the game started, things got worse for Davis's beloved Raiders. They got schooled by Jon Gruden, the coach Davis had sold to Tampa Bay for $8 million and four draft picks last February. Looks like Davis got rooked. Gruden so outcoached his replacement, Bill Callahan, that it seemed as if Gruden was calling plays for both teams. "We'd come to the line and we'd audible," said Oakland fullback Jon Ritchie. "Then you'd see their linebackers all turning to each other, going, '93 Willie! 93 Willie!' It's like they knew what it was." This made the evening longer than Kiwanis Poetry Night for Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon, 37. After 15 years of waiting for his golden moment, he went out and delivered an absolute Glitter -- five interceptions. Gannon threw for five touchdowns: three to the Bucs and two to the Raiders. Oakland would've been better off if he hadn't thrown at all. As Gannon was packing his bag after the game, he forlornly reached into a blue cardboard box lunch the team had packed for the players, flipped a packet of plain potato chips and a cookie into the bag, and zipped it up. "Dinner," he said. Right then he didn't particularly look like the 2002 NFL MVP. Life seemed just as Siberian for Tim Brown, 36, who also waited 15 years to get to this game, only to catch one pass, for nine yards. "We couldn't have beaten the worst team in the league tonight," he groused. Lincoln Kennedy, 31, the freezer-sized Pro Bowl tackle, was morose. "I'm never watching films of this game," he said. "I don't particularly want to watch us peeing down our leg." There was one happy face nearby -- in the Qualcomm Stadium jail, where the lone prisoner, 21-year-old Richard Craig, sat grinning. During the halftime show he had sprinted to an open area of the field in nothing but a black Victoria's Secret bra, thong and these words painted large on his chest: raider nation sucks! Sometimes, the naked truth is ugly. Issue date: February 3, 2003 Sports Illustrated senior writer Rick Reilly pens the weekly Life of Reilly column in the magazine.
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