Cheating Is Encouraged

THE OAKLAND RAIDERS, by far, are the most colorful, unusual, and bizarre team in the NFL. Despite their outlaw appearance, this menagerie of misfits and rebels is damn entertaining!

From their inception in 1960 to their Super Bowl wins this renegade team has displayed a number of colorful characters and personalities unmatched by any other NFL team.

Fred Biletnikoff’s football hero was a 5’ 9”, 178-pound wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles by the name of Tommy McDonald. He was the inspiration for Biletnikoff wanting to be a wide receiver. Freddy himself was a 6’ 1”, 190-pound wide receiver drafted out of Florida State by the Raiders in the second round of the 1965 AFL draft.

Freddy knew from the very start that he had to be not only a physical ball player, but also a mentally fit player. Biletnikoff was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988. His presenter was his former boss, Al Davis.

Freddy may have not been the biggest guy on the team or the fastest, but Stabler knew that he had the heart to play . . . and play well.

“Freddy represented everything the team was. He wasn’t the biggest, and hell, I could outrun him, but he had a tremendous heart. He would always find a way to come up with the ball—those rawboned hands always snatching a ball out of the air when you needed it most.

“As a wide receiver I had the opportunity to play my entire career with Freddy. He was incredible. I’ve seen players today drop more passes in one game than I ever saw Fred Biletnikoff drop in his entire career!”

During quarterback David Humm’s rookie year, he had the opportunity to work out with Biletnikoff.

“My rookie year I measured 6’ 1” and weighed in at 180 pounds. I decide I’m going to stay behind and work out as late as the latest guys, and the last one to leave was always Fred. I would work out with Freddy and his bag of balls, jump rope, hit the speed bag, do all the stuff in cycles.

“I’d say to Freddy, ‘You done?’ He’d say, ‘No, no, no!’ I mean we would be out in the dark working out by the light of the back door.”

“I just loved going out there and staying after practice,” said Biletnikoff. “It was fun to be able to think about your routes, your footwork. I mean, the ball’s not always going to be perfect. I liked being able to think about how high it might be, how low, covering my ass and catching all of those balls, too. You got to practice like you’re going to play.”

“You can’t go out on the field unless you feel good. The more comfortable you make yourself, the better you feel. So to make the uniform roomier, I would cut underneath the jersey—underneath my arms, and you’d feel like you didn’t have a jersey on.

“Then I would slit the back of my pants, because they were real tight pants. It looked ragged, but it was comfortable. And right where the jersey comes around the front, I would slice that down so it wasn’t so tight around my neck.”

“One time we won a game in Cleveland late in the year. There are three buses for the players afterwards. I always got on the last one, and this time there was just Fred, Snake, and I in the back. Snake had a pint of whiskey in his bag. They had a drink. We were about ready to go. Then [Al] Davis gets on, the last guy. He sits behind the driver. Next he turned around and looked towards the back of the bus, stands up, and holds up a letter from the league, points to it, and says to Fred, ‘You cost me another $2,500 with the way you mess with your uniform.’”

“Biletnikoff says, ‘Fuck you, Al! You told me, ‘Whatever it takes.’ Davis looked at him, and he laughed, and sat back down and just shook his head.”

Back in the day, Freddy used a then ‘legal substance’ that was rightfully named Stickum. Stabler recalled what equipment manager Dick Romanski would have to go through.

“Dick Romanski would get the stuff for Biletnikoff. It looked like a huge glob of goo. From afar, it looked like it might be a four-inch bloody gash seeping through his socks. After he catches that first pass you have to go right to the official and get a new ball because that one was all sticky. He was that way the whole game. Madden swears he once caught a pass that stuck to his forearm.”

“You needed paint turpentine to get the stuff off,” said Pete Banaszak. “Fred would have it everywhere—his uniform, his head, his nose, and his mouth.”

“It took me a day to wash off Biletnikoff’s helmet,” said Romanski. “But Freddy didn’t really need the help in catching a ball. He just used it to remind himself to hold on to the ball. Not that he needed to. Best pass catcher I ever saw!”

“It was more psychological than physical. I never used it in practice or training camp. Only games. The biggest thing was you were able to hold on to the ball when you were fighting with the defensive back, and you have to have any opportunity you can to get a grip on it. But yeah, you’re going to pull some balls out of your ass with it. Sometimes it helped a great deal.”

“Whenever he fell, he’d try and protect himself and turn to where he didn’t get his hands in the dirt and the grass,” said tackle John Vella. “I’d be across from him in the huddle, and there were times when his fingers would be stuck together, and he had a bunch of grass stuck to them. Stabler would be calling the play, and Freddy would be saying, ‘JV, help me out.’ I’m reaching over to separate his fingers because they’re all stuck together.

“I remember being in the locker room at halftime and Fred couldn’t hold the cigarette. He’d have Romanski actually hold the cigarette for him so he could smoke it!”

Monte Johnson describes Freddy’s “dinosaur-like” noises as part of his pre-game ritual.

“Madden made the comment one time, ‘Depending on how many times Freddy threw up, you knew what kind of game he’d have.’” I think it was superstition, but whatever it was, Freddy would disappear into the bathroom, calling dinosaurs. That’s what we called it, because he would make these odd, groveling, groaning noises. Like a dinosaur might make.”

“I was just real nervous and intense. It was the waiting, waiting for hours. Every game to me wasn’t just a game. It was a big game. Every game meant something to our team, and to me. The thought that you were never prepared enough when you went on the field—putting that on yourself is going to make anyone sick—until everything starts. And then you’re fine. Then everything falls into place.”

“Freddy was always a mess before games—nervous, hyper. He’d smoke a pack of cigarettes in the locker room and drink four or five Cokes. And he had a whole elaborate program for getting dressed to play. It would sometimes draw a crowd.

“First he would take a pair of scissors and snip off every little thread hanging from his pants. The threads could be so minute that most naked eyes couldn’t detect them, but Freddy twisted and turned those pants in the light till he got them all. His pants had to come just over his knees, and he would cut them in back for more freedom. He wore his black socks just over his calves so the flesh was bare to the knee.

“Then he would go through the ceremony of what shoes to wear. Receivers tend to be real picky about their shoes, depending on the field conditions and the weather. Even on perfect days, Freddy was picky. He might put on a pair of Riddells, then go to a pair of Spot-Bilts, then pull on a pair of Converse. One day I saw him put on one Riddell and on Spot Bilt. I guess one cut better to the left and the other to the right.

“He was so superstitious he’d put a dime in one shoe and two nickels in the other. He literally turned on a dime. And he always taped a crucifix under his shoulder pads that looked like they were made out of a couple of Kotex.

“Once he finally decided on his shoes, Freddy would tie them about twenty-five times to get them just right. Whatever that was. Pete and I would drive him crazy. Sometimes we’d hide a shoe or lace up a pair and skip an eyelet near the bottom.

“Freddy would tape over his shoes up to the ankle, which was called ‘spatting.’ He would tape his arms from just below the elbow to the wrist, then take a can of Stickum and spray the tape. Finally he would pull on his helmet and adjust the chinstrap.

“Then Pete would walk over, wink at me, and say, ‘Goddamn, Freddy, your uniform looks like shit today!’

“So Freddy would take the whole son of a bitching thing off and start all over.”

Biletnikoff was also very superstitious. He’d wear the same pair of socks every game and chew the same number of pieces of gum. Before every game Fred would tie and untie his shoelaces about fifty times. Then he would lie on his back on the locker room floor, tossing a football to himself over and over and over. When it came to Stickum, Fred used twice as much as Lester Hayes ever did. Fred had a routine: he would come back to the huddle and go right to John Vella. John would literally pry Fred’s fingers apart or tear off the grass that was stuck to the palms of his hands.

Dick Romanski had to carry Biletnikoff’s gum with him throughout the entire game.

“Every time he came out of the game, he had to have new gum. He was superstitious like that. Sometimes he would want Spearmint, sometimes Juicy Fruit. It was always three sticks. At times I’d mix ’em all up and he wouldn’t know the difference.”

George Blanda was a 6’ 2”, 215-pound quarterback out of Kentucky. He was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the 12th round of the 1949 NFL draft. He played ten years with the Bears, a year with the Colts, seven years with Houston, and nine with the Raiders. Blanda was cut by the Raiders prior to the next to last preseason game against the 49ers in 1976.

Blanda’s replacement was a twenty-three-year-old kicker out of Boston College by the name of Fred Steinfort. By 1977, after only a half year with Oakland, Steinfort was on his way to the Atlanta Falcons.

In 1981, Blanda was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His presenter was none other than Al Davis who, at that time, was the managing general partner for the Raiders.

What makes this even sadder is the fact that once you retire from the NFL, they are basically through with you. You are just a commodity. Once you are used up, they get rid of you. George deserved better than that.

“It was embarrassing. It’s like waiting to be beheaded. I was like a cancer out on that field. The players treated me like I had leprosy. I wish I had known what the situation was before I got here. I never would have come. I have no animosity toward Al Davis or John Madden. I just don’t care. Have you ever gotten to the point where you don’t care? I don’t care.”

“It’s was really sad,” said Biletnikoff. “They owe you something. There should have been some way of having him leave that would give you a good feeling. There should have been something to bring a tear to your eye . . . it’s like the guy going to the electric chair.”

“I thought for sure that there would be a big press conference and he would go out with glory,” said Stabler. “George deserved it. As cold and hard as he was, I enjoyed being around him. He would tell you what he thought. If you liked him, fine. If you didn’t like him, the hell with you.”

The only way to describe Bob Brown is that he was one tough, mean son of a bitch! An offensive tackle out of Nebraska, Bob stood 6’ 4” and weighed 280 pounds. He was absolutely massive! Brown was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round—second overall—of the 1964 NFL draft. He spent five years with the Eagles before being traded in 1969 to the Los Angeles Rams. After two years with the Rams, Bob was traded to the Raiders in 1971, where he completed his final three years in the NFL. After becoming a four-time finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Brown was finally inducted into the prestigious fraternity in 2004. Bob’s son, Robert Brown Jr. was his father’s presenter. Brown’s nickname was “Boomer.”

Bob Brown left his mark not only on the Raiders organization, but many other NFL teams. Kenny Stabler found Brown to be a most intriguing character.

“Bob had a massive upper body and little bitty calves. Brown could run (and keep up) with some of the backs. But most of all, he was mean. He wrapped his forearms from wrist to elbow over lengths of hard molded plastic. It was like he carried two clubs. He just hated defensive linemen and was devoted to making them pay for troubling him, particularly those who used the head slap. Bob punched back and would always go for a blow to the solar plexus.”

