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Al Davis: a footballmaverick rememberedDuring his many years as the coach and chiefexecutive of the Oakland Raiders, Al Davis had one
simply stated motto: 'Just win, baby.'
ByPhil Elderkin,Contributor/ October 11, 2011
In this 1998 file photo, Oakland Raiders owner Al Davisgives a thumbs-up to fans prior to the game with theKansas City Chiefs, in Oakland, Calif. The OaklandRaiders announced Saturday, Oct. 8, that longtimeowner and Hall of Famer Davis died.Paul Sakuma/AP/File
LOS ANGELES
Brass knuckles were as right forBrooklyn-raisedAl
Davis, the owner of the NFL Oakland Raiders, as
diamonds were for the fingers ofElizabeth Taylor.
Davis, who died Oct. 8 at his home inOakland, never
did anything the conventional way. Al was a fiercely
impatient man who was also a calculated risk taker. It
didnt make a difference to Davis whether he was
taking on the commissioner of theNational Football
Leagueor his two original partners with the Raiders.
The fact that many of his best players were picked upfrom rival NFL teams who got tired of explaining their
off the field activities to police never bothered Al.
The name Al Davis first began to grow to billboard
proportions when he was an assistant coach atThe
Citadel, a military school inSouth Carolina, except
that this man who once sold hotdogs atEbbets
Fieldwas never an assistant anything.
From there, Davis joined the coaching staff at
theUniversity of Southern Californiawhere two years
of recruiting violations resulted in the Trojans football
program being put on probation.
When USC head football coachDon Clarkretired and
the Trojans gave the job toJohn McKay, Davis was
so upset that he joined theAmerican Football
LeaguesSan Diego Chargers. Even though most
fans have forgotten by now, it was Al who signed
future pro football greatsLance Alworthand Keith
Lincoln.
In 1962 the AFL's Raiders were a disaster area. They
turned in records of 2-12 in 1961 and 1-13 in 1962.
Co-owners Wayne Valley andEd McGahliked Davis's
nine years of experience as an assistant coach and
hired him to be both general manager and head
coach. The only boss Al Davis would ever have to
answer to was himself.
For many years, Davis was consistently able to find
quarterbacks, includingDaryle LamonicaandKen
Stabler, who fit the Raiders' long-ball passing game.
But whenJim Plunkettretired after the 1986 season,Al couldnt seem to find anyone to take his place,
perhaps the only time in his career when frustration
tackled him from behind.
Davis built an organization that basically was an
extension of himself. He didnt believe in titles.
Everybody under Davis was an administrative
assistant.
With Davis in charge the Raiders went 10-4 in Als
first year as head coach. After that came 15 division
championships, four conference titles, and five trips to
the Super Bowl. Three of those visits resulted in
Raider victories, in 1977, 1981, and 1984 the first
withJohn Maddenas head coach and the latter two
achieved underTom Flores, the NFL's first Latino
head coach (Davis also hired African-American,Art
Shell, a former Raider lineman, to break the league's
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Al Davis Stories
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coaching color barrier, and its first female chief
executive,Amy Trask).
The team's1984 Super Bowlvictory occurred while
the team was based inLos Angeles. It would take at
least another 500 words to explain why Davis, who
became a part owner of the team in 1966, moved the
Raiders to Los Angeles.
When rival NFL owners voted 22-0 against it, Davis
hit them with a $160 million lawsuit. Davis won,
collecting millions in the process.
One of the things Davis explained after being named
to pro footballsHall of Famein 1992 was the drive
that helped him build the Raiders into champions.
I always wanted to take an organization and make itthe best in sports, Davis said. I admired theNew
York Yankeesfor their power and intimidation. I
admired theBrooklyn DodgersunderBranch
Rickeyfor their speed and player development. I felt
there was no reason the two approaches couldnt be
combined into one powerful organization.
Phil Elderkinis a former sports editor ofThe Christian
Science Monitor.
_____________________________________________
A Brash Style and Power PlaysAllowed Davis to Wrest Control
Associated Press
Al Davis, head coach and general manager of the Oakland
Raiders, watching an A.F.L. exhibition game in Oakland in 1963.
ByRICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: October 10, 2011
When F. Wayne Valley hired Al Davis to coach
theOakland Raidersin 1963, he could not have
imagined that Davis would one day shrewdly
maneuver him out as the principal owner.
Robert Klein/Associated Press
Al Davis, center, talking
with Oakland Raiders
players at the team's
practice field in Oakland in
1963.
Davis, who died on Saturday, was the receivers
coach of the San Diego Chargers at the time.When Valley was asked what he saw in Davis, he
said: Because everybody hates him. Al Davis
wants to win and hell do anything to win. And
after losing all those games, I wanted a win, any
way I could.
Davis turned a dreadful American Football
League team that was9-33 from its inception in
1960into one with a 23-16-3 record in his threeseasons as the coach. He left in 1966 for a brief
stint as the A.F.L. commissioner.
When he returned later that year to the Raiders,
it was not as the coach. Davis had something
much grander in mind. Now he was a general
partner, head of football operations and a part-
owner after paying a reported $18,000 for 10
percent of the team. In 1969, he hired JohnMadden as the coach.
That would be one step in Daviss climb to
controlling the Raiders.
He got a piece of the team on the cheap and a
managerial grip on the franchise. Still, Davis was
a football guy without the wealth of other A.F.L.
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owners like Lamar Hunt (oil and real estate),
Barron Hilton (hotels) and Bud Adams (oil). Nor
was he as rich as Valley, a homebuilder, or
Edward W. McGah, a developer, another one of
the eight founding Raiders partners.
Valley rightly saw a rare commodity in Davis, butit did not ensure a smooth relationship. They did
not get along. Madden said of Davis on Monday
on KCBS Radio: He wasnt a pushover for
anyone. And he did like the battle. He did enjoy
arguing.
In 1972, Davis staged what looked like a coup
dtat. With Valley at the Summer Olympics in
Munich, Davis drew up a contract that he andMcGah had signed to pay Davis $100,000 for 20
years and further consolidate his power as
managing general partner. Once aware of it,
Valley sued to nullify it.
But Valley lost the suit, and in 1976, he sold out
to Davis, said Jack Brooks, a former Raiders
partner.
His relationship with Valley wasnt very good,
Brooks said Monday from San Francisco.
Peter Richmond, whowrote a book about the
Raiders of the 70s, said in a telephone interview
on Monday: Al became dictator and emperor.
Emperors become emperors for many reasons,
and one is the hunger for power. But Als hunger
for power wasnt to grind everybodys face in the
dirt. It became a thing where he could say, I can
build an empire and dominate it if I do well.
