[madstork]

The topic of "do Al and Howie have a problem with each other?" comes up from time to time. Dr. Z shed a little light in his mailbag today:

• Not exactly a draft question, but Steve of Naperville, Ill., read that if Chris Long might have wound up a Raider, it would have angered his dad, Howie. Why? This is deep, and very little of it has come out. To put it in its simplest form, Al Davis said at one time that he felt that Howie retired a few years too early. The problem is that Howie's body was pretty well shot when he packed it in, and he always resented that statement. Even now, he's looking at extensive corrective surgery to get his shoulder right, his back, and God knows what else. Why is it so bad? Because he spent a whole career facing the meat grinder. He played left end, the power side, in the base defense, and he'd drop down inside at other times. Not once did he ever get to put on a wide rush from the open side, as Greg Townsend did. Howie, coming off the edge at RDE, would have raised all kinds of hell, but he never got the chance to find out.