“He was the only offensive lineman I ever heard say things like: “I try to punish defensive ends. My game is based on an attack formula. I use a Two Hand Rip Up to attack soft spots like the spleen, the liver, and the solar plexus. I think the universal quotient for the particular occupation is pain, and I attempt to apply pain constantly!”

Bob Brown was different and he was proud of it. He did things his way, and if anybody didn’t like it, well, he did not send sympathy cards.”

He was always weight lifting. We had a lot of guys who regularly pumped iron, but Bob was the only one who ever pumped in the dining hall. He carried a dumbbell to lunch and did curls with one hand while he ate. An ambidextrous eater, he would then switch his fork and dumbbell into the other hand and continue. Dumbbells looked like cufflinks in Bob’s hands.

“On his first day of training camp after coming over from the Rams in 1971, guys were just jacking around on the practice field. Bob Brown lined up in his stance in front of one of our wooden goalposts. Then he fired out and laid a forearm smash on the upright. The post shattered and toppled over dragging the crossbar to the ground.

‘Can you believe that big fucker?’ I said to Stabler. ‘Breaking a damn goalpost with his forearm?’

“‘He’s in the room next to ours,’ Pete said. ‘I hope he doesn’t slam the wall.’

“I think everyone was about half scared of Bob Brown, including his roommate Gene Upshaw,” said Banaszak.

“One night I head six or seven gunshots go off in rapid fire right outside my room. Freddy came in and I asked him what was going on.

“‘Bob Brown brought some pieces from his handgun collection to camp,’ Freddy said. ‘He’s out back firing into the air to check the gun’s action or something.’

“‘Or something?’ I said. ‘Did you tell him that might not be the best idea?’

“Bob played the weak side of the line. This made him uneasy. He took his complaint to Kenny Stabler.

“The Raiders got the reputation in 1973 of being a left-handed team,” said Stabler. “The media kept reporting that we ran mostly to the left side because I was left handed. We did run left more, even without the tight end set over there, but it had nothing to do with me. We had Shell and Upshaw over there and they buried people.

“Bob Brown didn’t like to be thought of as a player on the weaker side of the line, and he kept complaining in practice that we didn’t run off right tackle enough. The next thing I knew, we went to the line of scrimmage in a game and Bob registered his complaint so that all could hear.

“‘Can I please get a few fucking plays run to my side?’ he said in that booming voice of his.

“I looked over at that small mountain glaring at me and I nodded. The next play went right over the top of him, and everyone on the opposing line knew it would. All Bob did was drive his defensive end about four yards off the line while tying up the linebacker at the same time.

“Bob Brown kept himself in great shape, loved to play, and he was that rare offensive lineman who played football mad . . . all the time

Guard George Buehler stood 6’ 2” and weighed 260 pounds. He was drafted by the Raiders out of Stanford in the second round of the 1969 draft.

George was considered to be the strongest man on the team. He was a stellar athlete, but had a habit of losing interest in the game. Sometimes the other linemen would have to slap him around in the huddle to bring him back. Left guard Gene Upshaw said this about George: “He did have a tendency to drift a bit. Yelling at him didn’t always work. He seemed to have his mind on a hundred different things other than the game. It took a good slap to get him concentrating again.”

Fullback Pete Banaszak tells about a particular game when the Raiders’ were behind and driving for a last minute go-ahead touchdown.

“Everyone was deadly serious as they listened to Kenny Stabler call the play. Then, all of a sudden, Buehler started talking to me and asked, “Where’d you get those shoes? I’ve been thinking about changing mine and maybe I’ll try a pair like yours. I like that fancy design.’

“We called George ‘The Mad Scientist’ because he loved electronic gadgets. He made a little remote controlled tank that he used to send out to pick up his mail every morning.”

George also liked remote controlled airplanes. Unfortunately for George, he didn’t know how to use the controls. He brought a plane to training camp one day. We were all in full gear ready to scrimmage and George started flying his airplane around the field. The coaches told him to put the toy away but something was wrong with the controls. The plane started diving at us almost as though there was a crazed pilot flying it. Buehler was punching the control box with his fist and cussing while everyone else was running around ducking and dodging. Finally, the plane crashed into the goal post.

Clarence Davis was a 5’ 10”, 195-pound running back out of USC. He was the fourth round pick of the Oakland Raiders in the 1971 NFL draft.

One time we were playing in Pittsburgh and Clarence Davis came up to my room with a big smile on his face. He said, ‘Tate, I just gave an interview for you.’

“Clarence started explaining with a smirk on his face. ‘You remember the time we went out to dinner in Oakland and you left me? Remember, Tate? Remember that time when you left with that big dude’s lady friend?’

“I remembered what C. D. was talking about. One time, when he and I went out to dinner, I noticed this nice looking lady sitting across from us staring and smiling at me. Well, she got up to powder her nose and I just happened to get up to make a phone call. Anyway, I talked with her in the lobby and we both decided to leave together. She left her boyfriend and I left C. D.

‘Damn, C. D., I hope you didn’t get upset about me sticking you with the check for dinner.’ I replied.

“‘Oh, no, Tate, I wasn’t angry about the check I got stuck with. The lady’s friend had a knife and she wanted to stick me with it. I was lucky to get away with my life so I decided to do you a favor. That’s why I gave an interview for you.’

“C. D. was overly excited. I knew that he must have really stuck it to me, so I asked, ‘Okay, tell me about it.’

“‘Well, Tate, I was down in the lobby just minding my own business when this man comes up to me and starts asking questions. It was strange, though, because he kept calling me Mr. Tatum.’

“I knew what had happened. A lot of times reporters and even fans mistook Clarence and me. Really, though, I can’t see the resemblance. I’m much better looking.

“The man who came up to C. D. was a reporter and he wanted to interview me. He asked C. D., ‘Tell me, Jack, what receiver of the Steelers do you fear the most?’

“Obviously, the reporter was startled at my arrogant display of verbal abusiveness or, I should say, at C. D.’s. The man asked a second question: ‘Tell me, Jack, what do you think of the Steelers’ running backs?’

“The reporter was really taken in and he started firing more questions at C. D.

“‘Do you have any respect for anyone on the Steelers’ club?’ asked the reporter.

“‘Mister, if I told you the Steelers were gutless suckers, that would be a compliment. Ain’t none of the Steelers worth a damn, and tomorrow me, Mr. Jack Tatum, will personally beat them all over the stadium. You can quote me on that!’ Clarence told the man.

“The man did quote him and the Steelers read the story. Let me tell you, I had a hell of a time explaining everything to the few friends I did have on the Steelers club.”

In 1976, tight end Bob Moore was sent from the Raiders to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the expansion draft. Dave Casper took over his position.

Casper was one of the bigger tight ends of his day. A product of Notre Dame, “Ghost” stood 6’ 4” and weighed in at 240 pounds. In 2002, Casper was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His presenter was his former coach, John Madden.

Dave Casper, like the rest of the team, was a little “different.” According to offensive guard and former Notre Dame teammate Steve Sylvester, Dave was sometimes a bit . . . weird.

“Sometimes he was one of the guys. He played golf on Tuesdays and he was involved in all the tournaments. But sometimes, after games, when we would go hang out, he would go down to the estuary by himself and get his fishing rod and fish. Hey, on that team everybody beat their own drum.

“Madden loved Casper. He loved his weirdness. ‘He’s off the wall!’ John would say.

“Casper would draw up these crazy plays on the blackboard. ‘This is what we gotta do!’ It’d be something like a tight end around double reverse. Madden would love to watch it happen—on paper. But he’d never use the plays.”

Raiders guard George Buehler would sometimes be totally lost when talking with Casper.

“He’d frequently say things to you that you sort of wondered about. If you walked up to him and asked him a question, he’d ponder the answer for a second or so. Then he’d give you a series of confusing answers.”

“Casper would purposely say odd things to John and get him started. One day we’re about to go on the field for practice, and Madden was all pumped up, and Casper says, ‘Hey, coach, did you ever notice that if you lost something you find it in the last place you looked?’”

“Madden looked at him and said, ‘Well, yeah, that’s just stupid. It’s the last place you looked because after that you stop looking.’ So Casper says, ‘Coach, one time I found something in the last place I looked, but because I didn’t want it to be in the last place I looked, I kept on looking.’”

“And he just walks away. Madden is dumbfounded. With Dave, everything he said was sort of rhetorical. There were no right answers.”

“Dave was with us, but not really with us,” said Dave Humm. “He was a part of it all, but he could also leave it all behind him. He was torn between being a professor and a really good football player.”

When the great Jim Otto retired, Dave Dalby took over the center position. Dave was a product of UCLA and was drafted by Oakland in the fourth round of the 1972 NFL draft. Dalby was good size. He stood 6’ 3” and weighed 247 pounds. His nickname was “Double-D.”

In 1975, Dave started in every game of the season. Continuing this streak, he eventually played in 205 consecutive games.

As part of Dave’s wedding vows, it was included that he would have Thursday night out—for every night of his life! Now how many wives would agree to that inclusion?

John Vella had numerous stories of Dalby, as he was his roommate for nine years.

“If you had to vote for the most popular guy on the team, Dalby would win hands down . . . and there wouldn’t have been a close second. That’s how much he was liked, how much people liked being around him.

“Dave loved beer. As roommates, we were going to split the cost of groceries. We’re picking out groceries, and he picks up a case of beer. I didn’t say anything. I’m not a big beer drinker. A case would have lasted me a month at home. But for Dave it only took two or three days for it to be gone. And during that entire time, I had only one. He had twenty-three. I said, ‘Double-D, we’re not splitting beer anymore.’

“Fifteen minutes before practice was over, he’d always start going around to his best buddies and say, ‘Bamboo Room? Bamboo Room? Gonna have a beer?’ He was already recruiting for the next good time; the next time for some camaraderie. The look on his face was like a little heartbroken kid if you said no, so you always wanted to say yeah, because you didn’t want to see that look on his face if you said no. You couldn’t say no to Double-D.

“Dave was not a fan of the press. He didn’t want to explain himself. I remember a couple of times where he would be upset when the sports writers were inaccurately talking about us, putting blame on me or George for something that wasn’t even our assignment.

“Double-D was the prime example of the guy who really understood that linemen don’t get attention, and a guy who didn’t care to have it.”

Ray Guy was a 6’ 3”, 195-pound punter out of Southern Mississippi. He was drafted in the first round of the 1973 NFL draft by Oakland and it was a steal! To this day, Ray Guy not only remains the only punter drafted in the first round, but is the first and only punter to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“Al Davis was a risk taker.” said former 49ers coach and general manager, Bill Walsh. “Al knew a player when he saw one.”