By 2003, McGah had been dead for two decades
and his family held his 31 percent of the
team.McGahs daughter-in-law and great-
grandson sued to dismiss Davisas the managing
general partner because he was denying them full
access to the teams financial records. They said
that Davis and the company he created to run the
team conducted themselves as if they were the
sole owners of the Raiders.
Here was an unusual turn of events: Davis was
being sued by the family of the man who usheredhim into the seat of total power with the Raiders.
But the lawsuit ended well for Davis. After it was
settled, Davis reportedly acquired the McGah
stake, raising his share of the team to an
estimated 67 percent.
At the time, Valleys son, Mike, saw something
familiar in the McGah familys battle against
Davis.
The power that is being exercised against the
McGahs today is the same power that was used to
pry my dad away from the team, Mike Valley
told The Contra Costa Times. I wish them all the
luck in the world.
A couple years later, Brooks said he sold his stake
to Davis, not to settle a feud, but to plan his
estate.
He did not divulge how much of the team he
owned, or what Davis paid for it.
We got along fine, Brooks said. We were good
friends, and Al never asked to buy me out.
He added: Als irreplaceable. When I met him
before we hired him as coach, I said, This guysdifferent from anybody else we talked to before.
By 2007, Davis had been associated with the
Raiders for 44 years. He decided to get some cash
flow out of his holdings and sold 20 percent of
his Raiders to three investors for $150 million.
_____________________________________________
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Posted: Saturday October 8, 2011 2:38PM ; Updated: Sunday October
9, 2011 1:40AM
Peter King>INSIDE THE NFL
Davis impacted football history, and did it
on his own terms
Story Highlights
Al Davis was one of a kind, a man who did it all a
Despite recent history, Davis' lifetime accomplish
Davis had a history of always doing things his wa
Al Davis: 1929-2011
Al Davis took a chance on hiring 32-year-old JohnMadden to coach the Raiders, but it paid off with a
1976 Super Bowl win.Ron Riesterer/Oakland Tribune
Remembering Al Davis
My favorite Al Davis story:
On a Friday night in April 2004, the night before theNFL Draft, Davis was giving me a tour of his offices at
the Raiders' facility in Oakland. In his inner sanctum,
there were four large TVs on the wall, in a diamond
configuration. He said he watched games in his office
quite often. "Basketball, women's basketball,
baseball,'' he said. "All the sports.''
"Women's basketball?'' I said, surprised. And I decided
to test him: "OK, what team took Diana Taurasi with
the first pick of the WNBA Draft?''
Disdainfully, he said: "Oh, come on. That's easy.Phoenix.''
Al Davis wanted you to know he paid attention to
everything in the world and knew something about
everything -- and knew much more than you knew
about football.
***
When I heard the news about Al Davis' death Saturday
morning, the first thing I thought was, Has there ever
been anyone like him? In pro football history, I mean.
I honestly can't think of one. George Halas and Paul
Brown are close; they founded and owned and coached
and scouted, and Halas played for 10 years. But the
number of jobs Davis did in football is staggering:
scout, assistant coach, head coach, general manager,
commissioner, team owner, team CEO. And
professional contrarian. He did many of those at the
same time.
The shame of being young today is all you've seen is
Davis' Raiders flounder. In the last nine seasons,
Oakland has been a bad team and adrift as a
franchise, and he'd been unable to bring in a smart
man to help him run the front office day-to-day. But
look at the first 42 years of Davis' professional career,
and it's clear he belongs on the Mount Rushmore of
football history.
In a 51-year pro football career, Davis scouted for the
Chargers and Raiders, was an assistant coach for the
Chargers, was head coach and general manager for
the Raiders, served as American Football League
commissioner in 1966, was one of the key burrs in the
NFL's saddle that forced the 1970 merger of the two
professional leagues, and presided over the Raiders'
AFL Championship in 1967 and was part-owner and
GM -- either in title or de facto -- ever since. No single
person played more of a role in 63-year-old Pete
Rozelle resigning in 1989; Rozelle was sick of fighting
Davis in court over the movement of his franchise. For
that reason, Davis was despised by many of the old-
line owners in the league.
In the bitter AFL-NFL signing war, Davis fired one of
the very first shots as a Charger assistant, signing
wide receiver Lance Alworth; he became the first AFL
player elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His
Raiders and the Steelers were the first teams to mine
historically black colleges for talent. He hired the first
black head coach in NFL history (Art Shell), the first
Hispanic head coach in NFL history (Tom Flores) and
he made Amy Trask the first female chief executive in
NFL history, a job she still holds. He loved giving
young people chances. The chance he took with John
Madden, hired at age 32 to coach the Raiders in 1969,
paid off. Madden coached 10 years, and he retired with
the best winning percentage in history for coaches who
won at least 100 games.
Davis' Raiders won the AFL title in 1967 and NFL titles
in 1976, 1980 and 1984. They lost a Super Bowl in
2002. The franchise is one of two to have appeared in
Super Bowls in four different decades.
Of the people I've met covering sports in the last 31
years, Davis was the most interesting personality.
7/30/2019 Al Davis Stories
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Easily. He challenged me a couple of times over things
I'd written -- one time months later deep in a story
that even I didn't remember. Time after time, on issue
after issue, Davis would abstain from voting at league
meetings, often times his way of voicing his silent
protest over a bylaw he considered short-sighted. And
sometimes I'm convinced he did it just to be a
contrarian, just to say, "I never want to be in lockstep
with the NFL -- or with anyone. I'm my own man.''
Davis loved to take the new owners in the league and
spend time with them one-on-one, to talk about how
they could work in common and to tell them how he
viewed the present and future of the sport. One of
those men was Jerry Jones, who became close to Davis
over the years. It was that relationship, in part, that
helped embolden Jones to go outside the league's
exclusive advertising deal with Coke to make a deal
with Pepsi in the Dallas area. The league sued Jones,
but eventually adopted Jones' contrarian way of selling
and marketing beer and soft drinks both nationally and
locally in separate deals. Jones, through Davis, saw
the league was a collective entity, but also saw that
each owner should be allowed to pursue deals in his
own best interests.
Once, columnist Dave Anderson of the New York
Times described Davis, raised in Brooklyn, as
"cunning." When Davis saw Anderson he said, "Come
on Dave -- don't call me 'cunning' in the New York
Times.''
"But you are, Al,'' Anderson said.
"I know,'' Davis said. "But my mother reads the New
York Times.''
So did Davis. He read everything. Talk to him for 10
minutes and you realize he was a lot more than a
football man. Don't let the last nine years color
everything you think about Davis. Davis, in his prime,
was a holy terror for those he competed with.
