GREEN BAY, Wis. — If the Raiders' exhibition season was something less than a success, it's OK. They get to take it over.
Instead of starting with the Denver Broncos, the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants, as they did a year ago, this year it's the Green Bay Packers, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Oilers.
You think the Raiders have problems? Welcome to permanent hard times, where there is a different concept of the word problem .
A problem here is not when you're 8-8, and fighting your Coliseum Commission, and someone else motors up with $10 million in front money, and you have to start a kid quarterback, and everybody's worried.
A problem here is when you're 4-12, and expected to get worse, and the community feels betrayed, and the fans are booing your home-grown kid quarterback, and all you have behind him is a rookie No. 10 draft choice who couldn't even win the starting job as a college senior, and your club is so disorganized, it can't even make it through warmups.
The last is literally true. Before the Packers' second exhibition game, against the Redskins, Coach Forrest Gregg pulled his players off the field before they hurt themselves.
"Honest to God," Gregg said in words distributed to the nation in the Packers' own publicity release, "we got out there to warm up and we were so bad, I took them off the field, fearing that someone would see us and embarrass us.
"We ordinarily take three pass plays and run the ball a couple of times. Well, the first time we went out there and snapped the ball early. The next time we went out there, somebody wasn't in the right formation, and they couldn't get him in the right formation. I said, 'Hold it, wait, let's don't do this.' I took 'em off the field.
"Absolutely, it's the most frustrated I've ever been."
He couldn't have felt a lot better when the Redskins beat them, 33-0.
Gregg's first two Packer teams went 8-8, followed by a purge of veterans and last season's 4-12, followed by another purge and what looks to the local press like 2-14 coming.
"The only reason I'd say that many wins is they play Tampa Bay twice," a Wisconsin reporter said.