When Davis drafted Guy he had a broken foot, but after his foot healed and the Raiders saw his 60 to 70 yard punts, they knew they hadn’t made a mistake.

“Our punter for the last two years was Jerry DePoyster. He had three punts blocked in the ’72 season and I feel it was because he had to catch the ball against his body, and you wondered if he was ever going to get it off. Every time you go to punt, you wonder, ‘Is it going to be blocked, or dropped?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go through this again.’

“People said, ‘How do you draft a punter in the first round?’ Because every defensive guy wanted him because he helped the defense. Because every offensive guy wanted him because he helped the offense. And of course everyone on special teams wanted him.”

Even though Ray was one hell of a punter, his nervous energy allowed him to practice with the safeties—”but just practice,” as Madden put it.

“Ron Wolf told him [Ray] he could play safety when he signed him. The first day we practiced, I look up and we have Guy in at safety, and I tell him to get the hell out of there. He said, ‘But Wolf told me that if I signed with you I could play safety, too.’ I told him, ‘Ron Wolf lied!’ We never had another conversation about him being a safety.”

“I used to let Ray practice with the safeties [during walkthroughs] because he was such a hyper guy,” Madden continued. “He couldn’t just stand around. He’d always want to jump in and help, play defense against the receivers when you were walking through practices. He could throw the ball farther and harder than any of our quarterbacks, so then we started letting him throw the ball, which was safe, and it got his energy out of him.”

“If he wasn’t singing and playing guitar at Clancy’s, he was hoisten’ a few brews with the guys,” said Banaszak. “Hell, you look alongside of you to see who had that pitcher of beer and Ray was right next to you slopping them down with everyone else.”

“Yeah, it was fun. First we’d hit Uppy’s then the Grotto, Big Al’s—from Castro Valley to Walnut Creek to Jack London Square. We’d try to get to all of them. It’d take half the night to do it, but we would do it. Then always back to the Denny’s at three or four o’clock in the morning. Boy, did you feel bad the next day at practice.”

“I don’t like complex things. Life’s too complex as it is. But as soon as I got to the team, there was that family sense. After the first day, it was like I had been there all my life. They were just like me. It made me feel at home.”

Even though Guy had done well during the preseason, he was still a little apprehensive about the first regular season game.

“I had a great preseason, but when I stepped onto the field for the first real game, I was nervous. I grabbed the ball and hit it, caught it good, but when I looked down the field, the ball wasn’t there. It went about five or ten yards and about four rows into the stands. Talk about being nervous—I didn’t even know which bench to go to.”

“When I finally made it back to the Raiders bench, the first person I saw was George Blanda. He said to me, ‘You messed up, didn’t you? What did they draft you for? To be a punter? Then go do it. Have fun.’

“That hit home. I got up, got over it, and started mixing with the players. It was always like eleven guys moving at one time, and they were smoking when they did it. We were kind of like those Transformers. You keep turning all those parts. You fold them in and out and suddenly it’s one big man.”

“I just learned that every part of your body has a natural process, and you just have to keep everything in a natural alignment. You have to have timing and rhythm. Specifically, you don’t grip the ball tight. You drop it where your foot naturally wants to be. Then you trust your instincts.

“Where the power comes from, I haven’t a clue. Maybe it’s the long legs. Maybe it’s the muscles. Maybe God gave me something a little bit extra.

“It was at the 1976 Pro Bowl in the New Orleans Superdome when people began to talk about me hitting the dome’s hanging scoreboard on a punt. As the team was walking to the line, it just hit me right then. Why not? One of the officials, Jim Tunney was standing next to me when I heard him say, ‘You’re going to try it, aren’t you?’ I nodded my head. When the ball was snapped, I knew if I caught it right, and I had the right trajectory, I’d at least come close to it.

“Then when I kicked it, I knew I’d done it. When the ball left my foot, it was a perfect spiral. It just started rising and rising. If I’d been a yard further back, the ball would have gone over that thing. As it was, the back of the ball hit the top of the gondola, and the ball fell straight down.

“I had to re-kick the ball. This time I nailed it good; went just under the gondola. All I did was lower my drop a little bit. While practicing for the ’81 Super Bowl, I nailed that sucker four times in a row. When we came out on Sunday, they had raised that sucker all the way to the top!”

After being a finalist in 1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2007, and 2008, Ray Guy would finally be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014. His presenter: no other than his former coach, John Madden.

Before he was known as the “Judge,” Lester Hayes was affectionately nicknamed “Lester The Molester.” If I’m not mistaken, I think it was me who came up with the nickname.

This 6’ 0”, 200-pound Texas A&M defensive back was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in the 5th round of the 1977 NFL draft.

In his junior year at Texas A & M, Lester was converted from linebacker to strong safety. When the Raiders drafted him, they made one more change. They moved him from strong safety to cornerback—a position he didn’t really like.

“I was 6-2, 230 pounds, I was a linebacker and strong safety,” Hayes said. “I’m thinking, You don’t move All-Americans; you move other dudes.”

While in rookie camp, Lester pleaded with John Madden to talk to Al Davis about his case—to leave him at strong safety.

“I’m hoping, wishing, praying that Mr. Davis would say something,” Hayes said.

“Son,” Madden told Hayes, “you can play bump and run and you can play cornerback.”

“My face,” Hayes said, “dropped to my knees. I was driving down Santa Rosa Boulevard, crying.”

By being fearless, proud, and tenacious, Lester turned out to be one of the best corners in Raider history.

If any player was created to play a particular position, Hayes was born to be an NFL cornerback. He had the perfect body for a corner during the ’70s and ’80s when the “bump and run” defensive technique was allowed in the league. In addition to his size, Hayes could run like a deer and turn direction in an instant as he covered the best receivers of the day. His strong upper body and long arms allowed him to jam receivers at the line of scrimmage and most receivers never made it past 5 yards downfield once the Molester got his hands on them.

One of the best matchups on any given Sunday were Lester and Seattle Seahawk wide receiver, Steve Largent. They were both equally competitive as well as aggressive and would battle one another from the first down to the last.

Also during his rookie season, Lester was introduced to Stickum by Fred Biletnikoff.

“Try that, rookie,” Biletnikoff said as he walked away leaving Lester confused. “I thought,” said Hayes, “that Fred had put axle grease in my hands.”

Hayes absolutely went overboard when he began using “Stickum” all over his uniform and body. That’s right—his entire body! I followed and then running back Mark van Eeghan—”The Grass Monster” also started spreading it on his jersey. However, Lester took the use of Stickum to a level no one had ever seen before. Prior to every game, he would spread an ungodly amount of this glue to every part of his body and uniform that he felt could help him in intercepting a pass. In fact, because of his excessive use of this substance the NFL banned the use of Stickum in 1981 and the rule is now known as the Lester Hayes Rule! Did he need the Stickum to help him become a better player? Probably not, but then again any small advantage helps when every Raider played to ‘just win.’

Lester now reflects back at his introduction to Stickum and laughs at what it did for his career.

Linebacker Ted Hendricks was a one-of-a-kind player. Even though he possessed an extremely high IQ, he was as crazy as they come. They didn’t call him “The Mad Stork” for nothing!

Hendricks was 6’ 7” and weighed only 220 pounds—light for a guy of that height. He was drafted out of Miami (FL) by the Baltimore Colts in the second round of the 1969 draft. Like other members of the team, Hendricks didn’t find his niche in football until after he had completed five years with the Colts and one year with the Packers. In 1975, Green Bay, like Baltimore, had had enough of Ted and traded him to Oakland. It was the best move ever for Hendricks and, in 1990, Ted was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His presenter: none other than Al Davis.

“The thing I couldn’t figure out was why they wanted me when they already had Irons and Villapiano,” said Hendricks.

The big event of Hendricks’ career happened when the Raiders were at Denver and losing 17–7. In the third quarter, middle linebacker Monte Johnson was out with a back injury and was replaced by Mike Dennery. Dennery couldn’t do the job, so Madden called upon Ted Hendricks. In the Raiders defensive system, the middle linebacker always called the defensive signals. Unfortunately for Hendricks, he didn’t know the signals.

“In the first huddle, I asked if anyone else knew the signals. Everyone shook their head. I only knew two defenses—man to man or zone—so I used them for the rest of the game. We were able to shut down the Broncos offense and did not allow them to score again. We beat Denver, 42–17.”

But Ted wasn’t happy with the way Madden kept alternating he and Monte Johnson. Ted wanted more playing time but found himself on the bench more than on the field.

Hendricks purchased a harlequin mask to wear on the sidelines because he was sad.

“Madden was alternating the middle linebacker position between me and Monte Johnson. During the Denver game I was on the bench. I was very unhappy. I put on this harlequin mask that I had bought at a Renaissance Fair. It was a smile to show that I was sad underneath that I wasn’t playing. The ABC cameraman captured it on national TV.”

Against the Bengals in the division playoffs, Hendricks was magnificent. It would be his first full game as a Raider and with that he tallied up four sacks for the day along with a blocked punt. Al Davis was quoted as saying, “He played like a madman out there!”

“We’re having a scrimmage. Ted is trying to vault over Hubbard’s block, and he hits Hubbard in the head. Hubbard’s laying knocked cold. The Ted kicks him in the head with his cleat. Not maliciously.”

Villapiano said that Ted brought more than just his playing ability to the team.

“Teddy Hendricks brought the Miami spirit to the Raiders. Now, you try not to live by this, but you have to in a way. The Miami spirit is ‘Help yourself and fuck the rest.’ And what you mean by that is taking care of your own fucking job, and then help wherever else you can. And when you fucking dominate somebody, then you can help the linemen. But help yourself first. At the end of the day it’s very true. And if anyone should know that, Ted should know. He fucking dominated.”

“Before it was outlawed, Teddy was a master at the clothesline tackle. One time Joe Kapp was running a naked bootleg when he encountered Teddy in the open field. Kapp tried to juke him but Teddy wouldn’t bite. The clothesline went out and Kapp nearly lost his head. Kapp just looked up at him and said, ‘Nice hit, kid.”‘ Then he stumbled back to the huddle shaking his head. Teddy took pride in his ability to clothesline.”

“A bunch of Raiders were riding a bus to a golf tournament in the California desert,” said Matuszak. “It was hot and dusty and everyone wanted a drink. When the guys asked the bus driver to stop at a roadside store, he kept on driving as though he never heard them. They asked again and this time he refused. Teddy didn’t appreciate his lack of concern.

“‘You stop this bus right now,’” he screamed. “‘Or I’ll stop it because I’ll be the one who’s driving it!’

“When the driver stopped the bus, Teddy took food and drink orders for everyone.”

