 |
| |
|
 |
 |
The man behind the curtain Raiders credit little-known Trestman for offensive successPosted: Monday January 20, 2003 8:48 PM
SAN DIEGO -- He won't be catching or throwing passes on Sunday. He hasn't scored a point or even touched a football all season. But Marc Trestman's hands are all over Oakland's top-ranked offense, and he has had as much to do with the Raiders' relentless march to Super Bowl XXXVII as anyone. It's just that we don't know the sound of his voice, his face is only vaguely familiar, and the next press conference he conducts will be his first. As offensive coordinators go, Trestman is the equivalent of the NFL's invisible man. You know he's there, but only because you can see the effect he has on others. Like 37-year-old quarterback Rich Gannon and his air raid of an MVP season. Or receiver Jerry Porter's emergence as a dangerously quick star of the future. Or Charlie Garner's supplanting Marshall Faulk as the game's most versatile back. We realize this is probably the first time you've heard this, but Trestman has been the man putting the "O" into "Oakland." Sometimes to the extreme. "I love his approach," said Porter, the third-year Raiders receiver who has blossomed this season in Trestman's wide-open passing game. "There were times last year under coach [Jon] Gruden when we'd be playing teams, get a lead, and we'd go into our big personnel [package] and start running the ball. We'd go three and out and punt it, and they'd go score, giving them hope. "All of a sudden, it's crunch time and we're only up two or three points and we've made the game a lot closer than it should have been. Whereas with Trestman, if we're up by 14, we're going to try and go up by 21. Rather than milk the clock and coast on in with a win. "That's not the way it is under Trestman or [head] coach [Bill] Callahan. Most coaches don't do that because they don't want to seem like they're running up the score. But who gives a damn? If you don't run up the score, you give them a chance of coming back." Though the Raiders haven't allowed their assistant coaches to speak with the media for most of the season, Trestman's performance as Oakland's first-year offensive coordinator -- replacing Callahan -- has done quite a bit of talking on his own behalf. While many speculated that Oakland and Gannon would struggle with their offensive guru gone to Tampa Bay, the Raiders clearly haven't been the same team without Gruden. They've been better. The Raiders' 450 points ranked second in the league, their passing game and total offense earned top billing, and they increased their yards-per-game average by more than 50 yards this season. Equally valuable has been the Raiders' offensive unpredictability. Some teams think outside the box. Oakland carves up the box, sets fire to it and throws the ashes to the wind. The Raiders have proven they can win using exclusively the pass, like their Week 2 upset at Pittsburgh, when they threw 65 times, or on Sunday against Tennessee, when all but one of their first 40 calls were passes. But they're also capable of going smashmouth when need be, like when they stuffed the ball in Kansas City's ear holes with a Week 17 running game that included 60 rushes for 280 yards in sloppy weather. The Raiders can no-huddle you to death or pound away in a more traditional manner. But with Trestman handling the passing calls and Callahan contributing input on the running plays, the one thing they won't do is back down. "I never felt like there was an audacity or arrogance to what we were doing," Trestman said recently. "I just think this is what we do best right now. We practice a lot doing a lot of different things, and if we feel teams are starting to have a sense of where we're at, we have some places to go." Like to the Super Bowl for the first time in 19 years, fresh off of back-to-back 30- and 41-point playoff showings against the Jets and Titans, which were the two hottest teams in the NFL at the time. "It's really humbling," said Trestman, who has had at least three different earlier incarnations in the NFL, serving as offensive coordinator in Cleveland, San Francisco and Arizona. "I've got to be honest with you. A lot of things have to work in your favor for things to work out this way, and it really is all about the players. I'm just happy to be a part of the ride." Led by their anything-goes offense, the Raiders' ride this season has been a thrill-seeker. Up during a 4-0 start, down during a four-game losing streak, and back up, way up, during the team's current 9-1 run. "It keeps us players with that edge," Raiders guard Frank Middleton said of Trestman's play-calling. "We never sat on the ball this year, and I kind of like that. We always tried to step on their throat and kick them in the mouth when they're down. I think our team has taken on the same attitude, that aggressive attitude. I think we have more big plays this year than we did last year, and it's all because of Marc Trestman and coach Callahan." Gannon, too, has given much of the credit for his career year to Trestman's aggressive nature. Though he looks like the mild-mannered Clark Kent, Trestman's go-for-the-jugular style helped Gannon set team single-season records for passes (618), completions (418), passing yardage (4,689) and completion percentage (67.6). Gannon's 10 300-yard passing games were an NFL record, and for a time put him within hailing distance of Dan Marino's epic 5,084-yard passing season of 1984. "I feel like he's always in the attack mode," Gannon said of Trestman. "He's not a very conservative guy, and I think that's been very beneficial to our offense as a whole." After three years in Arizona, Trestman joined Oakland last year as an offensive assistant, working with Callahan, whose duties included both the offensive line and coordinator role. But it was Gruden's offense, and Gannon at first struggled to adjust to this year's staff changes. "It took them a while to get on the same page," Porter said of Trestman and Gannon. "They had their little conflicts or whatever. They didn't see eye to eye, and the play calls were a little mixed and not to Rich's liking. But Trestman has grown to see what Rich likes and Rich has grown to see the tendencies that Tres has. So they complement each other now." Porter himself is a nice complement to the Raiders' Hall of Fame receiving duo of Jerry Rice and Tim Brown, who, after all, can't play forever. While Porter lived in Gruden's doghouse the past two years, under Trestman and Callahan, he has become something of a pet project. "I think Coach Callahan knew where I was and knew what I could do, but it wasn't in his hands last year," Porter said. "It's not like I just instantly became a football player. They just started using me. Tres had a lot to do with that. We talked last year, but he didn't have much pull in the play-calling, so we waited." That may be the last bit of patience the Raiders' offense showed. These days, it takes what it wants, when it wants it. Even if Trestman and his low profile rarely get the credit for that mentality. "He's a quiet one on the surface, but he's so aggressive," Raiders fullback Zack Crockett said. "He's a mastermind at what he does. You just sit back and watch guys like that. He's so much more hands-on this year. And we're better off because of it." Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com. |
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||||