____________________________________________
Updated: October 9, 2011, 7:44 PM ET
Al Davis (and AFL):
Something differentBy Jeff MacGregor, ESPN.com
Remembering A Pioneer
"Al Davis Passes" isn't a headline, it was his playbook.
This is not biography. Neither is it history nor eulogy
nor expert summing up of X's and O's. This is just a
sketch of how Al Davis and those pass-happy Wild
West AFL days of the 1960s seemed to me as a little
kid.
It's hard to remember now, but back then the NFL and
the AFL were as different in type and kind as any two
things could be. And not just different, but at war over
their differences. At war, we were informed at thetime, for this nation's very soul.
[+] Enlarge
AP Photo Daryle Lamonica undoubtedly had a receiver 20-
30 yards downfield in mind if he had time to get off the
pass.
Because the NFL was all slow-motion teamwork and
Norse mythology, a grinding siege of elbow grease and
high-top shoes, antacids and good intentions. The NFL
was as buttoned-up and buttoned-down as IBM or ITT
or McNamara's Defense Department.
The AFL was Bourbon Street. It was fun that felt
wrong. Like you woke up one morning to discover your
dad had traded the family Vista Cruiser for a Vincent
Black Shadow and was dating Ann-Margret. Al Davis
was the embodiment of this, of course. Maybe even
the cause of it.
On one side was the football establishment and its
fedoras and cashmere topcoats and its dull Machine
Age regimentation -- and over there was Davis, as
loose and sleek and daring as a cat burglar. On game
day his teams all looked like they had just made bail.
He was the most thrilling villain in football history --something I could understand even as a 10-year-old
boy in 1967.
Because in '64 or '65 or '66 if you chose up sides for a
sandlot game, it was even money you'd pretend to be
the Colts or the Giants or the Packers; a safe bet you'd
stand in the pocket of your imagination like Unitas, or
run the sweep like Hornung. It was straight up old-
time football, missionary football according to the
catechism of Halas and Lombardi.
http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-different7/30/2019 Al Davis Stories
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But by 1967, here comes Al Davis and his Raiders and
his quarterback, The Mad Bomber, Daryle Lamonica.
Your daydreams just got the upgrade. No more Starr
to Dowler on the 6-yard buttonhook. Instead it's
everybody go deep and I'll heave it.
As unfair as it is to pioneers likeLamar HuntorSid
GillmanorJohn Hadl, it felt like Al Davis was the one
who set us all free.
[+] Enlarge
Mario Tama/Getty ImagesShared attributes of Al Davis and
the Vincent Black Shadow: Dangerous, dark and exciting.
Maybe it was those black uniforms. Or that logo. Or
maybe because Davis embodied for me a very specific
kind of anti-hero at a very specific moment in history.
Lee Marvin in"Point Blank."Frank Sinatra in"Tony
Rome."Steve McQueen in"Bullitt."1967. 1968.
Fictional hard guys caught between the antique days of
Sam Spade and the new world order of Harry Callahan.
That moment in time didn't last long. But what Al
Davis brought to football was their aesthetic, their
vibe, their wardrobe. Their situational morality. He
wore the same wised-up tough-guy nihilism they did.
The same hot cool. The same sunglasses. This wasn't
the harmless ring-a-ding-ding of the Rat Pack just
passed; nor was it yet the turned-on, tuned-in chronic
fugue state of Fonda and Hopper and "Easy Rider."
Rather, it was a weird little break in our cultural
progression -- not quite out of the Fifties, but not fully
into what we now understand as the '60s. So a couple
of years of violent cinematic alienation and imminent
rage in wingtips and two-button suits; of Angie
Dickinson and Jill St. John. All of it overwrought corn
and inauthentic and completely American. One minute
it's hip to be square, the next thing you know it's the
Summer of Love and even the league bosses are
rocking turtlenecks and ankle boots.
And what's sort of endearing about Al Davis -- at least
to those of us who've traveled down the timeline with
him -- is how this remained his look and his sound and
his ethos for the next 40 years. The revolutionary
authoritarian. The anti-corporate capitalist. Just win,
baby, whatever the cost or contradiction or existential
consequence.
He seemed to me then and seems to me still a very
great and terrible man. An American pirate. An
original. An answer and antidote to the dismal little
pieties and uptight fictions of the National Football
League, he was a 60-yard go route just for the hell of
it.
He was the Raiders. He was the AFL. He was what I
knew of rebellion at the age of 10.
Looking back, what Al Davis brought to football was
sex and freedom. And for that The League can never
forgive him. And the game can never thank him
enough.
Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and
ESPN The Magazine. You can e-mail him at
[email protected], or follow his
Twitter.com feed@MacGregorESPN.
_____________________________________________
The advice Al Davisgave me ...
October, 8, 2011, 4:27PM ET
By Paul Kuharsky
In the summer of 1995, as I prepared to move across
the country and start the job that qualified as my big
break, I read Slick by Mark Ribowsky.
The biography of Al Davis was required reading, amentor had told me, before I started covering
DavisOakland Raidersfor The Oakland Tribune.
Its a gripping account of Davis life, and I felt I had a
good sense of him as I embarked on the move as a
raw 26-year-old whod written a lot but was about to
take on his first beat.
There was no sign of Davis as I struggled through my
first days at training camp in Oxnard, Calif.
But not too long after I started came several days of
joint Raiders-Cowboys practices in Austin, Texas. And
there, in the white sweatsuit, he emerged.
The three fields at St. Edwards University ran end to
end, so it was a pretty good walk from the second or
third down to a fenced-in pathway that led players and
coaches to the locker rooms. Reporters walked with
them as they left the field.
http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PLAYER_ID=103http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PLAYER_ID=103http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PLAYER_ID=103http://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HadlJo00.htmhttp://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HadlJo00.htmhttp://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HadlJo00.htmhttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/www.imdb.com/title/tt0062138/http://espn.go.com/www.imdb.com/title/tt0062138/http://espn.go.com/www.imdb.com/title/tt0062138/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062765/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062765/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062765/http://twitter.com/MacGregorESPNhttp://twitter.com/MacGregorESPNhttp://twitter.com/MacGregorESPNhttp://espn.go.com/nfl/team/_/name/oak/oakland-raidershttp://espn.go.com/nfl/team/_/name/oak/oakland-raidershttp://espn.go.com/nfl/team/_/name/oak/oakland-raidershttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/nfl/team/_/name/oak/oakland-raidershttp://twitter.com/MacGregorESPNhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062765/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062380/http://espn.go.com/www.imdb.com/title/tt0062138/http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7079609/al-davis-afl-was-differenthttp://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HadlJo00.htmhttp://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://espn.go.com/www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PlayerId=76http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.aspx?PLAYER_ID=1037/30/2019 Al Davis Stories
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I was ready to introduce myself to Davis. I waited a
reasonable distance from him as he signed autographs
and charmed fans until he stepped away to start that
walk. He knew of me and the Tribune's plan, he said,
and was welcoming. We chit-chatted about a variety of
things, including where I went to high school -- he said
hed heard of it, though we didn't have a football team
and there no reason for him to know it.