Marv Hubbard was a 6’ 1” running back who was drafted by the Raiders in 1968 out of Colgate. From experience, teammate Bob Moore describes Hubbard’s street fighting techniques on the gridiron.

“He was unbelievable. He was just a street fighter. When he ran the football, he was looking for a fight. Marv probably ran all of a 5.5 forty at the time. He’d start the season at 250 and work his way up to 275—and his mission was to run right over you. You’d slip off your block, and he’d be running past you, right up your nose. He wasn’t trying to avoid you. He was trying to run right through you! It didn’t matter how big you were, he was going to make you pay.”

Madden only needed a few words to sum up his running back: “Hubbard was tough!

“He was tough and he enjoyed being tough. He enjoyed a good fight. He said where he came from you could go to a bar, have a drink, fight a guy, knock him down, pick him up, dust him off, buy him another drink and you were buddies. He said, ‘I come out here to California, go to a bar, have a drink, get in a fight, knock a guy down, they want to sue me! What the hell is that all about?’

“He was so proud of the technique where he could punch the window of an establishment, break it, and not cut his hand. He did this one time too many, and the owners of the establishment informed Marv that the next time he broke a window they were going to call the cops.

“And so I called him in and told him, ‘You can’t do that.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I pay. I’m not running away from anything.’ I said, ‘But you can’t break the window of a business. You just can’t do it.’ And he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t do it. I told him, ‘Just don’t do it.’ And he stopped doing it. But he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t do it. Or why he couldn’t fight.”

“He played real hard and partied real hard,” said van Eeghen. “But a lot of people did. One night he rode his motorcycle through the Piccadilly Pub in Castro Valley.”

“It was a straight shot back to front,” said John Vella. “There was a long hallway from the back door before you got to the bar and you could go straight to the front with no tables or bar stools in between. So Marv rode his motorcycle from the back straight through to the front. I’m not saying people had to dive to get out of the way. It wasn’t like he was going 100 miles an hour. But put it this way, though, he never stopped.”

“Marv played the entire ’75 season with a dislocated shoulder. We had to have a belt wrapped around his ribs tied to the belt on his pants so his arm couldn’t go any higher because it would come out of his socket. He went to Stabler before one game and said, ‘Snake, if you’re going to throw the ball to me, it can’t be any higher than this because of my arm.’” Ken looked at him and said, ‘Marv, we’re not showcasing you in our passing attack today.’”

On one play back in 1970 between the Raiders and the Chiefs, Marv Hubbard and Kansas City linebacker Willie Lanier hit the hole at the same time.

“When they hit, the whole stadium went silent,” said Duane Benson. “I thought they were both dead. Then Hubbard jumps up and says, ‘Is that the hardest you can hit?’ Next thing you know, Hubbard is walking toward the other goalpost. He was so knocked out they had to escort him off the field.”

“Marv loved to block,” said Stabler. “He used to say, ‘I get this nasty little thrill out of sticking my helmet into somebody’s stomach.’ Then he’d chuckle.”

“One night after a loss, a group of us were heading for Clancy’s, a restaurant in Jack London Square. We had started at Al’s Cactus Room and hit another bar or so before reaching San Francisco, and Marv was ready to break something. Loud music was pouring out of the open doors of a rock n roll club in the square, and Marv hollered, ‘Turn that shit down!’

“The rest of us kept walking, thinking nothing of it. Then someone yelled, ‘Fuck you!’ and went at Marv—a big mistake on that man’s part. Marv grabbed him by the throat, threw him up against the wall, and popped him. Another guy tried to sucker punch Marv, missed, and also got himself punched out.

“After that, his aggressions apparently all out [of his system], the man who had gone to Colgate on an academic scholarship joined us in Clancy’s for a nice dinner.

“But Marv could get a little crazy on the field, too, particularly when we played the Chiefs.

“Kansas City was always the toughest competition in our division until the late 1970s, when Denver came along. Kansas City also had the best middle linebacker in the AFC, if not in the entire league. Willie Lanier weighed about 240 and hit like he weighed 260. Marv went to war with Lanier every time we played KC because our fullback plays were all off-tackle and up the middle.

“Marv would take a pill that we called ‘rat turds’ from a Coke cup, get that jaw working, get that glazed look in his eyes, and just hammer away at Lanier. And late in the games, when our running attack picked up a lot of yards because defenses tended to be beaten down from all the pounding by then, Marv would start yelling at Lanier when we broke the huddle. He would point at Willie and yell, ‘Here I come! I’m coming right at you, Willie!’

“And that’s where the play would be going! I’d scream, ‘Shut the fuck up, Marv!’

“Marv got into it with another middle linebacker in one game after receiving a couple of cheap shots in pileups. He stood up and yelled, ‘I’m gonna get you if I have to bomb the bus you’re on!’”

Quarterback Daryle Lamonica was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the twenty-fourth round of the 1963 AFL draft. At 6’ 3”, 215 pounds, Daryle played four years with the Bills before being traded to the Raiders where he would finish out the next eight years before retiring at the end of the 1974 season.

Kenny Stabler and Daryle Lamonica were two different quarterbacks with two different styles of play. According to Stabler, Daryle didn’t get the nickname “The Mad Bomber” for nothing.

“Daryle was known as The Mad Bomber—a big, strong guy who would throw the ball long and throw it often. He had come to Oakland from Buffalo in 1967, led the AFL in passing, and took the Raiders to their second Super Bowl. He played behind a good offensive line and had excellent receivers in Warren Wells, Freddy Biletnikoff, and Billy Cannon.

“Daryle was not as popular as George Blanda was with his teammates. Blanda was a man’s man and everybody respected him. Lamonica was aggressive, had a tremendous ego, and was always talking about how well his outside business deals were going. His personality did not sit well with some of his teammates. I liked him because he always took time to answer any questions I had. But we had different styles of play.

“In my opinion, Lamonica was a good thrower, not a good passer. Up until 1970, most teams stayed in man-to-man defenses. But later, teams began mixing in zone coverage. Daryle could not adjust because he was not a touch passer.

“But Lamonica was the starting quarterback, Blanda was the backup, and I accepted the role of third stringer. The 1970 season was devoted to learning and getting to know my teammates.”

Missouri defensive end John Matuszak was the first pick of the Houston Oilers in the 1972 NFL draft. The 6’ 8”, 280-pound Matuszak played one year with the Houston before spending a year in the WFL with the Houston Texans. From there he found himself with the Kansas City Chiefs, but that only lasted for two years. Like with other misfits and rebels, the Raiders signed John to a contract in 1976 (after the Chiefs had traded him to the Redskins where he didn’t last through training camp)—even though he had a long list of former coaches, former teams, behavioral problems, and substance abuse issues.

A week following his release from Washington, Matuszak received a call from Al Davis.

“I received a call from the Raiders telling me that Al Davis wanted to meet with me. He was interested in signing me with Oakland. With all the crap Al had probably heard about me, I’m sure he wanted to see if I had three eyes and a pair of heads.

“I was a little nervous about meeting Al since I had had two previous encounters with the team: I bloodied one of their quarterbacks and cursed their sideline. In both incidents, I was playing for the Chiefs.

“In one game, I tackled Clarence Davis just as he was about to run out of bounds. It was a hairline call that could have gone either way. But John Madden went haywire. He started screaming at the refs, demanding that they call a penalty. If the hit had been obvious, I would have minded my own business. But I didn’t think John had reasonable grounds for arguing so wildly on such a borderline call. Obscenities were exchanged between me and the Raiders and I ended up giving them the ‘we’re number one’ sign—to no one in particular.

“My other run in with the Raiders was when they replaced Kenny Stabler with George Blanda. George was forty-eight years old and at the end of his career. When the ball was snapped, his O-line broke down and I busted through for a sack. The shot was clean—helmet to helmet—but George went down hard. There was blood running down his face and he had to be helped off the field. I was worried on how the Raiders and Al Davis would take that.”

“Upon meeting Al, he said that whatever problems I’d had in the past didn’t mean a damn thing as far as he was concerned. He knew I could play in this league and that’s all that really mattered. He couldn’t use me in that week’s opener against Pittsburgh, but he would definitely find me a spot on the team. He shook my hand and said he was glad to have me as a Raider.

“I was flabbergasted, close to tears. I probably would have hugged him, but I didn’t want to get fired before I was hired. I signed for eleven thousand, five hundred dollars.”

“Madden asked me about Matuszak. He asked if I thought John was any good. I said, ‘Every time we see him play, we laugh at him. He just can’t do anything.’

“I didn’t recommend him. They signed him anyway. He didn’t have a lot of moves, but he definitely had a lot of power.”

“At that point, with all the injuries, we really needed a defensive end,” said Villapiano. “Al kept bringing in these other people, and I kept saying, ‘Al, they’re horrible! I got a guy in Bowling Green named ‘Mad Dog’ MacKenzie. He’s selling for Carnation Foods. He’s as good as these guys. Can we bring in Mad Dog? Give me someone who can fuckin’ play! I’m out there on an island!’

“So one day Al calls me and says, ‘I got your guy: John Matuszak. But I’m going to get him a house next to your house. And I want you to watch over him. He’s fucking wild.’

“And then we finally started playing some fucking football. And now we had a fucking defense. He was perfect for that team.”

“I’m the kind of guy who’s all or nothing. I mean, if I’m going to go out and get screwed up, I do it all the way.”

Dolphins’ defensive tackle Manny Fernandez remembers an incident with Matuszak at a bar.

“It was in January of 1974. The Dolphins were in town (Houston, Texas) to play the Vikings in the Super Bowl, and me and a couple of other guys walked into a bar called the Sports Page. As we made our way into the darkened part of the bar, we heard a loud bang! It was Matuszak. He shot a hole in the ceiling to honor the entrance of the guys going to the Super Bowl.”

When John Madden confronted Ted Hendricks as to whether or not Matuszak would be a good fit for the Raiders, Ted replied, “Look around you, John. What’s one more going to hurt?”

“It’s strange,” said Matuszak. “When people expect you to be wild, talk about you being wild, encourage you to be wild, you begin to be wild. It’s almost as if you become your image. There were times when I tried to live up to other peoples’ expectations, be the life of other peoples’ parties, and I wound up getting hurt for it.

“But I don’t want that misconstrued. Ultimately, anything I did was my decision.”

One of the linebackers on the team was Jeff Barnes. Like many others in the Raiders organization, he was a little strange. Matuszak recalls two stories about Jeff.

“Once there was a power outage at the Coliseum after one of our practices. The entire stadium went black, including the players’ locker room. Everyone was bumping and fumbling around the locker room when a voice came out of the darkness. It was Jeff’s.

