MONDAY VIEWPOINT : Next Time, Coach, Kick on Second Down

You’re the coach.

It’s overtime at the Coliseum Sunday and your team has the ball on the other team’s 16-yard line, second and six.

Crucial game? All the pride and poise in the world is riding on this one, baby. Your team has Super Bowl potential, but can’t afford to lose this one.

What’s your call, coach?

If you’re Tom Flores, coach of the Raiders, you run Marcus Allen off left tackle, hoping to position the ball closer to the center of the gridiron for a field-goal attempt on third down.

“We were going for field position on second down,” Flores said. “We were going to kick on third down.”

And if you’re Tom Flores, you watch Marcus Allen fumble the ball, you watch the Eagles pick it up and run it back 81 yards to set up the winning touchdown.

If you’re Tom Flores, you’ve been here before. Two years ago, in another crucial overtime game, you tried to position the ball for a field goal just like you did Sunday, and Frank Hawkins fumbled away the ball and the game to the Denver Broncos.

What was it George Santayana said about knowing history? (For the record, it is: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”)

In defense of Tom Flores, probably a couple dozen other NFL coaches would make the same call Sunday.

Flores seemed to feel that the call was above second-guessing.

“I would think so,” he said. “You just don’t anticipate losing the ball. It was a simple play.”

Not to me. Granted, I don’t have a team to coach at the present time, but I wouldn’t have run that ball. In fact, I would have kicked the field goal on the previous play, first and 10 and the Eagles’ 20. And from the 16-yard line, no question. Kick.

I do this for four reasons.

1. My kicker, Chris Bahr, can kick a 36-yarder, or 40-yarder, blind-folded and with his shoes on the wrong feet. Bahr is 19 for 25 on the season. In the NFL, missing a 36-yarder on a dry field with no wind is a hanging offense.

2. Unlike the ultra-wide college hash-marks, the NFL hashmarks are only about six yards apart. Risking a running play into the middle of a defense coached by a man some call a defensive genius, just to move the ball a few inches closer to the center of the field, is like brushing a gnat off Bahr’s shoulder pads so he won’t be unbalanced.

If I’m Flores, I put myself in the other coach’s shoes. What would Eagle Coach Buddy Ryan most dread seeing right now? Easy. Chris Bahr trotting onto the field wearing his size-9 pitching wedge.

3. Marcus Allen seems to be a shade off his “A” game. Still recovering from a severe ankle injury, Marcus is averaging 2.5 yards this afternoon. He’s no longer the old fumble-prone Marcus, but he’s not having the game of his life, either.

4. History. Santayana.

Bonehead-wise, Flores’ call pales in comparison to Buddy Ryan’s early Christmas gift to the Raiders. With 1:54 left in regulation, the Eagles lead by three and have a first down at midfield.

What’s the worst call possible here, other than a 65-yard drop-kick field goal attempt? A pass, right? Right.

So Ryan orders up a pass, maybe because he likes excitement and controversy. The pass is intercepted and turned into the game-tying field goal. A field goal kicked by Chris Bahr, incidentally, from 27 yards.

There is no controversy over that call by Buddy. The world agrees, it was simply terrible.

Worse yet, when the Eagles run back Allen’s overtime fumble to the Raiders’ four-yard line, Ryan orders two quarterback sneaks.

The fact that the second one resulted in a touchdown should not ease the burden of guilt on Ryan for not opting for the oh-so-difficult, horrendously risky, 20-yard field goal.

But getting back to the Raiders, a bigger question raised Sunday was, what were the Raiders doing in overtime against the Philadelphia Pigeons?

I know, on any given Sunday . . . But the Raiders are a Super Bowl-bound team. Buddy Ryan said so himself. The Eagles are, at best, a team of the future.

“I don’t think we went in with the proper attitude,” Raider safety Vann McElroy said. “I don’t think we took the game seriously the whole day. We talked a good game, but we didn’t do it. There wasn’t any intensity, not as much as before. . . . We didn’t go out there fired up.”

Howie Long, the defensive end making his comeback from leg surgery, concurred with McElroy.

“I think we had an emotional letdown,” Long said. “Any time you’re beating people up three or four months at a time, it’s gonna wear you out emotionally. It’s like watching three John Wayne movies in one night, and you wake up and you gotta watch ‘Rocky IV.’ ”

Yeah, but the Raiders, in a good year, watch Rocky I through XX and then tear up the theater.

Emotional letdowns are for teen-agers the day after the prom. The Raiders are supposed to be above emotional letdowns.

Maybe it’s easier to cite emotional letdown than to speculate that your team is not as great as some people are saying.

In spite of Buddy Ryan’s Super Bowl prediction--Raiders vs. Redskins--the Raiders showed Sunday they are a team with certain limitations. The quarterback, everybody’s hero, turns 39 years old this week and in spite of his poise and charisma, is capable of a 16 for 42 passing day.

The receivers are capable of the big drop, the defensive backs can be burned, the aging offensive line is under suspicion, and Marcus Allen isn’t his old self yet.

Still, with a patsy schedule the rest of the season, compliments of their old pal Pete Rozelle, the Raiders, coulda been a contender.

So what did they do? They ran the ball when they shoulda kicked the ball.

In his big luxury box in the sky, Santayana did a few spins.