Raiders’ Leggett Has New Protege : Coach Who Landed Howie Long Tackles Bob Buczkowski

OXNARD — Pray for Earl’s baby. This latest one is named Bob Buczkowski, and he checks in at a tidy 6 feet 4 inches and 270 pounds, for all the good that will do him.

Were he Wilt Chamberlain’s height and William Perry’s weight, he’d still be overmatched by his new mentor, Earl Leggett, the Raider defensive line coach, who weighs, say, 325 pounds, not counting his coach’s whistle.

Leggett has already made one training table meal here memorable by sitting down in a chair and popping out its back. That is something on the order of what he has in mind for his new No. 1 draft choice.

“When Earl gets in a bad mood, look out,” Buczkowski said. “No, you can’t say enough about Earl. He’s probably the greatest defensive line coach in the game. It’s a dream come true, playing for him.”

Why wouldn’t it be? Leggett is 51, soft-spoken, Southern-accented, gentlemanly. At least away from practice.

“You know those up and down drills we do on grass?” Buczkowski says. “He got me the first day on those pretty good.”

By the second day, Buczkowski was out with a tight hamstring. He was explaining this to a writer when Bob Zeman, the linebacker coach, walked by. “Talk to someone in pads,” Zeman said.

It was a joke, and all in all, the restrained treatment. You want to know who got the real thing? It was Howie Long, who came along four defensive linemen ago, in 1981. Leggett had arrived the year before and Long, a big kid from little Villanova, was the first player Leggett had told Al Davis was worthy of a top Raider pick.

That, and the fact that Long was raw as uncooked hamburger, resulted in a memorable training camp for at least one of them.

“I thought he hated me,” Long said of Leggett. “Every minute of every meeting, I did nothing right. I didn’t know what made that man tick.”

Long is now intent on making the Hall of Fame, and Leggett has gone from the Main Line of Philadelphia to Texas Christian University for Greg Townsend, to Rutgers for Bill Pickel, and to Northeastern for Sean Jones, putting together the rest of a line that has gotten the Raiders atop the NFL in sacks over a three-year span.

Did Lyle Alzado retire? Where else to go for replacements but east to Pitt, for Buczkowski, or out-of- the-way stops like UC Davis for Mike Wise, the No. 4 pick, and Mankato State for No. 10 Jeff Reinke?

If anyone else but Davis had drafted Buczkowski No. 1, it would have gone down as the shock of the year. One Raider official said that Davis went that way just because it was Leggett’s recommendation.

And what rigors had Leggett put Buczkowski through when he scouted him?

“He had me come off the ball, make a few direction moves,” Buczkowski said. “Then he said, ‘Let’s go to lunch.’

“They told me they were interested, but they didn’t talk rounds. They said they were looking for a guy who was big, strong and fast, that I fit the mold.

“Right at that point in time (draft day), I was surprised. I thought I’d go on the second round to Indianapolis. They had talked rounds. I thought I’d go to the New York Giants. I found out this stuff later on. Apparently, there were three teams that wanted to take me in the second round.”

Long, Pickel, Townsend and Jones were drafted Nos. 2, 2, 4 and 2, respectively. Buczkowski thus becomes Leggett’s first No. 1.

If he wondered what awaited, he found out quickly, and pleasantly. Long befriended him the day he got off the plane.

“I can see why they drafted him in the first round,” Long says.

“Compared to me as a rookie? The only way we were alike was our body size and our shoe size. He’s much farther along than I was, physically and mentally. He played in a major program. He knows how to use his hands. He has a grasp of how to play football.

“I know one thing for certain, Earl Leggett will bring something out of him he didn’t know existed.”

Buczkowski said: “You really can’t say enough about the guys here. Why does a Howie Long have to be nice to me, or a Lester Hayes or a Bill Pickel? But they sit down and talk to you. I don’t think other teams are like that.

“You have all eyes watching you . . . You think about (the possibility of resentment by veterans). But I can’t say enough about the guys here.

“Howie Long was one of my idols. To be able to play alongside him? Sometimes watching films can be boring, but when you watch him on film, it’s never boring. To watch him or Bill Pickel come off the ball? There’s nothing you can do but learn from that.”

Earl’s new baby doesn’t have to worry if he can’t say enough. Earl will help make up the difference.