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Perhaps. But even if Tatum is the only savage-minded safety in professional football—and that seems dubious—his case is complex enough to merit consideration. For while his "confessions" may be tasteless and disturbing, he tempers them with a sort of pathetic self-pity ("I am not an assassin, but rather a human being with a deep compassion for little children"). He also tells of a ghetto boyhood in Passaic, N.J., and football as his only way out. At every stage of his career, Tatum says, he has been judged mostly by how hard he hits, first by a shrewd high school coach, later by Ohio State's notorious Woody Hayes, and finally by the Raiders. If he has done his job too well, the rules of the game are partly at fault, Tatum insists, and he proposes reforms: banning quick slant-in passes that leave receivers little running room, zone defenses that give a Tatum too much time to zero in on his target, and linebacker blitzes that take a heavy toll on quarterbacks. As for the spirit of the game that he so crassly violates, he can hardly be excused. But there are others to share the blame: the Raiders' owners, coaches and fans who pay Jack Tatum to be their "assassin." -