It had gone well, I thought. But we still had a distance
to cover and so my mind started racing. What else
could I turn to in an introductory conversation when it
was clear Id be walking with him all the way to the
building?
And the question I came up with produced the greatest
answer Ive ever gotten from a prominent sports
figure. It was something like this:
So can you give me some advice, one Northeasternguy to another? How do I adjust to California?
We had been walking side by side, but Davis stopped,
and turned to face me. I responded in kind.
He put a hand on my shoulder and he said: You dont
adjust. You just dominate.
_____________________________________________
Chuck Klosterman:Remembering OaklandRaiders Owner Al DavisPosted Saturday, October 8, 2011 4:48 PM
Chuck Klosterman
Malcolm Emmons/US Presswire
What is one to make of a Jewish person who is
fascinated by Adolf Hitler? How do we comprehend a
man who goes out of his way to study the most hated
thing he can imagine? In 99.9 percent of all possible
scenarios, such paradoxical absorption would be dark
and meaningful. It would be twisted and bizarre, and it
would be perceived as the ultimate manifestation of self-
loathing. Unless, of course, the Jewish person in
question was Al Davis. Then it makes perfect sense. Of
course Al Davis was interested in the Nazis. Of course he
was. Somehow, it would have been more surprising if he
hadnt been.
When I woke up this morning and discovered that Al
Davis was dead, I was surprised. Now, how could this
be? How could I be surprised by the death of an 82-year-
old man who already seemed unhealthy in 1988? Yet I
was. It did not seem like Davis was killable. He was a
hard man a genius contrarian who seemed intent on
outliving all his enemies in order to irrefutably prove his
ideas were right. No one ever personified a sports
organization the way Davis embodied the Raiders, and
no one ever will. No one can. Its not possible. The league
he helped invent no longer exists in the manner he
devised. Its difficult to visualize another man who could
coach a team, then manage that team, and then own the
team. Equally amazing was the way Davis remained at
the organizations dead center on all three levels: As a
coach, he created the attack the Raiders have stubbornly
used for almost 50 years (run between the tackles, pass
vertically, and feed off intimidation). His gambling
personnel philosophy throughout the 1970s and '80s
built the superstructure for three Super Bowl victories
speed came first, reputation mattered least, and loyalty(or at least his weird definition of that word) was placed
above all. As an owner, he was always (always!) in
control of the ship, even when the ship was on fire and
hitting an iceberg. Was he impossible to work with? Im
sure he was. He did not merely have more power than
anyone else in the organization; he had more power than
the rest of the organization combined. If God had wanted
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to trade Cliff Branch, he had to convince Davis first. And
Davis probably would have said no.
Certainly, Davis did some troubling things during his 49-
year tenure with the Raiders. Even his friends
considered him ruthless, and Davis probably wouldnt
have been friends with them had they thought otherwise.
Marcus Allen gave an interview to ABC in 1992 in which
he openly claimed that Davis was trying to destroy his
life and ruin his legacy, even though Allen had essentially
won Super Bowl XVIII for him. It occasionally seemed
like Davis was trying to wreck the NFL out of spite; no
man ever made Pete Rozelles life more complicated and
less comfortable. (Although it must be noted that upon
Rozelles unexpected resignation, Davis was the first
person to shake the commissioners cigarette-stained
hand.) His behavior was impossible to predict. He
enjoyed holding grudges. His clothes seemed to matter
more than half the players he ever drafted. He was my
favorite owner, ever. I have no idea if he was a good
person.
When writing about the history of any sport, its
common to use the phrase the modern era. What those
words signify is the historical point where a game begins
to resemble whatever it is now; in pro football, we often
use the advent of the Super Bowl, the AFL-NFL merger,
or the 1978 rule changes that opened up the passing
game. However, football is still relatively young.
Someday (unless America becomes a dystopia), it will be
hundreds of years old. Someday, it will be ancient. And
when that moment is reached, the so-called modern
era will be defined as starting today. It will begin with
the death of Al Davis. He was the final survivor of pro
footballs seminal period; he designed the way aggressive
teams play, he was the heart of the AFL, and he was the
last man to carry the total burden of a team for his entire
adult life. He wasthe Raiders. Thats a clich, but its
absolutely true. There was no one else. In his final years,
Davis looked strange. He looked like a skeleton. He
looked a little like the logo on the Raiders' helmets (all he
needed was the eye patch and the knife). He physically
became what he emotionally was. And that will never
happen again. From here on out, its just football.
Chuck Klosterman is the author ofsix books. His
novelThe Visible Manwas released this month.
_____________________________________________
Insider: Al Davis wastrue 'godfather' ofNFLPosted Oct. 09, 2011 @ 5:34 p.m. ETBy PFW staff
The following quotes are from NFL scouts, coaches andfront-office personnel, speaking on the condition ofanonymity. "Nobody worked harder or sacrificed more than Al
Davis in building the NFL into what it is today. He gaveEVERYTHING. He was the true 'godfather' of the NFL. He was one of a kind. I don't agree with everything hedid a lot of people would probably agree with that but everyone respected him."
"QB is the most important position on the field. Youneed to have a plan or short list at all times. You can'twait until there is an injury to know who is available. (Dolphins GM) Jeff Ireland is being exposed when ateam works out all the quarterbacks on the street thatis a sign he doesn't know who can play or who to sign.(From my perspective,) it was embarrassing."
"If you are one of the bottom teams in the league for acouple of years, you better be able to turn it around. Withthe new CBA, teams are not going to get strangled by arookie contract for $50 million. I don't think you'll seeanother team like the Colts going to the playoffs nineconsecutive years with the new rules. It's going to beharder and harder. And if you look at it, is it good to haveteams like the (New York) Yankees in the NFL or is itgood to have a new Super Bowl winner and six newteams in the playoffs every year? That's how the leaguewas built trying to level the playing field so everyonehas a chance every year."
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"Left tackles are difficult to find. I don't think you candraft tackles and cornerbacks by always picking that(low) in (each round). Look at New England andPittsburgh (the Steelers) had that bad year wherethey drafted (11th overall) and they used it to get(Ben) Roethlisberger. Pittsburgh has not been highenough to draft a tackle. The top two tackles are usuallyoff the board by (No.) 20. Do you draft for need or doyou draft the best player on the board? If you look at
the best drafts, they are always looking for the bestplayer at priority positions."
