SAN DIEGO – There was a time when you could find flashes of consolation in locker rooms like this one, specks of hope mingled in with the residue of failure. That was a different NFL, when it was only logical that this year’s runner-up could naturally aspire to be next year’s instant favorite.
The Raiders knew better last night. They know better this morning. There was a reason why they attacked this season with such urgency. They were in a hurry, all right, hoping to blitz through the season, grind through the playoffs and grab the Vince Lombardi Trophy before someone figured them out.
Yesterday, the were figured out, they were exposed, they were chased all the way back to the Pacific Coast Highway by a younger, faster, quicker, stronger and better batch of Buccaneers.
The final score may have been 48-21, but the numbers were mere details to what happened on the field at Qualcomm Stadium.
It isn’t just a season that ends for the Raiders now, but a quest, a holy mission put forth by a room overstuffed with geezers and wheezers who have far too many yesterdays on their dossier, and far too few tomorrows.
As long as they were able to squeeze a little more life out of their legs, a little more magic out of their ride, then they were always able to use euphemisms to hide their deficiencies, especially the most troubling one: They were older than jazz.
No need to hide that now. No need to cover it in soft soap. The Raiders needed to win the Super Bowl this year because far too many of their key players are moments away from joining AARP. They needed to finish what they started this time around, because too many of them are on the wrong side of 30, and too many teams in the AFC will be gunning for them next year.
It isn’t hard to get caught up in the romance of the Raiders, the mystique of who they are and all they’ve been. When they play postseason games at home, it’s even easier, because of all the wide eyes and thumping hearts opponents experience whenever they ease within spitting distance of The Black Hole.
“I like having older guys on my team,” Al Davis, the man who invented that mystique and augmented that aura, said a few weeks ago, on the eve of their playoff opener against the Jets. “Older guys are a lot less likely to play scared or worried about big games. They’re a lot less likely to be overwhelmed by a big moment.”
That may well be true. Only, Rich Gannon played neither scared nor worried yesterday; he was simply chased out to the parking lot on snap after snap by a Buccaneers defensive line that proved to be the equal of its press clippings. Jerry Rice and Tim Brown, who’ve been around the NFL so long it seems like they started in leather helmets, weren’t overwhelmed by the big moment or the Big Game, they were merely covered by a Tampa secondary that was as clingy as mosquito netting right from the beginning.
Bill Romanowski? Sam Adams? Rod Woodson? The rest of the Raiders’ veteran defense? None of them were scared, or worried, or overwhelmed. They were just neutralized into dust by a brilliant game plan devised by Jon Gruden, who justified every penny the Glazer family spent to acquire him, who made the four draft picks they’ll end up swapping seem like a couple of beaten-up baseball cards.
Time ran out on a timeless team, 60 minutes shy of the trophy. And as they slogged through the second half, as the Bucs made Gannon look like a green rookie, as the rest of the Raiders started to look like tourists trying to hike through an Irish bog, they all bore the same look that Bill Parcells wore four years ago, when he left the AFC Championship Game in Denver looking like George Halas.
“I don’t think I’m ready to think about all that would have to happen, all you have to go through, before we can be right at this spot we’re standing at right now,” Parcells had said that day. “It’s exhausting just to think about.”
The Jets, as you may recall, have yet to make it back to that spot Parcells was talking about. The Raiders are about to find just how right he was. And how elusive that spot can really be.