“Another story has to do with an airplane. On a flight to a road game, our plane had just landed when, all of a sudden, it was approached by a man driving one of those luggage trucks. This guy was coming up on one of the wings awfully fast, but we all figured he would brake in time. He didn’t. He ran right into the tip of the wing. One of the guy’s spoke with the pilot a few weeks later and the pilot said the driver had caused something like $75,000 worth of damage. He was also fired from his job. Just after the incident, Jeff put it all in his own unique perspective.

“‘Boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s a good thing we weren’t in the air when that truck hit us.’

When the Raiders broke training camp in 1979, Coach Tom Flores asked Stabler if he would room with Matuszak.

“I went over to his office, wondering what was up. I found Tom pacing around with his head down, looking concerned.

“Tom looked up at me and asked, ‘Who’re you rooming with in Oakland, Snake?’

“‘Well, wound you mind rooming with Matuszak?’ Flores said. ‘We’d like him to move out of the trunk of his car.’

“‘It’s no joke. Last season, when he wasn’t living with some woman, I hear he actually spent some nights in his goddamn car. Now we need performance out of John this year and it’ll help if he’s settled in one place. Will you take him in?’

“Flores smiled. ‘You’re about the only guy on this team who can handle him, Tooz.’

“‘I don’t know if anyone can handle The Tooz.’ I said, remembering our loss to Denver in the 1977 playoffs.”

“John had partied the pregame night away. When he got back to the hotel in the morning, he decided he didn’t like the window draperies, so he tore them down—rod and all. A hotel employee tipped the Broncos that Matuszak was in bad shape and the Broncos ran out the clock over him. They had Tooz gasping for oxygen in that high altitude the whole final quarter. That wasn’t the reason we lost, but John was real depressed on the flight home.

“I like John. He’s basically a good guy,” I said. “And I know he felt bad about that 1977 playoff game. I don’t think that’ll happen again.

“Although I’m obsessive about keeping my cars, duds, and living quarters organized, everything neat and polished, I told John he was welcome to join me in the condo.”

“‘Hey, Snake, that’s damn nice of you,’ he said, ‘But I’ll have to see the place before I decide.’

“‘The Tooz always has offers for his person,’ he said, pushing out his chest.

“The moment John looked through the sliding doors and saw the hot tub, he cried, ‘Goddamn, Snake, this is me!’

“He got right on the telephone. And before we had even unpacked, The Tooz, myself, and three airline stewardesses were all cavorting naked in the hot tub.

“John began tossing a girl into the air and catching her in the water. He grabbed a second girl, who couldn’t have weighed over 100 pounds soaking wet, which she was. When he threw her skyward, the girl must have sailed up about eight feet. The Tooz gave an appreciative roar, and the girl let out a piercing scream. An upper floor window came open and a woman yelled, ‘A little quiet, please!’

“John hollered, ‘Quiet this, you . . .’ and I reached out and clamped a hand over his mouth.

“‘Tooz, we don’t want to get thrown out of here the first day,’ I said. ‘We can have fun without riling the neighbors.’

“He floated on his back and waved his dick at the upper window, whispering, ‘Quiet this, neighbor.’

“Typically, John would go out wearing a flashy multihued shirt, red, white, and blue suspenders, tight jeans, flip-flops or cowboy boots, and a pair of New Wave wraparound sunglasses, usually chartreuse,” said Stabler. The attention didn’t stop there.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve seen The Tooz walk into a bar, grab his shirt at the chest with both hands, rip it open to the waist, and growl like a lion at the top of his lungs. That tended to get everyone’s attention.

“He particularly enjoyed stomping into the gay bars in San Francisco and scaring the shit out of everyone in them. Eyes glaring and muscles bulging, he would let out that roar and it would rattle glasses on the bar and just freeze everyone solid. He loved to see fear on people’s faces.

“His favorite cry when he entered a bar with me was, ‘Stabler will arm wrestle anybody in here for $5.00!’

“One night we went into a quiet San Francisco restaurant. An attractive and petite young woman wearing a tailored suit was seated at the bar near the entrance. As John walked by, he scooped her up onto his shoulder, saying, ‘Get up there, little lady.’ He kept walking until he reached another pretty and diminutive woman at the bar. ‘You too,’ he said and hoisted her onto his other shoulder. He carried them to a table in back and gently sat them down.”

“‘Now, what would you two gorgeous girls like to drink with The Tooz and his partner here, The Snake?’ he asked, charming the women who ended up at the condo with us later that evening.

“At a disco one night, we met two young women and decided to take them to a quiet bar across Jack London Square. John picked both of them up on his shoulders and we walked down the street. Approaching the open door to the bar, John bent down and the girls ducked too. But they couldn’t get low enough. One girl screamed as John crossed the threshold, bumping both girls’ heads on the doorframe.

“‘I’m used to women yelling around me,’ John said, rubbing her head. ‘I’m sorry, but hey, you got to play with the small hurts, as Vince Lombardi used to say.’

I don’t think that John and Vince Lombardi would have hit it off very well. John didn’t go much for discipline and that included his eating habits.

Matuszak wasn’t exactly what one would call a healthy eater. John may have put away copious amounts of liquor, but when it came to food, he wasn’t a real big eater.

“We had to keep the condo liquor cabinet pretty well stocked, but luckily I didn’t have to keep a wide variety of food in the fridge for The Tooz,” said Stabler.

“His meals basically consisted of Cheese Whiz smeared on bagels. That’s about what he lived on—Cheese Whiz, bagels, and Crown Royal. Not exactly The Breakfast of Champions.

“He used to tell me all the time that I shouldn’t smoke. He once told me, ‘It’s a terrible habit. Take up pocket pool instead.’

Sadly, John Matuszak died of a heart attack on June 17, 1989. He was only thirty-eight-years-old at the time.

On Sunday, June 25, 1989, I was asked by the New York Daily News to write an article about how I remember John. Here is that article.

The Two Toozes: Fans Came First for Big John

It seems ironic that several months ago I sat watching my friend and former teammate John Matuszak on a TV show. He was playing the role of a veteran football player in the twilight of his career, trying to retain his position on the team by using steroids, who then tragically dies of a massive heart attack on the field.

John had become a fairly good actor. He made you believe in his character and that such a thing could happen in pro football. But that was Hollywood, that was make believe. If you don’t get it right the first take, you film it again and again if necessary.

In real life, you don’t always get a second chance. Such as a week ago, Saturday night, for my friend ‘Tooz,’ when he died of a real heart attack in Los Angeles.

My first reaction was disbelief. After all, how could such a huge, strong man succumb to a simple heart attack? He was in perfect physical condition and could have still invoked fear in opposing NFL quarterbacks.

It’s difficult to speculate what killed John Matuszak. As it stands now, the county coroner’s office is conducting tests to find answers.

Perhaps it was those years of hard living that had finally caught up to him. I’d known John for almost twenty years, first meeting him while playing against Tampa University my senior year at Villanova, then as an opponent and teammate in the NFL.

John was larger than life. He was an intimidator and, at 6’ 9”, 290 pounds, he was physically bigger than any man I had met or seen.

His mere presence attracted immediate attention, but he seemed to love the fame and notoriety, and perhaps that’s why he chose Hollywood to live in and acting as his vocation after football.

But there was another side of Tooz. It was almost as though he were two different people.

The other Tooz was always the last player out of the stadium parking lot after a game because he could never say no to anyone seeking his autograph.

I can recall talking to John in Reno aout today’s pro athletes earning huge sums of money and then charging kids for their autographs. I listened to the anger in his voice as he vehemently objected to the practice—he insisted pro players owe it to fans to oblige them with such a small token.

The other Tooz was a man who would go just about anywhere to appear at a charity event. He would travel for hours from Oakland to places like Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, or Fresno to speak at Pee-Wee football dinners or Boy Scout luncheons. There were seldom any fees involved.

My most vivid memory of John Matuszak is of the Sunday night after we had just beaten the Vikings in Super Bowl XI, and were winding down from the greatest party ever thrown by Al Davis. It was 5 a.m. and I was walking through the lobby of the Newport Beach Marriott with a friend of mine, Dan Bruscella. There was Tooz—still signing autographs.

I introduced Dan to John and asked if he would sign a football for him. He obliged by signing the ball. The next thing I knew, Tooz makes like Kenny Stabler and sends Danny deep down the middle of the lobby for a bomb. He hit Danny with a perfect spiral, just missing a crystal chandelier by inches, in full stride in front of the elevator for an imaginary touchdown. Then John proceeded to high-five anyone still left in the lobby. As I got into the elevator, I turned and saw Tooz had gone back to signing more autographs.

“Double-O,” as he was called, was a 6’ 2”, 255-pound center out of Miami (FL). Otto joined the newly founded Oakland Raiders in 1960 and, for the next fifteen seasons, was the only starting center the Raiders ever had. He was one of only three players to see action in all of the Raiders’ 140 regular season games over the AFL’s ten-year history.

More than anything, Jim wanted to play for the NFL, but no offers came around. But in 1959, the AFL held its first draft and Jim was drafted by the Minneapolis franchise which later became the Oakland Raiders.

“I was notified by telegraph, and I had to ask where the hell was Oakland,” Otto said. “I signed for $8,000.”

Here were two men who defined the AFC title game’s matchup at the line of scrimmage—Green at the top of his career and Otto, called “Pops” by his younger teammates—in his fifteenth season, 223 consecutive start, and his final game.

Greene tried to rally Otto on the field but Jim simply said, “How’s your wife and children, Joe?” That was Double-O’s way of saying, “Shut up and play!”

“I mean, you hit him in the head and your helmet would just . . . ring!” Greene said. “You had to deliver a blow with your helmet, and hitting him with your helmet was not something that you cherished. First, you had to get your ‘mind right’ as we used to say.”

“Well, in being taught to lead with your head and shoulders to make a tackle, and basically place your head to where it’s going to hit the ball, because you get some good fumbles that way when you tackle and place your head and shoulders to where you’re going to hit the side where he’s carrying the ball. And then being in that position to hit the ball, the runner drops his head, the quarterback drops his head or whatever it might be, and you have head-to-head contact.

“You’re the tackler, and you get fined! Now, I don’t think that’s fair. I think some of these below-the-waist blocks as well, sure, you stand to hurt a knee or stand to hurt something, I don’t have knees anymore. And sure, this hurts, but you know, and it can hurt somebody, but I don’t think a guy should get fined for doing something he was taught to do all his life. Uh-uh, can’t do it, you know?”

Jim once returned to the sideline in 1973, his forehead oozing blood that streamed over the bridge of his nose; a screw inside Otto’s helmet was the cause. The team trainer approached Jim to help stop the bleeding.