"Players in Pittsburgh are starting to see throughMikeTomlin. You've got to remember he's not much olderthan some of the players there. The team is old and verymature. That is a well-oiled operation now. If he had ayoung team like Raheem Morris (does) in Tampa, whoknows how it would be going? I think he would have aharder time. The guys that are (in Pittsburgh) now they keep the locker room in line."
"You have to give (Packers GM)Ted Thompson credit
for letting Brett Favre go when he did in the sense thatBrett would have continued to hold the team hostage,not wanting to go to camp, but wanting to play. Throw allthat aside, and look at the amount of money invested instarting quarterbacks. It eats up a very healthy piece ofthe salary cap. You look at what (the Colts) are payingPeyton Manning you could have a couple morestarters right now if he were not consuming as much capspace as he is. They are the one organization I think thatdeserves a pass for how they started (in 2011)."
"I think one of the biggest problems you have inJacksonville is that the head coach's time ran out a few
years ago. Any time you have a situation where a coachis sticking around only because his contract is too muchto swallow, you have an unhealthy situation.Unfortunately, Jacksonville is in a market that puts thefranchise at a competitive disadvantage. They don'thave the resources the cash on hand to becompetitive in that division. The other three(Indianapolis, Tennessee and Houston) do have theresources. So it's a frustrating organization."
"(Bills owner)Ralph Wilson has good intentions, buthe has always been extremely meddling. He gets anidea in his head from somewhere or somebody and hegets stuck on them. He needs a patient GM that'swhy a lot of good ones left."
__________________________________________________
Plunkett on Davis: Heunlocked the best in meBy Jim PlunkettSpecial to Yahoo! Sports Oct 8, 2:18 pm EDT
I can remember the mounting, self-imposed pressure tothis day and, most importantly, how Al Davis handled itso perfectly.
In 1980, my 10th season in the NFL and my third withtheOakland Raiders, I was at a crossroads. As we gotready for the sixth game that season Don Coryellsoffensive juggernaut from San Diego was coming totown I was going to get a chance to start for the firsttime in more than two years.
For most of my life, starting was a foregone conclusion.But after seven mostly unproductive seasons onstruggling teams in New England and San Francisco, Iwas relegated to backup status with Oakland. For a timebeing a backup was OK. It was a chance for me to getmy confidence back. But now, I had this chance to proveto fans and the rest of the league that I still could play. Idesperately wanted to show everyone that I wasnt ahas-been, a former No. 1 overall pick and HeismanTrophy winner whose athletic highlights seemingly cameand went by the time I was 23.
And that was just the personal side. Throw into the mixthat the Raiders were 2-3 at the time. I had played a rolein that, coming in as a backup the previous week whenDan Pastorini broke his leg. I threw five interceptions asKansas City won for the first time. I could explain awaythat performance a little as getting thrown into a badsituation. Those games happen.
This game against San Diego was different. This was mychance to be on stage again, to be the man in chargeand to be at the center of what was probably going to bea high-scoring game. Thats when Al came up to me anddid everything he could to make the pressure vanish.
Thats when Al helped turn my career around.
Its not important you play well, Al said. Its importantwe win. If you go five of 15 and we win, thats OK. I was good that day, going 11 of 14 with one touchdown.More important, the Raiders were great that day, winning38-24, and from that moment forward. The rest of thestory of that season is well-chronicled. We went 9-2 therest of the season, made the playoffs, won the SuperBowl against Philadelphia. I was Associated PressComeback Player of the Year. I was the Super BowlMVP. I proved everything I wanted to and more. Threeseasons later, we won the Super Bowl again before Ifinished the rest of my career as a backup, finally retiringin 1986.
Of all my moments with Al in the more than threedecades I have been with and around the Raiders, Iremember those three sentences and 21 words most. Aldid for me what he had done for so many others. Heunlocked the best in me.
That, to me, is the real story of Al Davis, who diedSaturday at 82.
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Sure, you can get lost in the controversies. Thats easyand, to a large extent, Al liked it. He liked the image heprojected of himself and his team. He liked being amaverick. He liked the mystique.
But he always did that with the intent to achievegreatness. While critics will look at the last decade or soas a sign of how much Al had lost, you have tounderstand how much he had. Al wasnt just a brilliantfootball man, both on and off the field. He wasnt just agreat coach and personnel evaluator. He wasnt simplydedicated to being great for himself. He was all thosethings. Plus, he was the antagonist who drove hisopponents to be great just so they could beat him. Whilesome people dismiss him as sinister, he was the verydefinition of sand in the oyster.
Without Al, the NFLs journey to becoming the crownjewel of American sports would have been much longer.Al was more than happy to play the villain. He poked andprodded and cajoled the best out of everyone. He madefootball more than a great sport; he made it a drama withthe Raiders as one of the teams you either loved or
loved to hate.
For me and many other Raider greats like JohnMatuszak, Lyle Alzado and Ted Hendricks, he also wasable to coax something out of us that didnt materializeat other places. Sure, a lot of that had to do with talent,but it was more than that. In some cases, he drove us tobe champions just by giving us another chance. Thatwas especially true for Matuszak, Alzado and me. Eachof us had the talent all along, but for a variety of reasonsit didnt come out completely until we got to the Raiders.
Jim Plunkett knew a side of Al Davis many didn't get to see.(US Presswire)
When I got cut by San Francisco after the 1977 season,
I was devastated, depressed. It was the low point in astring of years I never expected coming out of Stanford.That offseason, my agent, Wayne Hooper, set up ameeting with Al. Hoopers office also was in Oakland, soit was easy. There were several teams interested, but Ididnt want to pick up and leave the Bay Area again.
More important, when Al came to meet me, all he didwas talk about how much he liked me coming out ofcollege, how tough he thought I was and how much headmired what I had done under the circumstances. With
Al, you always had to listen for a while when he gotgoing.
I signed to back up Kenny Stabler, and I truly was abackup. My first year, I never played. In 1979, I threw 15passes. When Stabler and the Raiders got into acontract dispute in 1980, he eventually was traded forPastorini and I stayed the backup until Pastorini got hurt.What I learned to appreciate during that time was howdedicated Al was to the team and the players. Al wasmore than an owner. On most teams, the owner is theowner, you dont see him very much. Al was at practiceall the time, especially the heavy practice days onWednesday and Thursday. He was always yellingencouragement or teaching. Youd hear him say, Holdthe ball high when youre dropping back.
The most important quality is that he treated us like menAt that stage of my career, I wasnt going to be able toplay for someone like Dick Vermeil, who ran everythinglike a boot camp. Al let men be men. If you were twominutes late for a meeting, he didnt fine you. If you werehabitually late, it got taken care of by the players. There
was structure even if it didnt seem like there wasstructure. Al picked guys who might have been a littledifferent OK, some of us were a little nuts buteveryone cared about winning. You might not get everyguys undivided attention during the week, but comeSunday everybody was ready to play.
