Oilers Lose, But Hold Up Their End

on't tell me there's no justice: Eddie George, the stellar running back for the Tennessee Oilers, was running southbound in the Liberty Bowl during the first quarter of last Sunday's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, their AFC Central Division rivals, when he gave up the football to Chris Hudson of the Jaguars, who took it northbound for a score that helped the Jags pad an early 27-10 lead. (It was a game which, at that point, depended largely on both teams' capacity for turning the ball over.)

But late in the fourth quarter, with the Oilers behind 30-24 and driving for a score that, together with their stonewall second-half defense, would probably have put them ahead to stay, George fumbled again. All 11 Jags on the field started giving the first-down sign the other way, but the men in stripes whose duty it is to call such a thing didn't see the fumble, or thought the ground caused it, and so the Oilers caught a break and kept the ball.

And thus they would end up losing the game not by some mischance, but by the solid illogic of their own errant play selection. With three minutes to go and the ball on the Jaguars' two-yard line, it was fourth down, and the Oilers faced their options: a quarterback sneak or rollout by Steve McNair, who had led them near-flawlessly in a second-half comeback? George into the line? A short cross-over pass in the end zone to either of the two tight ends, Frank Wycheck or Michael Roan, whom McNair had found repeatedly during the half?

No, what they did instead was try a slow developing shovel pass to Wycheck at the three, who shortly looked to be moshing in the mass of bodies collected thereabouts. Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin said after the game, "There was a little play-recognition there. We'd played a good game body-to-body, and we'd seen it before." They not only saw it, they pretty well stuffed it.

Oilers coach Jeff Fisher, who called the play, said he had no qualms about it. "We did what the situation called for," he said. Tight end Roan, designated player-of-the-game by the Oilers, said much the same, "It was a situation play. We had confidence in it, and we still do."

Quarterback Steve McNair, who had to execute it, said, "I'd call it again. I wouldn't change a thing." Never mind that he didn't call it in the first place.

Most of the rest of the people who saw the play thought it sucked from beginning to end, from conception to execution to the principle of the thing.

But no matter: Nobody much, in the stands, on the field, or later on in the locker room, was much in the mood for recriminations. There was a general recognition that the Oilers had played one of their best games despite losing, and the 27,000 fans didn't seem to feel cheated.

There was one sign on the premises, "Big Cats Spill the Oilers," that might have served to keep alive the fiction, beloved to Oilers-baiters in both Memphis and Nashville, that such people who come out do so only to cheer on the visiting team.

Sorry, boys, this has never really been the case. No crowd at the Liberty Bowl, not even the first one, when Oakland Raiders fans were there a-plenty, has been predominantly anything but an Oilers crowd, and no crowd, whether paid or papered, has been anything less than animated when the Oilers did well.

Even the pitiful remnants of 15,000 or so who came out for games against the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals hazarded the wave, for example. And "Ed-die, Ed-die," a celebration of George's heroics, is an established chant at the Liberty Bowl.

There was a moment Sunday, after the Oilers' last score when they were lining up to kick off, that special-teams member Anthony Dorsett turned to the crowd and cupped his arms upward in the familiar gesture asking them to turn on the volume. He got what he wanted.

And the crowd was still making noise, even in the chill, even in the rain, when there was less than a minute left and the Oilers had to stop the Jags on third down to get the ball back. They didn't. No moans, no groans; instead an attitude of Watch This Space among the 30,000 or so who seem to have emerged as a base following for the Oilers, now 4-5 and slated to play the New York Giants at the Liberty Bowl this Sunday.