This week rather than doing a player and game we are going to do two games on Raider Greats. The next game I will write about is a Thursday night game that happened in 1983 in December during the Raiders Super Bowl season.
However, with the Raiders losing one of the ugliest games I have ever seen 3-0 to the Vikings this past week I had to talk about a game that might have been the only game I had ever seen rival that. It happened to be against the Chargers who the Raiders play this week and the QB that won the game for the Raiders, Wade Wilson, played most of his career with the Vikings.
Going into the game the Raiders sported a 3-2 record and the Chargers were 2-3. The Chargers were starting the all time bust Ryan Leaf at QB and the Raiders Donald Hollas. Hollas was a strange story who played for the Bengals in the early nineties, then didn’t play for 3 years but somehow became the Raiders backup to Jeff George in 1998.
George went down with an injury early in the season and Hollas took over. Hollas actually would end up 4-2 as a Raiders starter and while technically this game was a win he did not play well. He was off from the get go, going 12 for 35 only 101 yards with and INT and was sacked 3 times . The Raiders run game was smothered as well as the Raiders would only run 18 times for 18 yards .
The Chargers main source of Offense was Natrone Means who pounded the ball 37 times for 101 yards and caught 6 passes for 66 yards. The Chargers actually only had 195 yards of offence and 4 ints but he had 167 of them.
Leaf was awful going 7 for 17 and 3 INTs and Craig Whelihan replaced him, who would add another INT.
The Chargers scored on field goals in the 2nd and 4th quarters to lead 6-0. It was so bad for the Raiders that they did not have a first down the entire second half and were 1-18 on third down. The two teams combined for 27 punts!! With 16 coming from the Raiders.
Wade Wilson came in for the struggling Hollas and missed on his first 6 passes .
However, his 7th pass was a gem. Wilson dropped back on a 3rd and 10 and threw a perfect bomb to James Jett for a 68 yard TD and the Raiders led 7-6. The Raiders defence then stopped the Chargers offence on 4th down as they tried to get into Field Goal range and the Raiders won one of the ugliest games in NFL history.
Below are the ummmm urrr highlights of the game !