Post by TheShadow on Oct 20, 2006 18:57:14 GMT -5
www.insidebayarea.com
By Jerry McDonald, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated:10/20/2006 03:18:28 PM PDT
Any Oakland Raiders feeling sorry for themselves over the embarrassment of an 0-5 record and an 11-game losing streak had better steer clear of Clem Daniels.
Daniels was a star running back on a Raiders team that lost the last six games of the 1961 season and the first 13 in 1962.
Faced with the possibility of going 0-14, the Raiders shut out the Boston Patriots 20-0 at Frank Youell Field before an announced crowd of 8,000.
"It felt like vindication," Daniels said after getting in a round of golf Thursday. "We didn't consider it the end, we considered it the beginning of our future."
The Raiders who left the field that day never looked the same.
They walked off the field together in black and gold uniforms, which were changed to silver and black when a 33-year-old coach and general manager named Al Davis took over the following season.
The Raiders went 10-4, finished in second place and began a run of success that brought three world championships. They've fallen on hard times, with a 13-50 recordsince 2003, the low point of the Davis era.
Daniels, 69, hopes the Raiders are taking the defeats as hard as he did.
"I never lost a game where I wanted to walk over and shake the other guy's hand," Daniels said. "You kick my butt, I don't want to be congenial to you. I'll take my lumps and go work out, work to get better."
The Raiders host the Arizona Cardinals (1-5) on Sunday at McAfee Coliseum. Arizona is coming off a gut-wrenching loss to Chicago in which they surrendered a 23-3 lead on two fumble returns and a punt return.
Lose, and the Raiders would be decided underdogs until they face Houston on Dec. 2, at which time the odds say they would be 0-11 with a 17-game losing streak.
The Raiders have heard all the talk.
"When you're on the outside looking at an 0-5 team, it's really easy to nitpick," defensive tackle Warren Sapp said. "There aren't a lot of things you can fight off when you're 0-5. The losses are there, and there are no wins to fight anything with."
"We're the only team that doesn't have one," coach Art Shell said. "We're not going to run away from that. That's there. We've got to do something about it."
Safety Jarrod Cooper was a rookie on a Carolina team coached by George Seifert that won its season opener in 2001 and then lost 15 consecutive games — six times by three or fewer points.
"For awhile it seemed like every time we lost, it was by three points," Cooper said. "Once you don't have a chance to make the playoffs, you start losing it. It seemed like things started to break apart at about 1-8 or 1-9. It's hard to hold it together at 1-15."
The Panthers went out meekly, losing their last two games by a combined score of 68-13 to Arizona and New England.
Raiders players, despite whatever turmoil exists from Jerry Porter's suspension and Randy Moss' radio show, insist they are holding things together. Cooper won't compare the 2006 Raiders to the 2001 Panthers.
"It's a whole different group, a whole different set of people," Cooper said. "You never can tell."
Quarterback Andrew Walter is dealing with the criticism by ignoring it.
"You want to be the king of the castle. You want to be the team everybody is talking about in a positive light," Walter said. "The fact that we're the last winless team, a lot of people pay attention to that stuff. I am not one of them."
Daniels said his Raiders teams stuck together even before Davis arrived. There were no mandatory off-season minicamps, so Daniels and his teammates worked out together from February through May at the YMCA on Telegraph Avenue.
They did this despite needing off-season employment to make ends meet. With his job as a Raiders running back paying $12,000 per season, Daniels worked as a teacher in the Oakland schools system.
Daniels thinks the only way the Raiders can turn it around is with each man looking at himself in the mirror.
"It's a matter of believing in yourself, of believing you can play and being the best that there is," Daniels. "If you do believe that, it makes you more determined to be the best at what you do. I played football since the sixth grade. When you work all your life at something, you refuse to succumb to the doldrums of being the worst that there is. We wouldn't do that.
"That's the position the Raiders are in right now. It's the Raiders against the world, and they have to prove they are part of professional football and have to work at being respected. Right now, nobody respects the Raiders. Nobody can fix that for them. They have to do it themselves."