WASHINGTON -- Former Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams unleashes a harsh attack on Jay Schroeder, alleging in his forthcoming book that his adversary and one-time teammate had an ego so big, 'I don't think there was a hat in America that could have fit his head.'
Suspicion was strong that Williams, who led the Redskins to a Super Bowl title in January 1988, and Schroeder, now a starter on the Los Angeles Raiders, were bitter rivals during their coinciding years with the Redskins in 1986 and 1987.
Williams, who is out of football, says in his book, 'Quarterblack: Shattering the NFL Myth,' that he and Schroeder 'didn't ever get very close.'
When Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs brought Williams to the team as a backup to Schroeder, Williams said, 'I could sense right from the beginning that (Schroeder) felt threatened by me.'
'I was somebody who had been successful in the league and could do some things pretty well,' Williams says in his book, which is being run in excerpts in The Washington Post, the first appearing Sunday. 'You could see Jay was a little unnerved by my presence. But he played fairly well in 1986.'
It was after the '86 season that Williams says Schroeder's 'attitude went out the window.'
'The worst thing that ever happened to Jay Schroeder was being picked for the Pro Bowl and getting a bigger contract,' Williams, who lives in his childhood hometown of Zachary, La., writes with co-author Bruce Hunter. 'The Redskins gave him $900,000 a year.
'After he played in the Pro Bowl, his ego ballooned, and it was already big to begin with. I don't think there was a hat in America that could have fit his head.'
While Schroeder could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday, one person in the front office of the Raiders said Williams' description of Schroeder is contrary to 'the Jay Schroeder we've seen. He is very humble and nice.'
In the Redskins' last game of the 1987 season, Williams recounts how he replaced a faltering Schroeder and rallied Washington to an overtime victory over the Minnesota Vikings.
'Everyone could see Schroeder wasn't playing to the level that we needed to make a run at the Super Bowl,' Williams writes. 'So Coach Gibbs named me the starter for the playoffs.
'After I became the starter, Jay Schroeder wouldn't talk to me. He couldn't deal with my taking his position.
'As soon as they benched him, Schroeder started acting like a spoiled little kid.'
Williams said Gibbs 'bent over backwards' for Schroeder.
'During the (1987) season, a lot of players came to me and say they couldn't understand why I wasn't the starter ... they were upset. They thought it was a black thing.' Williams is black. Schroeder is white.
'I just told them, 'I'm not worried about it, don't let it bother you. If that's what Coach Gibbs wants to do, that's what we'll do. It's fine with me.'
'I didn't want to get caught up in a racial issue again,' writes Williams, who was the target of race-based criticism during his years with the struggling Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
'I had been fighting being a black quarterback all my life, and to make this a black issue would have been detrimental to the team.'
Williams is the only black to quarterback a winning Super Bowl team.