“Get away from me!” Otto growled. I thought, Double-O likes it! He thinks the blood will intimidate his opponent! He had no idea that it intimidated me!

“I was very physical and never cared how I came out of it,” Otto said. “It was almost like being a kamikaze pilot, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have landed when my wheels were down.”

Double-O retired in 1975 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980—the first Raider to of many to come. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you who his presenter was . . . who else but Al Davis!

Charlie Philyaw was a one-of-a-kind guy and to say that he was different would be an understatement. He was a defensive end out of Texas Southern. At 6’ 9” and 276 pounds, he was a giant of a man. The Raiders drafted him in the second round of the 1976 NFL draft. Though large in stature, it always seemed as though Philyaw was in a perpetual state of confusion.

“One day on his way to practice, Philyaw stepped in a hole and sprained his ankle,” said Tatum. He limped his way through the day and later that night came over to our room to see the doctor. Philyaw was standing in the hallway outside our room, all six feet nine inches of him, explaining his problem to Skip. Philyaw was saying, ‘Trainer say to get the whirlpool from you.’”

“‘Trainer say you have the whirlpool and I need it for my ankle,’ Philyaw explained as he started taking off his shoe to show Skip his swollen ankle.”

“Skip turned to me for help and asked, ‘Tate, what’s this big dummy talkin’ about?’”

“I just shrugged my shoulders and rolled over in bed. I wasn’t about to get mixed up in any of Skip’s and Philyaw’s communication problems.

“Skip slammed the door in Philyaw’s face and stormed over to the phone. He called the trainer and cussed the man out. Skip wanted someone, anyone, to teach Philyaw the difference between the team’s doctor and the team’s cornerback. Skip didn’t stop with a phone call to the trainer either. He called Big Red, El Bago, Tom Dahms, and even one of the owners. Skip cussed and screamed for over an hour, and that was the last time Philyaw came after Skip for medical attention.

“Next day at practice, Philyaw came over to Skip and said, ‘Hey, man, you know, all this time I’ve been thinking you were the doctor. Can you believe that?’

“Charles Philyaw was a sideshow by himself. But I want to make it clear that I am not trying to poke fun at Charles. He was one of the nicest people I ever met and I always considered him a friend. He was a good football player, and his unusual way of doing things kept everyone smiling.

“Charles weighed in at 276 pounds and was always hungry. One day he was complaining during practice that he was starving. Fred Biletnikoff heard him moaning and generously directed him toward George Blanda. This was near the end of George’s career and he wasn’t getting much playing time at games or in practice. Fred told Charles that George’s sole function at practice was to take food orders for the rest of the guys. Charles walked up to George and put in an order for a hamburger. George nearly killed him.

“Another story involves Phil Villapiano. Phil would always look out for Charles and help him whenever he saw he was having problems. In one game, Charles was unexpectedly inserted into the lineup against the Steelers. As always, he was more than willing, but they ran a lot of traps and misdirection plays, and their offense could be confusing if you weren’t familiar with it. Charles was falling for too many fakes. Phil used to have an uncanny knack for guessing the other team’s plays. Right before each play, he began to whisper to Charles what he thought was coming. Phil was often right and Charles had a great game.

“The following week, Charles was back in the starting lineup. Before the first defensive play, Phil noticed that Charles was staring at him as they waited for the offense to break its huddle. When the offense got to the line of scrimmage, Charles was still staring. Phil didn’t know what Charles was up to, but he had no time to worry about it. He had a play to stop. Finally, just before the ball was snapped, Charles cupped his hands over his mouth and whispered to him, ‘Hey Phil, aren’t you going to tell me what to do this week?’

When a player gets a minor injury, he’s instructed to come and watch the other guys practice. Injured players always feel awkward and insecure, and they usually don’t like to call much attention to themselves. Most guys dress accordingly, in some basic shorts or sweats, certainly nothing flamboyant.

One day Charles sprained an ankle and came by practice to watch. He had on skin-tight shorts with his car keys dangling from a belt. He was wearing a tennis shirt, a hat, and a pair of sunglasses. Over two different color socks, he had a regular shoe on his good foot and a sandal on his bad one. He was also sipping on a coke. Other than that, Charles blended right in.

Philyaw was a great guy, but sometimes he didn’t have both oars in the water. Just ask Dave Rowe.

“Charlie was extremely naïve. One day, Charlie comes by and says, ‘Hey, van Eeghan, how come you have both your names on your jersey?’ Mark explains to him that van Eeghen is his last name and that his first name is Mark. But Charlie still wanted both names on his jersey like van Eeghen.

“One day he got towed into training camp. When I asked him what happened, he told me, ‘I ran out of gas. I didn’t have any money on me.’

“I asked him if he had a credit card and he said he had a Master Card. I asked him why he didn’t use it to buy gas. He told me, ‘You can use that to buy gas?’

“Charlie was a really nice guy. He had a world of talent. He just had a difficult time with learning defenses and utilizing basic, common sense.”

“We named Charley King Kong. To say that Charley was sometimes a little slow catching on is an understatement. At practice, Charley hurt his hand and needed medical attention. He walked over to Pete Banaszak, holding his hand and asked, ‘Hey, man, what should I do?’

“Instead of Philyaw walking over to the team doctor, he walked out into the middle of a pass defense drill and pulled Skip Thomas aside, saying, ‘Man said I should show you this,’ and he stuck his bloody paw in Skip’s face. Obviously he had forgotten his last encounter with Skip.

‘Showing my hand to the doctor.’ Charley answered. ‘The man said that I should show it to the doctor.’

“Every morning the offense and defense went to separate film rooms and view game films. One morning, Philyaw was sitting in the offensive film room ten minutes before someone said, ‘Philyaw, you’re in the wrong room.’

“Defensive coach Tom Dahms had a nice meeting going without Charley, and when someone said, ‘Coach, Philyaw isn’t here,’ and he answered, ‘Good!’

“During a morning practice session, Philyaw had hurt himself once again. He wasn’t expected to practice for a couple of days, but that afternoon, like a good rookie, Philyaw was back on the field. Like before, Charley was wearing one shoe on his good foot and a sandal on the one he had sprained, but that wasn’t all. This time Charley had on different colored socks, the wrong colored jersey, no belt, and his thigh pads were upside down. Everyone stopped and stared in disbelief. The coaches took Charley aside and started counting up the things wrong with his uniform. Philyaw set an NFL record with ten things wrong with his uniform.”

Shell was drafted by the Raiders in the third round of the 1968 NFL-AFL draft. The 6’ 5”, 265-pound guard turned tackle out of Maryland Eastern Shore (now University of Maryland-Eastern Shore) developed a great respect for the man who played opposite him on game day.

“I always felt that you didn’t have to hate each other on the field,” said Shell. “From high school to the pros, I always heard that I wasn’t mean enough, but I sincerely mean it that you don’t have to be angry to play football. It is a job, and you treat it as such. I think that during the course of my 15-year career, I was angry three times about something that someone on the other team did to me.”

The one thing that bothered Shell the most was allowing his man to sack Stabler. He took it personally.

But it’s something that didn’t happen often. Kenny Stabler can attest to that.

“Art possessed natural strength,” said Stabler. “He was very quick on his feet and could move accordingly to the oncoming pass rusher. He completely dominated the line of scrimmage and saved my ass more than once.”

When Shell was ready to enter the NFL-AFL draft, he thought that the Chargers would take him.

“I drew interest from a lot of teams, and I really thought I’d go to San Diego. All I got from the Raiders was a questionnaire. But the Raiders drafted me in the third round. As I understand it now, the Raiders missed out the year before on drafting Kansas City linebacker Willie Lanier, who had played at a historically black, small school, Morgan State and they vowed that if a talented small school player was available, they weren’t going to miss out on him. But back then, what got my attention about the Raiders was watching their games on television and seeing Jim Otto snap the ball without looking!”

“The coaches told me that if I didn’t win a starting job within three years, I should quit,” Shell said.

Against opponents Upshaw and Shell were the left offensive side of the line of scrimmage. They were two completely different men. Shell was quiet while Upshaw was loud and brash. Even though it was Gene who usually did all the talking, the players would come to Art in the huddle, knowing that when he had something to say, Stabler would listen.

“When Snake walked into the huddle, it was his, but if I had something to say, I’d catch him before the huddle. I used to be the carrier pigeon for Cliff Branch. Cliff would insist he was open and could go deep, so I’d talk to Snake about it and he’d tell me that Cliff thought he was open but he didn’t see the safety rotating back. So I go to Cliff and tell him that he didn’t see the safety rotating back, but it got to the point where Cliff was always open.”

My most vivid memory of Art Shell occurred in my rookie season. It was my second, professional, regular season game and we were playing the powerful Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

We had just lost our opener to the Steelers in Pittsburgh, however, in the fourth quarter I was able to get free for two long touchdown catches thrown by Lamonica. Since it worked with the Steelers, John Madden and then wide receiver coach Tom Flores decided we would continue bombing away with Lamonica.

Guarding me that day for the Packers was All-Pro cornerback Ken Ellis. We had never played against each other before and early in the game I was able to break free for a 56-yard catch. That didn’t sit too well with Ellis and he began taunting me throughout the first half. Occasionally he would take a swing at me when the officials were not looking.

Enter Art Shell! Art saw what was going on and he wasn’t about to let anyone cheap shot his teammate. So big Art got in between Ellis and myself during an altercation. He simply told Ellis to back off in so many words and waited for Ellis to turn and walk away—which he did.

From that point on and throughout my career, all I had to do was ask Art for a little help if I ever had a problem with a defensive back and the problem was solved quickly and efficiently.

As big as Art was, he was incredibly agile and mobile. I witnessed Art dunk a basketball from a standing position and as gentle as his demeanor was, he could seriously hurt you if he wanted to! I’m glad he was on my side and not my opponent!

In 1989 Art was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His presenter, of course, was Al Davis. Along with Willie Wood of the Green Bay Packers, Art was enshrined with Pittsburgh Steeler foes, Mel Blount and Terry Bradshaw.

That same year, Al Davis named Art Shell the head coach of the Raiders. Art was the first black head coach in the NFL.

6’ 4”, 265-pound, defensive lineman Otis Sistrunk never attended college, but was discovered at a Los Angeles Rams tryout by Al Davis. Sistrunk was one of the first NFL players to sport a shaved head. He was also instrumental in helping the Raiders obtain their misfit image. He gained national attention on Monday Night Football, when commentator Alex Karras said of Sistrunk: “He’s from the University of Mars.”

The reason Karras said that was because when Sistrunk came over to the sidelines for an interview (it was really cold that night), steam was coming from his head. Otis actually like the nickname, “The Man From Mars.”

