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Chiefs-Raiders Notebook 'Chokeland Faders' find yet another way to lose
Posted: Monday November 29, 1999 07:37 AM
By Jon A. Dolezar, CNN/SI OAKLAND, Calif. -- Fans in the Bay Area may have a new name for their favorite football team after yet another come-from-ahead loss. The Oakland Raiders are quickly becoming the "Chokeland Faders." The Raiders are officially on playoff life support following their three-point loss to the Chiefs on Sunday. Pete Stoyanovich's 44-yard field goal loosened the plug of Oakland's playoff hopes a bit more, as the Raiders joined the Patriots and Steelers as teams whose season is heading the wrong direction at a most inopportune time. "We've been on the playoff watch since the Jets game," Gruden said. "It's a must-win game every week for this football team. There are some valuable lessons that we are learning now, whether we want to admit it or not. We've been in 10 very tight football games and I suspect some of our young players will learn a great lesson about the National Football League. "Whether you are ahead by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter or not, the game is not over until the final second ticks." Oakland's schedule down the stretch is brutal, with road games at Tennessee, San Diego and Kansas City, and home games against likely playoff teams Seattle and Tampa Bay. Sunday's loss dropped the Raiders to 5-6, and all of this combines to make a run at a wild-card spot appear to be out of the question. The locker room was very quiet after the game, with most of the players realizing that the blown 14-point lead in the fourth quarter likely cost them dearly. "When you lose a game like that, it's very frustrating," wide receiver Tim Brown said. "Last play of the game, you don't get another shot. You have to go home. You want to put a couple of seconds back on the clock and have a chance to return a kickoff or something. It's very tough." The Raiders' season has followed a script very similar to Sunday's game, though, with all six of their losses coming by seven points or less. "It's the way our season has gone," Gannon said. "Guys continue to fight and continue to work, but this is pretty disappointing right now." Tyrone Wheatley tried to take the positive approach after putting up 34 points against a pretty good Chiefs defense, but he acknowledged that the turnovers in crunch time cost Oakland the game. "We did play a damn good game," Wheatley said. "We had a lot of positives that came out of it, so I'm not going to sit here and comment on all the damn negative [things]. ... We just have to put the whole thing together. Of course it's frustrating." The Raiders haven't been able to finish teams off with a killer instinct, and that has allowed opponents to hang around in games or come back late in games. Brown thinks that there are no excuses for Oakland to blow a 14-point lead that late in the game. "It wasn't close today," Brown said. "They were down by 14 points in the fourth quarter. I don't think that is considered to be a close game, but we lost the game because we turned the ball over. They are an opportunistic defensive team and they got two touchdowns on defense."
Chief kick-a-winnerPete Stoyanovich hadn't made a game-winning kick in almost two years, since beating Denver at the last second in 1997. That might explain the little-boy smile on his face in the locker room following the game, and all the well-wishers who kept stopping by his locker to congratulate him on the 44-yard game-winner that kept the Chiefs in the playoff race in the AFC. After Michael Husted missed a chance to break the tie with 2:56 to play, Stoyanovich said he was certain that the game was going to come down to a last-second kick. "I knew it was going to come down to me," Stoyanovich said. "I went right over to the defense when they sat down after that series and told them they could take their pads off because they were done for the day. ... I saw the look on their faces at the end there, so I just told them to relax, take their pads off, the game was over, that their job was done. The offense was able to march down the field and put me in a position to win the game, and that's all I really wanted. I haven't had an opportunity to win a game in a long time." The Chiefs' veteran kicker got a surprise visit at his locker from jubilant Chiefs president Carl Petersen, who gave his team's hero a surprise peck before the assembled reporters. "I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea," Petersen said, as he leaned in to kiss Stoyanovich on his left cheek. "You did a hell of a job. Way to hammer that!"
One man gangGreg Biekert had one of the best games of his six-year career, but he didn't feel much like boasting about his personal achievements following the tough loss. Biekert finished the game with 15 total tackles, one sack and an interception which he returned down the Chiefs' 3-yard line which set up Oakland's go-ahead touchdown early in the fourth quarter. "We were just in a zone coverage and we [the linebackers] dropped to spots on the field," Biekert said. "I just dropped back and he threw the ball in my direction. It wasn't too far for me to react to it. It was pretty much right to me, so it was just a matter of catching the ball and running with it." The star of the Raiders defense on this day was frustrated that his team blew a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter, and didn't seem to eager to dwell on his solid play in the loss. Biekert was trailing Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, after all, on his 73-yard touchdown catch in the fourth quarter, having been caught up on a crossing route over the middle on a play-action fake. "It was productive in ways, but I'm not going to just say this was a good game for me because I gave up some plays here and there," Biekert said. "Those are things I can't do, and I think that everybody needs to realize that if you are making mistakes those have to be corrected. You have to improve every week, and we have to find ways to get these mistakes that we are making out of the game. I know you are going to make some -- that's human nature -- but you have to really limit what happens on the field."
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