Al understood that and he could expect it because theguys saw him all the time. They saw his dedication. Hewas accountable and the players couldnt help but feelthe same way. I think that may have been part of theproblem the last few years. Al just couldnt physically beout there as much as he got older. I think the current
players didnt get a chance to see what Al real ly wasabout, and the accountability was lost. The same wastrue of personnel. When Al could see the players upclose and really understand who they were, he wasamazing at picking guys who could help us. Maybe thisguy could be a good third-down back. Or this linebackerwho got cut by some other team, Al saw that he had acouple of good years left and could help us as a passrusher.
Als vision went beyond the field. He saw the future ofpay television and of marketing the team. Whenever theleague would do a marketing deal with one company,you always saw Al work with the other company to worka deal. He knew he would have to upgrade the stadiumand he knew he never was going to get the cooperationfrom Oakland. Thats why he moved to Los Angeles.When Los Angeles didnt follow through on the promisesmade to him, he had to go back. Really, I think thatworked out better. The Raiders really never were an L.A.team. They were a small-town team, a neighborhoodteam. Oakland fit much better, but Al knew he had topush the business side of the team.
Of course, there were the lawsuits and thecontroversies. I think some of that took away from his
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focus on the team, but it wasnt like he was off doingsomething else. Again, everything about Al was aboutbeing great in football. If you returned that dedication, heloved you and he was loyal. You look around theRaiders, and you see all the old players who work for theteam maybe in scouting or coaching or somewhereelse. I used to hear from other players that they couldntget jobs with their team. They had to go somewhere elseto get started after they were done playing.
That wasnt how Al ran things. He was all in and if youwere all in, there was a bond. It was always aboutfootball, always about pushing the right buttons withpeople, like what he did for me.
Or like the times, hed call my house late at night duringthe week of a game. Al would call between 10 andmidnight all the time, just to find out what I was thinkingabout the game, what was on my mind. A couple oftimes, Id be out drinking with some friends or whatever,and hed end up talking to my wife. This was before cellphones, so shed take a message, but he always wouldbe a little upset that I wasnt around.
That was Al. All day, every day, he was all about thegame and being great.
_____________________________________________
Combative Davis made hismark on the game
ByJason Cole, Yahoo! Sports Oct 8, 2:11 pm EDT
In August, one NFL owner was asked to discuss Al
Davis place in NFL history. The owner, who asked to
remain anonymous, looked at the ground uncomfortably
before answering.
Obviously, Al is important, nobody would ever say thats
not the case, but , the owner answered and paused
for almost 10 seconds before finishing. Sometimes you
just wondered if he really had to do it the way he did.
Davis, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and
one of the icons of the modern game, died Saturday
morning at 82. He was considered a driving force in
turning the NFL into the nations most popular game, as
well as turning the Raiders into a three-time Super Bowl
champion. He did that with an uncompromising and bold
sense of competition that often pushed the boundaries of
what some people thought was acceptable.
In the 1970s, for instance, Davis funded a lawsuit filed
by former Raiders safety George Atkinson against
Pittsburgh coach Chuck Noll for defamation. Noll had
accused the Raiders of having a criminal element after
Atkinson hit Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann with a
blindside forearm to the back of the head. Although
Atkinson eventually lost the suit, the tr ial heightened the
already bitter rivalry between Steelers and the Raiders,
and caused huge rifts throughout the league between
Davis and other owners.
Those rifts continued when Davis went to court time and
again, such as when he moved the Raiders to Los
Angeles in 1982. Davis even had rifts with his own
people, such as when he fired former coaches such as
Mike Shanahan and Lane Kiffin or warred with running
back Marcus Allen. In a sense, Davis life story is long -
running joust.
You cant overstate how great Al Davis has been for the
NFL,Dallas Cowboysowner Jerry Jones said earlier
this year. Jones, who was very close to Davis, then
smiled wryly and said, But he was different.
The cause of Davis death wasnt immediately released
but it is believed that he had a long battle with skin
cancer which severely hindered him physically over the
past six years. During a business meeting within the past
year, Davis had a brief seizure. Mentally, however, Davis
remained incredibly sharp, even if he was sometimes
perceived as paranoid.
When you would see him, it was really quite scary,
another owner said with complete sincerity. I remember
walking into his suite when we played the last time. My
wife had her arm around mine and when she saw Al, I
could feel her grip tighten. It was fear and it was sad. But
when you talked to him, he was still clear, quick-witted
and incredibly focused.
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Longtime Oakland executive Amy Trask once told a
group of NFL executives: When you see Al, its
heartbreaking. But when you talk to him over the phone,
its the same Al Ive always known.
Many believed that Davis physical constraints had a
direct relationship to the downturn of the team in recent
years. After making the Super Bowl in the 2002 season
(when they lost to Tampa Bay), the Raiders went on a
horrendous run of seven consecutive seasons with at
least 11 losses. That streak ended last season when the
Raiders finished 8-8.
Prior to that downturn, Davis, who first served as a
coach when he broke into the NFL, had a huge impact
on the on-field operations of the team. He not only
handpicked the personnel, he had a strong say in who
played at a given time, particularly on defense. On Sept.
30, as New England was preparing to play at Oakland
last Sunday, Patriots coach Bill Belichick fondly
remembered being interviewed by Davis in the late
1990s before Davis hired Jon Gruden.
We had a good couple days of conversation, Belichick
said. I told him when I got out there, it really seemed
like a waste of time because I felt pretty certain that he
wouldnt hire a defensive coach because he hasnt since
Eddie Erdelatz in [1960]. Its a parade of offensive
coaches out there. Hes really a defensive coordinator
and has been. You know, it was good because we talked
a lot about football and hes very, very knowledgeable
about the game, personnel, schemes, adjustments and
so forth. He was asking a lot of questions about what we
did defensively. You kind of dont want to give too muchinformation there because you know, hes running the
defense. He wasnt really too interested in talking about
offensive football.
Hes a great mind. It was unlike any other interview Ive
ever had with an owner because he was so in depth
really about football, about Xs and Os and strategy and
use of personnel and acquisition of all the things really
that a coach would talk about, thats really what he
talked about. That made it pretty unique. But he hired a
good coach, Gruden. Which is again, in all honesty, the
way that I expected it to go because thats been all the
Oakland coaches from Art Shell to Mike White, Joe
Bugel, Shanahan, you know right down the line, Lane
Kiffin, theyre all offensive coaches.
