Rich Gannon knows exactly where his receivers are going to be -- and how to get the ball to them at the right place and the right time. The Raiders QB and his wideouts let us into their huddle.

	Just toss it -- one of your Hall of Famers will catch it.

Rich Gannon: Our offense depends on throwing the ball over the middle of the field. It helps that we've established a trust factor that's rare in this game. Jerry Rice and Tim Brown have made careers out of cutting across the middle for square-ins and slants. They run those routes with confidence, because I'm not going to put them in danger. You can look at film of our games and not see any examples of me putting our receivers in a compromised position, because I know where to place a pass to each of them.

Jerry Rice: Oh, man, having a quarterback who knows how and where to throw the ball in that situation is huge. It's a fine line, and nobody walks it as well as Rich. He reads our eyes and our body language. He picks it up right away, whenever he sees us accelerating into a route or slowing down as we make our cuts. We're reading the defense as we go into our routes, and he's doing the same thing. If I slow down, he sees that and adjusts. He knows exactly when I'm going to turn around. It's uncanny the way he feels the game.

Tim Brown: I've played with a quarterback who used to hang me out to dry all the time, so I know the difference. You've got enough to worry about when you're running over the middle, so it's nice to have confidence in the guy throwing the ball. It's a little peace of mind.

Jerry Porter: I'll give you a perfect example of how Rich takes care of his receivers: The 29-yard touchdown pass I caught down the sideline against the Jets was threaded between the cornerback and the safety, and showed just how pinpoint this guy is. The first thing Rich did on that play was freeze the safety with a pump fake to the middle of the field. That bought him the extra second he needed to put the ball where I could catch it at the goal line. If you watch the play, the safety made a good recovery. He wasn't that far from me, just far enough for Rich to throw it over the top of the cornerback where I could catch it before he could break it up. If Rich had thrown the ball a half-tick later, you might have been breaking out the smelling salts for me. If he had thrown it a full tick later, there's a good chance it would have been intercepted.

Rice: It works both ways. He's confident he can throw to a spot. I'm confident I can run those routes over the middle. I know he's not going to force the ball and put me in a dangerous spot.

Gannon: I consider it part of my responsibility as a quarterback to protect those guys. I want them to trust me. I need them to trust me.

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ON THE JOB: THE WISE MEN

You can't spend 10 minutes with the Raiders without hearing the reporters ask questions about "experience" and "wisdom" and "smarts." But they carefully steer clear of one word.

"Old," says 37-year-old safety Rod Woodson. "We admit it, and you can say it. Everybody in this locker room is getting older by the minute. None of us can deny that." Five Oakland starters are 36 and up, so age is a recurrent theme: the old guys being asked how they defy it, the young guys how they learn from it. How does Jerry Rice keep getting open at 40? How can Rich Gannon scramble on 37-year-old legs? How can 36-year-old Bill Romanowski play every down on D? How can Tim Brown preserve his 36-year-old body?

	Like many Raiders, Woodson has aged like a fine wine.

Nobody gets old in this game without first getting smart. Woodson studies: not only quarterbacks and wide receivers, but offensive coordinators. He'll wade through a man's career to get a handle on tendencies and preferences. Says Woodson: "They have tried-and-true plays they use when the game's on the line, so it can't hurt to take a look at their track record."

Brown's teammates marvel at his ability to keep his body intact despite hundreds of hazardous missions over the middle. Coincidence? Luck? More like Old Guy ingenuity. "You've got to choose your battles," says Brown. "There are times when you have to decide what's more important, an extra couple of yards or your body's well-being. It can be a tough call, but after running so many routes and catching so many balls, I've learned to make those split-second decisions. If you can make an extra two yards and get down safely, that's better than fighting for three and ending up on a stretcher."

For all of Gannon's flair on the field, off it he seems as spontaneous as life insurance. No nifty tricks or telling anecdotes illuminate his ability to improve with age. He says he deflects the effects of age by crossing the word "off-season" from his calendar.

It wasn't always so. When the 1987 season ended, someone associated with the Vikings shook Gannon's hand, wished him luck and handed him a booklet titled Off-Season Conditioning Program. He was told to report back a week before training camp. "Those days are long gone," Gannon says. "When we come in here now during the off-season, we're not just working out for two hours and heading home. We're watching film and going to quarterback school. We'll sit and watch the interception reel, the sack reel, the touchdown reel. There's a reel for every need."

Woodson's philosophy: "Anything for an edge." Asked to define "anything," he says, "I can't tell you that." Can't blame him. If the Old Guys let everybody know their secrets, the whole league would be filled with Old Guys, and the Pro Bowl would turn into an AARP meeting.

You've got to leave something for the kids. –Tim Keown

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This article appears in the February 3 issue of ESPN The Magazine.