“When I got to Oakland in ’72, John told me later, they knew nothing about me. ‘Did he just get out of jail, or what?’ They were taking a chance. ‘Who’s this guy Treetrunk?’ So you come in with your big cigar and your Dashiki, and you start doing your thing.

“When John asked me what position I played, I told him ‘all four.’ ‘Which one do you want?’ I said, ‘I play all four. Just say the magic word. Whatever makes the Raiders win, that’s what I’ll play.’ When you make a boast like that, you better back it up. So I played in the first exhibition against Baltimore, and afterwards Madden said, ‘You proved it.’”

“We had no background on him. We had no idea how old he was. And I never did know. He looked old then. When he played for us he could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. But he was good—good enough to start the season. He was just a natural defensive lineman.”

Kenny Stabler, a product of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, was drafted by the Raiders in the second round of the 1968 NFL-AFL draft. At 6’ 3”, 215 pounds, Stabler rode the bench during his first three years as a Raider. Game plans and playbooks were not a strong part of his vocabulary. The Snake, as he was nicknamed, would always be a sandlot type of player—in other words, if you got open, he’d find you.

Kenny got his nickname in high school after he zigged and zagged and snaked up the field for a 70-yard touchdown on a punt return. He was also a great pitcher. As a matter of fact, the Houston Astros drafted him right out of college.

“I didn’t study in front of film like a Peyton Manning. I went out and played the game. But remember, it was a simpler time and a simpler game. The defenses weren’t sophisticated. John would give me the playbook at the Wednesday night meeting, but I didn’t study the game.”

Regardless of his style, Madden still thought that Kenny was an amazing quarterback.

“The whole thing is seeing it, reading it, deciding where you’re going, and getting it on its way. It’s something you can’t teach; you’re born with it, and Stabler had it. He was amazing.”

“Kenny was the most accurate fucking thrower I’ve ever seen,” said Pete Banaszak. “If you wanted the ball between the four and the zero, he’d put it there. If you wanted it in the ear hole, Kenny could put it there, too.”

“The ball sure didn’t have a lot of velocity on it, but I think accuracy is the thing that’s overlooked and underrated,” said Stabler, “That was my game. It’s not just a high completion percentage or quickness of release. It’s where you put the ball. I had a pretty good knack of putting the ball where ever I wanted.”

“The bigger the situation, the calmer he got,” said Madden. “That was a great combination with me, because I was just the opposite. I was intense. If everything was normal, and we were ahead, he’d get bored. He had to have his ass in the fire to get really focused in on something. Then, when he really got focused in, instead of getting excited and tight, he’d get calm.”

“It was 1977 and we were playing the Colts. The game had gone into double overtime. I was thinking of a play to call, or three plays. ‘We’ll do this, or this.’ So anyway, he was listening to me, he had his helmet cocked up, and he was taking a drink, and he says, ‘These fans are getting their money’s worth today.’ I just looked at him in awe.”

In sticking with his calm and cool demeanor, John Vella mentions how he never saw Stabler criticize a player.

“I want to tell you what I never saw him do. I never saw him chew guys out. He never once singled a guy out. It was always, ‘We’ll get ’em on the next play.’”

When the game was on the line, it was known how Kenny was usually pretty quiet in the huddle.

“He was usually the one guy in the huddle who wasn’t talking,” said Bob Moore. In the huddle, it was always Upshaw talking, or someone else—well, primarily, Upshaw talking and someone responding to Gene. Meanwhile, Kenny is as quiet as you can be. He calls the play in the same voice in the fourth quarter as in the first quarter. He’s the same guy starting the game as he was at the end. Same guy as he was in practice. All kinds of things would be going on around him and he’d be just as calm as he could be. Strangely calm.”

One reason that Stabler may have been so calm is that he always knew his offensive line would take care of him.

“In 1975 we beat Cleveland 38–17. I took several late hits from defensive ends Earl Edwards and Turkey Jones. On one play I rolled out to the left and threw a 22-yard pass to Branch. I was standing there watching the ball in flight when Jones came running at me from about ten yards away on the blind side and hit me in the back of the head. Gene Upshaw always arranged for turkeys like Turkey Jones to receive a message about their deportment, usually from a double-team.

“Look, this guy took a cheap shot at Snake. Let’s take care of him,” Upshaw said in the huddle.

“On the next play, Vella and Buehler dropped Jones. As he was getting up, Upshaw ran over and leveled him, and Turkey was carried off the field.”

After the game, the Browns coach and former Green Bay Packers member Forrest Gregg said, “The Raiders remind me of the old Packers—nothing fancy. They just take a football and drive it down your throat the way we did in Green Bay.”

Stabler quoted Kansas City coach Paul Wiggin in reference to his team’s defense.

“The Raiders defensive players aren’t really bad fellows; it’s just that they’re trained to kill.”

While Stabler loved his teammates, he also had much admiration for some of the great NFL quarterbacks of the game.

“I think the quarterbacks I admired most after Bobby Layne were Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Namath, and Billy Kilmer.

“They all followed a similar pregame plan to prepare for games. I had to love Kilmer, who won a championship and led his team to the Super Bowl playing with one leg shorter than the other.

“And just for the record, all four liked to have a drink now and then. Hell, Bobby Layne was known for hoisting a few at halftime!”

Teammates John Vella can’t understand why Stabler isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“How could he not be in the Hall of Fame? Are stats everything? Ask the Steelers defense of the ’70s. Who would they have not wanted to face? Ask the Dolphins ‘No-Name Defense’ who they would not want to face in the clutch. That says it all. They would say without a doubt, ‘We don’t want to face Stabler.’”

The emergence of what would be dubbed “The Soul Patrol” began in 1974 and lasted through the Raiders 1976 season. It was comprised of the following Raiders players: cornerback Willie Brown, cornerback Skip Thomas (aka Dr. Death), free safety Jack Tatum (aka The Assassin), and safety George Atkinson (aka The Hit Man).

“That beard, the hair,” said Atkinson. “That was part of our persona—part of our makeup. It was saying, ‘Fuck you’ more or less. We’re here. We don’t care. We’re going to kick your ass and walk out of here, and we don’t care whether you like us or not, but you’re going to respect us and you’re going to fear us.”

“The Soul Patrol: I wouldn’t trade them for any secondary in the league,” said Stabler. “It’s as simple as that.”

A 6’ 1” 205-pound defensive back out of USC, Alonzo “Skip” Thomas was drafted by the Raiders in 1972. Teammate Phil Villapiano talks about his overall toughness.

“He was the size of a linebacker and he could run like the wind. I thought Nemiah Wilson, whom Thomas replaced, was good, but he was so small he’d get outmuscled. Because Willie Brown had so many All Pros behind him, people would keep throwing at Skip, which was just stupid. Skip was as good as Willie. I wouldn’t mess with Skip Thomas in a million years!”

“When Skip came to the Raiders, they made me his roommate. I knew from the beginning that he was Raiders material. He liked to beat people up, and he likes to be called Dr. Death.

“Skip never talked to reporters or let anyone take his picture. He said, ‘Gettin’ your picture taken steals part of your soul.’ As far as reporters go, Skip just didn’t like people. One time a reporter came up to our room to interview me. Skip didn’t like the questions I was being asked so he threw the reporter out the door!

“The night before a game, Skip would eat four or five full-course meals, drink a bottle of tequila, smoke two packs of cigarettes, and watch TV for hours after all the channels had signed off.

“Skip also had a fascination for motorcycles and fast cars. When the motorcycle craze was going around, Skip had a dream of jumping the Golden Gate Bridge on a bike. He was going to build a ramp in the parking lot of our training camp and practice by jumping over a couple of hundred cars. Al Davis put a stop to Skip’s dream.

“Another time Skip and one of our cornerbacks, Clarence Davis, got into a debate about which was faster, a Corvette or a motorcycle. Once again we were in the parking lot. Clarence was gunning his Corvette and Skip was on his bike. Al Davis didn’t get there in time to stop the race and when they zoomed across the finish line, there wasn’t enough parking lot left to stop the car or the bike. Davis banged off a few parked cars and slid into the practice field while Skip jumped off the bike and landed in a ditch. No one was hurt, but Al Davis sent the bike and car back to Oakland on a big truck.”

Skip Thomas was given the name Dr. Death because of his tempestuous behavior on the field.

“They called me Dr. Death because I was so wild. They didn’t know what I was going to do one minute to the next. I didn’t know what I was going to do! I knew one thing: if I did something wrong, Willie [Brown] was going to get on my ass. George [Blanda] was going to get on my ass. John [Madden] was going to get on my ass. John was going to send Gene [Upshaw] and Art [Shell] after me. They went all the way to make sure I did what I had to do. So I kept it where it needed to be.”

“Thomas used to check himself into the hospital on Sunday night after the game to make sure he was rested,” said George Atkinson. “He’d do that after every home game—with his motorcycle. Can you image that? He had his motorcycle with him in his room.”

“I’d ride my Harley right down the hallway, ride it to the room, push the bed over and put it to the side. See, I’d go to the hospital after the game because I wanted to be ready to play the next Sunday. And I knew that once the game was over with I was going to do my thing. I was going to have fun. So if I go to the hospital, and then if I’m back for practice on Wednesday, I’m good to go. So I’d stay in the hospital ‘till defensive day on Wednesday. On offensive day, John might even say, ‘You look bad. Go back to the hospital.’ They wanted to keep me out of trouble, but that didn’t always happen. I had a bunch of nurses down there I’d play strip poker with. They’d have my liquor for me. They’d have a fifth of Crown Royal or a fifth of tequila, and they’d have it waiting for me.”

“I liked Skip. Skip Thomas had no one to take care of him at home. So he’d go to the doctor. Like if he had a cold or something, they’d just put him in the hospital. He started to enjoy it. Cause he was getting, like, service. So the doctor said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Skip. But he wants to be in the hospital.’ I said, ‘I’d rather have him be in the hospital than any place else he’s gonna be. So just put him in the hospital. I don’t give a shit.’”

Dave Rowe talks about Madden and his altercations about Skip wearing his helmet during Saturday practices.

“John Madden was like a father to Skip, and Skip would do anything for John—except put on his helmet.

“We were having a light Saturday morning practice before we left to play the Chiefs in Kansas City. Madden comes in and says, ‘Get your helmets on.’ Skip is looking at John. John says, ‘Come on, put your hat on, Doc.’

“Skip says, ‘I’m not putting my hat on. It’s going to make my head look terrible. I just got my hair fixed.’ Now, Skip’s hair looks pretty good. He turns around and shows us, and it does look pretty good.