Davis style helped create a player-driven atmosphere
that both insiders and outsiders said walked the narrow
line between driven and chaotic. In the glory days of the
Raiders, players like Ken Stabler, Ted Hendricks and
Lyle Alzado were the face of the team. Later, as the
team fell apart, it was the likes ofJaMarcus
Russell(notes)andJerry Porter(notes).
When Al was around the team only saw who wasfocused and into it, but he drove those guys to be behind
him because he was so devoted to them, former
Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett said. Guys wanted to
play hard for Al but I think some of that was lost when
he couldnt physically be around as much.
Former Oakland defensive end Trace Armstrong once
said, Al loves the players, no question. But some guys
didnt always get it and when the older guys left, therewas nobody around to run the asylum.
Davis death Saturday morning creates a mountain of
questions throughout the NFL and perhaps paves the
way for the league to return to Los Angeles, where Davis
once saw the future and then had to abandon it.
IN the immediate, Davis wife, Carol, and son, Mark, are
expected to assume control of the team. However,
numerous sources around the NFL believe that neither
will want to keep control of the team in the long run and
are expected to sell relatively soon.
Al tried to float the idea that Mark would run the team,
but most people look at that as Als dream, not a reality,
an owner said earlier this year. I dont see any wa y
Mark holds onto the team. Hes just going to cash out.
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NFL owners are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Houston.
The Raiders were on the way to that city Saturday to
play the Texans.
_____________________________________________
Jim Otto on Al Davis
Jim Otto (left) with Al Davis at Otto's induction to the BayArea Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.
Pro Football Hall of Fame center Jim Otto had aparticularly close relationship with Davis. Hereswhat he said in an interview with Chronicle StaffWriter Steve Kroner.
Ive been loyal to him and hes always been loyalto me. The passion that he had for people andlife was phenomenal, witnessed by his time spentwith his
wife when his wife was deathly ill. He never lefther side until she came out of her coma. His
passion for life was tremendous with regard toeveryone, not just his people, but other people,too, that he wanted to help.
In the early to mid-60s, the passing game. Hewas very instrumental in the passing game, thewide receivers, the split ends and spreadingacross the field for the passing game and goingvertical. That was his game. Basically, he also ranthe West Coast offense before the West Coastoffense was run. We did all that type of stuff. Bill Walsh got the West Coast offense from us andhe took it where he went. Mr. Davis was aninnovator of all those things.
He was quite serious in private, too. His sense ofhumor, he derived it himself. When he wanted to
be funny, he would be funny and it wasintentional. He was a little different than other
people with regard to a sense of humor. He wasvery much an all-business man: It was football,
football, football and there werent too manyfunny things that happened with football.
People scorned him for his successes. A lot ofpeople dont like successful people and Mr. Davis
has been very successful in the things that he hasdone. People dislike that very much.
He was a very loyal person. I know a lot of peoplehave said that. (He was) very loyal to me and my
family. Ive had a lot of physical problems since Iretired. There were several times when I was veryill. Every time I was ever in the hospital and Iwas in the hospital many, many times he calledevery day, checked me out, made sure I was allright. Sometimes, I found out later that he wasvery disturbed by the way I sounded. Thank
God, Im here and I always came through it. Heworried about me and he worried about a lot ofdifferent people. Thats the way Mr. Davis was.He was a caring man, very caring man. Manytimes, he told me how much he loved the Raider
fans in Oakland and as we were coming back toOakland, he couldnt get back there fast enough.
_____________________________________________
Tom Flores on Al Davis
Tom Flores (right) and Al Davis in 1981.
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Former Raiders coach and current Raidersbroadcaster Tom Flores talked with ChronicleStaff Writer Steve Kroner in the wake of Al Davispassing. Heres what Flores said.
First of all, the fact that he passed was notsurprising but the fact that he passed wasshocking if that makes any sense because weall knew that he was in poor health and was
struggling and doing the best he could to do whathe had to do, but its sad. How else can you sayit? Its just sad when reality hits you right inthe face, and thats what happened, reality hit usright in the face this morning when I wasawakened very early. Ive known him for 48 years.We were both young people when we first startedand trained together.
It was quite obvious, his passion for the game,the game of football itself, the people that
played it, the people that coached it and owned
teams and were part of the growth of the game.And with that came his compassion and passionfor players that have played for him and playersthat have played elsewhere. He just loved the
game and respected it so much. His loyalty tothose that were close to him was just withoutequal. He was my coach, my mentor, but mostof all, he was my dear friend.
One of the things that I remember vividly is whenI was in Seattle and my wife took ill. She hadbreast cancer, and the first call that I got was
(from) him. I wont go into any detail but thefirst call that I received was from Al. How heheard about it, I dont know, but he called and hewas there. Some of the things that he did thatyou never hear about. You just never hear aboutit because he did it quietly, without fanfare, buthe did it because of his love and respect forwhomever he did that gesture.
First of all, his vision for the game sometimes wastaken out of context, but then as the years wentby, people would look back and say, Well, Al wasright about this. Al was right about that. He wasbig on size and speed. Speed and size were alwaysa big part of his evaluation and his direction. Heloved the wide-open game. He loved the big plays and all of those are a part of the game today.This league has turned into almost a passingleague. I dont know if he envisioned that asmuch as it is today, but he certainly liked that
part of the game when I was involved with him,which was a long time. There are so many things.Right now, its kind of hard to reflect oneverything because its such a sad day.
I think sometimes people didnt think he had aheart, but his heart was bigger than life.
_____________________________________________
"For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writesnot that you won or lostbut how you played the Game."
GrantlandAl Davis' StrategicLegacyWhat the "vertical pass" guru contributed to
football
By Chris Brown OCTOBER 11, 2011
Andy Hayt/Getty Images
In recent years, it became easy (and sometimes evenappropriate) to mock Al Davis and his beloved Oakland
Raiders. From the poor on-field results and questionable
personnel moves to Davis'infatuation with speedand his
seemingly never-ending quest to find a modern version
of the "Mad Bomber," Daryle Lamonica, the past few
years have been ugly. And nothing, perhaps, was uglierthan the Raiders' ill-fated selection of quarterback
JaMarcus Russell with the first overall pick of the 2007
NFL draft. Russell had a strong arm, but he ate
androbo-tripped sipped sizzurpuntil he became persona
non grata in the NFL. But none of this should
overshadow what Davis built and also what he left
behind, even if at the end he seemed to be grasping at
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the shadows of the Raiders' past success. Among his
greatest contributions is the least well understood: the
vaunted Raiders "vertical passing game."
