Raiders Find New Way to Lose : AFC: Against Bengals, Schroeder passes test, Brown and Allen resurface, but fluke fumble in overtime does them in, 24-21.

CINCINNATI — It was the day Raider quarterback Jay Schroeder got his passing touch back.

It was the day Tim Brown got his starting job back.

It was the day Marcus Allen got some overdue respect back.

But it wasn’t enough. None of it.

Not Schroeder’s 380 yards passing and two touchdowns, nor Brown’s 104 yards receiving, nor even Allen’s clutch fourth-quarter touchdown.

Because, in the end, all that was negated by a couple of crucial turnovers, the biggest being a fluke fumble by Dan Land that enabled the Cincinnati Bengals to beat the Raiders, 24-21, in overtime Sunday before a Riverfront Stadium crowd of 54,240.

The winning points came off the foot of Jim Breech, who kicked a 34-yard field goal just over a minute into the overtime.

But those points really came off the helmet of Raider special-teams player Sam Graddy.

Graddy was attempting to block for Land, who was returning the kickoff at the start of the overtime.

Instead, Graddy inadvertently crashed into Land, helmet first, as Cincinnati’s Randy Kirk came up to tackle Land from behind.

By the time Graddy looked up, Land was going in one direction, the ball in the other.

“If we don’t do our job,” Graddy said, “everybody loses. It was a tough break for Dan and I.”

Antoine Bennett landed on the fumble at the Raider 21 and, from there, it was just a matter of how many plays Cincinnati Coach David Shula would need before feeling comfortable calling on Breech.

One was enough, as it turned out.

After a five-yard gain by Derrick Fenner, Shula signaled for his field-goal kicker, a 14-year veteran.

When Breech put the ball through the middle of the uprights, the Raiders found themselves 0-2 for the first time since 1986, a season in which they finished 8-8.

Cincinnati, on the other hand, is off to a 2-0 beginning under Shula, its new head coach, after going 3-13 last season under Sam Wyche, the man who once took the Bengals to a Super Bowl.

Cincinnati’s victory is all that more remarkable considering the cloud that has hung over the team because of a rape scandal involving 20 former and current players.

Strange things are happening, including what transpired here Sunday.

The Raiders came in struggling offensively, their passing game in dreadful shape under a slumping Schroeder. The Raider quarterback had shown an alarming inability to keep the ball out of enemy hands. He had turned it over four times in last week’s season-opening loss, fumbling twice and throwing two interceptions. He also threw five interceptions in the exhibition season after giving up 16 last season.

Schroeder’s critics were on his case with the same ferocity opposing linemen were on his heels, those critics demanding the Raiders replace Schroeder with Todd Marinovich.

But the sports talk shows will have to find another topic for now.

Schroeder, who found himself with a new starter in Brown, the fast, sure-handed receiver who replaced Mervyn Fernandez in the lineup, also found himself facing man-to-man coverage by Cincinnati.

That was all he needed to go to work.

It didn’t take long.

On the Raiders’ second series, Schroeder hit Allen for 40 yards in the flat, and followed that with a 33-yard touchdown pass to Brown in the right corner.

In the second quarter, Schroeder connected with Graddy on a 37-yard scoring play.

In all, Schroeder completed 25 of 40, with only one interception, after hitting on only seven of 24 attempts last week.

Vindication for Schroeder?

“We lost,” he said. “That’s all that matters to me. It hurts. It doesn’t matter if I throw for 500 yards and 62 touchdowns. If we lose by three points, it’s still a loss.”

It was a loss largely because the Bengals, employing the talents of both Harold Green and Fenner, gained 178 yards on the ground.

Green had 97 of those yards in 19 carries, including a 20-yard scoring run in the first quarter. Fenner added 70 yards in 17 carries, scoring on a nine-yard run in the second quarter.

When Eric Ball added a one-yard smash into the end zone in the third quarter, the Raiders, despite all of Schroeder’s heroics, found themselves down, 21-14.

On the series prior to Ball’s touchdown, it appeared the Raiders were going ahead when Schroeder found Brown open inside the Cincinnati 10.

Brown got close enough to the Bengal end zone to touch it.

If he had only taken the ball with him.

Coming up from behind, Cincinnati defensive back Rod Jones spun Brown around and stripped him of the ball. It squirted into the end zone where Jones recovered.

That was a bit of vindication for Jones, who had been burned on both touchdown passes by Schroeder.

Now, it was Brown’s turn to be steamed.

“I forgot about him,” Brown said of Jones. “I was looking at the guy ahead of me. It was a stupid play. You’ve got to protect the ball with both hands and I just didn’t do it.”

In desperate need of a game-tying touchdown, the Raiders turned to a seemingly forgotten source in the final quarter.

Their running game was struggling. Eric Dickerson had only 28 yards in 10 carries, Nick Bell five yards in two carries.

So they went to their third back--Marcus Allen.

Seldom used since ending his holdout in training camp, and reportedly in owner Al Davis’ doghouse, Allen, the leading rusher in Raider history, nearly carried his team to the penthouse in the fourth quarter.

On a game-tying drive, which covered 90 yards in 11 plays, he rushed three consecutive times from the Cincinnati 16, taking the ball in from the one.

That was as close as he and his teammates would come on a day when everything seemed to finally change for the slumping Raiders.

Everything but the final result.