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Closer Look Husted's miss was beginning of end for Oakland
Posted: Sunday November 28, 1999 10:42 PM
By Jon A. Dolezar, CNN/SI OAKLAND, Calif. -- Two bitter rivals were tied late in the game. Playoff positioning made for high stakes. A back-and-forth high-scoring affair had riveted the crowd for nearly three hours, and now the game was going to come down to a kicking contest in the final three minutes. It didn't turn out to be much of a contest. Oakland kicker Michael Husted had a chance to give the Raiders a lead, but missed his 44-yard attempt with 2:56 to go in the fourth quarter, keeping the door open for the Chiefs. The miss was the beginning of the end for the Raiders, who could only watch Pete Stoyanovich do what Husted couldn't -- nail a pressure field goal. Husted made no excuses following the game, calling the snap from center Adam Treu and the hold from punter Leo Araguz both fine. "I felt like I hit it strongly," Husted said. "I'd say that for the majority of the flight of the ball it looked like it was going straight. It looked like it had a nice straight kick to it, and at the end it just tailed off on me. I was very surprised that it tailed off like that." Raiders head coach Jon Gruden knows that the playoffs will be an uphill battle following Sunday's tough defeat, but he refused to put the loss solely on Husted's missed kick. "Michael had made a couple of kicks earlier in the game," Gruden said. "We had a kickoff go out of bounds. We're going to continue to work on that aspect of our game. I don't want to sound redundant or get into a bunch of coaches' jargon, but we've got to make those kicks." Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert wanted to relieve Husted of some of the burden following the game. Biekert said that the defense still had the opportunity to stop the Chiefs on their final drive but failed to do so. "The game is still tied [following Husted's miss]," Biekert said. "We've still got a chance to go into overtime or even get the ball back to win the game. I don't think anybody was down at that point. They still had a ways to go just to get a field goal. That was a point where we needed to stop them and not let them get a first down and move the ball." Husted hopes to get the chance to redeem himself in another big game this season, but with the Raiders falling to 5-6 with the loss, it's doubtful that there will be so much on the line the next time he gets his chance. "Anytime you don't make a kick it's disappointing," Husted said. "To miss a kick with a few minutes left is even more disappointing. But that's just the way this game goes, and that's the life of a kicker. It's a roller-coaster ride and you just have to not get too high when you make them and not get too low when you miss them. It's part of it."
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