Davis picked up the aerial bug from passing-game guru
Sid Gillman when he was one of Gillman's assistants
with the San Diego Chargers in the 1960s. Gillman, the
"Father of the Modern Passing Game," introduced
several innovations to the air attack, the first of which
was timing. Gillman preached meticulous practice to
sync the precise timing between quarterback and
receiver, or, more precisely,between the quarterback's
dropback and the receiver's route. If the quarterback
took a five-step drop, the primary receiver had to run his
route based on a precise number of steps, such that
quarterback would throw the ball before the receiver had
turned to look for it. The secondary receiver in
thequarterback's progressionran his route a split
second after the first receiver, so that the quarterback
could look for the first receiver, reset his feet, then look
for the second and still throw before that receiver turned
to look for the pass. Nowadays, this emphasis on timing
is so universal in theory if not entirely in practice
that it's difficult to believe how influential Gillman was
in establishing it. His second insight was to understand
pass defenses and how to defeat them at a level far
beyond the old command to "get open." Defeating a
man-to-man defense, then as now, is about identifying a
receiver who can get open versus a particular defender.
Zones, on the other hand, require more thought. Gillman
realized that the key to defeating zones was spacingbetween receivers; specifically, if a defense had only four
underneath defenders, then five stationary targets
even five trash cans spaced evenly horizontally across the
field are uncoverable. The defenders are
outnumbered. Thus, the idea of the zone "stretch" was
born.
When Davis left Gillman's staff he took Sid's playbook
and, more important, his ideas with him.1But Davis
wasn't content to stretch the field horizontally; he
wanted to get vertical. If Gillman could get a trash can
open against a zone, Davis tested how good he'd do if he
added his favorite ingredient: speed. Gillman, of course,
used "vertical stretches" passing concepts that spaced
receivers not left to right, butdeep to short but for
Davis they became the centerpiece of his offense. Indeed,
this is what Davis meant when he brought the "vertical
game" to Oakland. It was not a matter of throwing deep
bombs (though it was sometimes), but was instead the
science of stretching defenses to their breaking point.
With receivers at varying depths, a small defensive error
often meant a 15-yard pass play for Davis' offense, and a
serious mistake meant a touchdown.
Davis continued to tweak the Gillman offense by adding
more formations, adding options for running backs in
the passing game, and generally expanding the
possibilities of what an offense could do with the
football. This was innovative stuff, so much so that it had
an outsize effect on a young Raiders assistant coach by
the name of Bill Walsh, who went on to craft his own
multi-Super Bowl-winning offense with the 49ers that
looked a lot like what Davis had created in Oakland. As
Walsh explained in his bookBuilding a Champion:
"[Al Davis'] pass offense included an almost unlimited
variety of pass patterns as well as a system of calling
them, and utilized the backs and tight ends much more
extensively than other offenses. To develop anunderstanding of it took time, but once learned, it was
invaluable."
This is not the description of the Al Davis offense you
usually see as some kind of simplistic, backyard,
"heave it up" strategy. Sure, Al wanted to hit the long
ball, but it was all part of his system. Al Davis' "vertical
game" was, in short, built on stretching the defense
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vertically while using all available receivers deep,
intermediate, and short to take what the defense gave
up anywhere on the field. It's not Al's fault that defenses
often yielded big plays to the Raiders.
In Davis' offense, as is the case today, the ultimate
vertical stretch passes are true "flood" or three-level
vertical stretches, with one receiver deep, another at an
intermediate depth, and a third short. Pass defenses
generally have onlytwo layers of defenders deep
safeties and underneath coverage players so when
there are receivers at three depths it is extremely difficult
to cover them all. For example, Davis' early Raiders
teams often used the "strongside flood" route,a pass
concept still popular today. On the play, an outside
receiver runs a "go" route straight upfield, trying to beat
his defender deep and otherwise taking the coverage
with him. An inside receiver here the tight end runs
a corner route at 15 yards, breaking to the sideline while
an underneath receiver here the running back runs
to the flat. On the backside, the outside receiver runs a
post route as an "alert" for the quarterback. He's not the
primary read, but if the deep defenders overreact to the
three receivers to the right, the home run shot is always
available. Because the defense has only two defenders
(the corner and the safety) to cover three receivers, it
shouldn't be able to defend the play. Al's secret and it
is the same secret Gillman discovered and Walsh
extended is that the surest way to hit those deep
passes is to consistently hit the underneath ones.
Courtesy of Chris Brown
Davis also pioneered the use of "slot" formations, in
which the tight end lines up to one side by himself, and
two split receivers position themselves to the opposite
side. From this they could run all manner of vertical
stretches, but one the Raiders used quite well (and which
many teams also use today) began with the slot receiver
running vertically downfield and the outside receiver on
adeep square-in or "dig" route. This pattern more
directly attacked the deep safeties and linebackers,
defenders Davis knew would be vulnerable to his fleet-
footed receivers.
Courtesy of Chris Brown.
These vertical stretch passes help explain why Davis
became obsessed with speed. Obviously, speed gives a
vertical receiver a chance to get behind the defense, but,
even if he does not actually get open, he
still stretches the defense, thus opening up the entire
field. Speed distorts defenses, forcing them to cover
wider swaths of the field, and thus exposing the weak
defenders and the voids around them. If Davis could
have a receiver like Warren Wells, who in 1969 totaled
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1,260 yards on only 47 catches for the Raiders a
staggering26.8 yards per completion then his other
receivers would have plenty of room to roam.
And yet, while Davis may have been hooked on speed
and the vertical game, those addictions weren't
responsible for the Raiders' struggles in recent years.
Instead, the Raiders have been derailed by weaknesses at
the two most important positions for implementing
Davis' vision as owner: head coach and quarterback.
Throughout the 1970s, Davis had John Madden, a coach
who could make Raiders football a reality. And for more
than a decadeOakland had two quarterbacks, the "Mad
Bomber" Lamonica and Ken Stabler, who could execute
the sophisticated vertical passing game the way Davis
wanted.
But long after Madden, Lamonica, and Stabler left the
Raiders, Davis remained. As the years went on, Davis
couldn't expect his coaches to run the offense exactly as
he'd taught it to Bill Walsh nor did he want them to, at
least not exactly. But he always knew how he wanted it to
look, and at times the Raiders achieved something close
to the brilliance that had once been the norm. In
football, great teams and great organizations exist only
in the moments before the next signing season or injury
or retirement, or even the next death. It's simply not
reasonable to expect what Davis accomplished early in
his Raiders career to continue into perpetuity. But,
despite whatever bitterness or decay emanated from the
Raiders in recent years, the fact remains that Davis gave
all of us more than we gave him. He didn't just mold his
football team and his coaches and his players in his
image he molded the game itself.
Chris Brown runs the websiteSmart Football. Follow
him on Twitter:@smartfootball.
_____________________________________________
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