“‘Everyone listen up,’ Madden said. ‘Skip just got his hair done. Skip, don’t put your helmet on. We don’t want to mess that hair up. Everyone, be careful. Don’t run into Skip.’

“There’s not any other NFL coach who would have done that. He would have walked right off the field, but that was John, and that was Skip.”

Oakland’s defensive captain Willie Brown came undrafted out of Grambling in 1963. At 6’ 1”, 195 pounds, Brown played tight end and linebacker for the great Tigers coach, Eddie Robinson. Denver picked him up as a walk-on but, in 1965, Brown joined the boycott in New Orleans and Coach Lou Saban traded him to the Raiders for his actions. It was the best thing that could have happened to Willie. Willie was moved to the defensive back position upon his arrival in Oakland would end up being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984.

“This is the truth. When I first got here, I saw Willie Brown working after practice, and I thought, ‘This guy is All Pro, and he’s still out here working after practice? I’m not going to let this old man outwork me.’”

“They talk about how good I was, but I didn’t see it that way. The things that happened in my career I attribute to the Raiders, number one—my teammates. They’re the ones who helped me get into the Hall of Fame. I didn’t look at it in terms of how great I was. I always wanted to be better than how great they think I am, you see? I wanted to be the guy on third down where if you threw the ball to my man, I know it’s going to be incomplete. I didn’t worry about how hard I hit them, because chances are I’m not going to have a chance to hit them anyway, because the ball is going to be incomplete.

“I wasn’t a drinker. Didn’t chase girls. I was a captain. I had to be at a higher level. I had to reel them in once in a while, because they’d get out of hand on certain days. But I didn’t care what they did off the field. Come game time, my job was to make sure those three guys were focused. That’s the way the secondary took it: that I wouldn’t stand for any bullshit.

“You try to keep them calmed down some, make sure they’re in compliance with the rules. We’re not going to break the rules, but we’re going to bend the rules as much as we possibly can.”

George Atkinson was a 6’ 0”, 181-pound defensive back drafted by the Raiders in the seventh round of the 1968 NFL-AFL draft out of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. Like father like son, George Atkinson III now plays for the same team his dad played for: the Oakland Raiders.

“Yeah, we all liked to party, but we drew the line when we had to. There was a point, come later in the week, when you’ve got to gear down. To be human encompasses the whole thing—you know what I’m saying?

“You exist through a process you don’t understand. You don’t even know what is inside of you. And to not humble yourself and realize you were given a gift makes no sense; a gift not to be made a mockery of but to be displayed.”

“George was one of the best I ever had. He was the type of guy, if you needed something done, you could just call him in and say, ‘Get this straightened out,’ and he would.”

“Yeah, we had fun. We rattled other teams. Teams didn’t rattle us. We had ’em scared—especially after the first quarter. We’d let guys catch a pass and jack ’em up. We intimidated people. We didn’t sit back and wait. We initiated shit. We made shit happen.

“We had a special section of our locker room known as ‘The Ghetto.’ That’s what we called it. You couldn’t come down to our end of the locker room. We had a strip of tape laid down on the floor. Colored it black on one part, and colored the other part white. If you crossed that line, we’d put you I a trash can, upside down.”

Jack Tatum was named “The Assassin” in a press release after a Colts game when he leveled Baltimore’s future HOF tight end, John Mackey.

Tatum was a 5’ 10”, 200-pound defensive back who played for the notorious Woody Hayes at Ohio State. He was the 19th pick of the first round in 1971, but it would be a week before he contacted anyone from the team. He took a road trip to the beach with a couple of friends from Ohio State . . . another player who marched to the beat of his own drum.

“In 1971 I joined the Raider training camp,” said Jack. “It was right after the College All Star Game. I was a superstar in high school and an All-American in college. At twenty-one years of age, I walked into training camp with an overconfident attitude, but the Raiders deflated that attitude and put things in proper perspective by introducing me to a former Raider, now retired, by the name of Fred Biletnikoff.

“Fred Biletnikoff was a balding but hippy-looking wide receiver for the Oakland Raiders. When I was instructed by my coaches to cover Fred one-on-one during a pass defense drill, I laughed to myself. Fred Biletnikoff had a great pair of hands and could catch anything near him, but he was slow by NFL standards. I’ve played against big receivers, small receivers, and fast receivers, and they couldn’t burn me. Now, for my first test in an Oakland Raiders camp, they put me against a slow receiver.

“Fred ran his first pattern and I showed him why I was an All-American. Covering him like a blanket, I nearly intercepted the ball, and after the play I told Fred, ‘You’re lucky that we aren’t hitting.’

“On the next play Fred drove off the line hard and made a good move to the outside. I was too quick for him though and reacted like an All-Pro. But then he broke back across the middle and left me tripping over my own feet. Needless to say, the quarterback laid a perfect pass into Fred’s hands and he scored. On the way back to the huddle Fred showed me the football and asked, ‘Were you looking for this, Rookie?’

“That got me upset and I started cussing. I told him, ‘Try me again and see what happens, Chump!’

“Fred came at me again with about five different fakes and just as I went left, he went right and scored again. Biletnikoff started running patterns that quickly deflated my ego and taught me humiliation. He burned me time and time again so bad that I went back to the locker room feeling very uncertain as to whether or not I had what it took to make it in professional football. Deep down inside my pride was scorched.

“Later that evening I bumped into Fred and we began talking about practice. He turned out to be a pretty good guy and after a few minutes we were talking like old friends. After that I listened to everything Fred told me because he had the experience and wanted to help my career.”

“Believe it or not, Jack Tatum was quiet and soft-spoken. He looked like Genghis Khan—he had an Asian feel to him, and he had a big afro, and he looked fearsome—but he was really a gentle presence.”

“He was quick to smile and so relaxed. Quick to giggle and laugh. Then he’d put his helmet on and, Jesus, the switch would turn. It was hard to think it was the same guy. Jack used to count how many knockouts he’d get on the field. Anyone who didn’t get up in eight counts was a KO.

“You can’t be off the field what people see on the field. That’s a whole different world. It was a different person when you take the field.”

Dolphins running back Jim Kiick never forgot how hard Jack would hit his target. “Tatum would hit you with all he had and do it every time. But everybody respected him.”

“That’s the way I learned to play from Woody Hayes at Ohio State,” said Tatum. “He told me, ‘You never make a tackle with a smile on your face.’”

“Pound for pound, Jack was the toughest football player I’ve ever seen. The only guy I could ever compare him to was Dick Butkus—as far as being ferocious. He would rather have a receiver catch the ball and drill him than try and knock the ball down. John had to tell him in practice, ‘Don’t hit your own players. Don’t hurt your teammates!’”

While it’s said that he was soft spoken off the field, Jack Tatum once got into an altercation during practice with John Vella, and just wouldn’t let it go.

“We were at practice and I was hit. The hit knocked me into Jack. Now, I definitely wasn’t going after a safety in practice. That was something none of us ever did. So we collided. I again told him that it was just an accident, but on the next play he said, ‘I’m gonna get your ass, man.’ I told him to forget about it.

“We get back to the showers and Tatum is standing six inches from me. He kept repeating the same thing, ‘I’m gonna get your ass, man!’ Again, I said, ‘Will you just forget it?’ I turned my back and let it go. “But Jack still hadn’t let it go.

“We were having lunch when Jack, once again, told me that he was ‘gonna get my ass.’ By this time I had had it, and told John [Madden] that there might be a fight between Jack an me.

“Madden got all fired up. ‘Don’t do anything! Don’t get into it with him! I’ll take care of it!’

“I don’t know what Madden did and I never asked him, but Tatum didn’t confront me anymore. But we didn’t talk again the rest of the year. Not a word. I saw him one time in the off-season and we ignored each other. And then the next year, in training camp, I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to see if he’s ready to move on.’ I asked him how his off-season was, extended my hand; he shook it, and we moved on.

“Put it this way: you were glad Jack Tatum was on your team, and that’s the highest compliment I can give any player.”

“Yeah, John was a little concerned about what had happened between Tatum and Vella because Jack is quiet, but you didn’t know what’s underneath it all,” said Bob Moore. “I know from personal experience. When I was at Stanford in 1970, we were scheduled to play Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

“The week before the Rose Bowl, both Stanford and Ohio State took their players to Disneyland. Both buses pulled up next to each other in the parking lot. We had a receiver [from Stanford] by the name of Randy Vataha (who would later play for New England)—a little guy at 5’ 10”, 176 pounds who looked like he was fifteen years old. Now, Jack gets off the Ohio State bus; he’s about 215, big head, huge shoulders, and he’s pretty gnarly looking. Randy gets off our bus, takes one look at Tatum, gets back on our bus and says, ‘I’m not going to that fucking place with this guy.’”

“He was a Jersey guy like me and the whole state had heard about Jack. I thought, ‘What the fuck is he?’ I’m jealous. Then he goes to Ohio State and I go to Bowling Green, and I’m still Little League compared to him. I get drafted, and I’m still behind him. Then once I got to play with him, I immediately understood why I’d been behind him.”

“When you’re a pro, you look for guys you can learn something from—guys you can say, ‘Wow. That’s what I want to be like.’ I had my own way of hitting, and he had his. I liked his better.

“When Jack hit someone, it was a different sound. It was like a blow. I knew it was him just from the sound of his tackles. There was a different sound between everyone else’s hits and Jack Tatum’s hits. It was much more solid. Put it this way, it was like a pro golfer hitting the ball and comparing it to a guy like me hitting a golf ball.”

“I remember one specific game when Tatum had Earl Campbell on a fourth and one at the goal line. To this day Earl doesn’t remember scoring. I thought for sure that somebody was really hurt.

“Another time Atkinson was getting beat by Denver tight end Riley Odoms. Odoms was running slants, and Atkinson couldn’t get there in time. While talking about it in the huddle, Tatum said to Atkinson, ‘Let’s just switch. Take my guy and I’ll take care of Odoms.’ Tatum knocked him out of the game.”

“Tatum’s most infamous collision occurred when he hit and paralyzed the Patriots 6’, 194-pound wide receiver Darryl Stingley in a 1978 preseason game at the Coliseum.

“On that fateful night, Pats quarterback Steve Grogan threw to Stingley on a crossing route. The ball sailed incomplete. Tatum blasted Stingley head on anyway. Darryl never got up.

“The hit was considered legal at the time—the kind of vicious shot Tatum delivered on a regular basis. No flag was thrown. The NFL didn’t discipline Tatum. That Darryl Stingley suffered two broken vertebrae and was paralyzed from the chest down was considered a risk of the game.

“In a 2003 Boston Globe story, Darryl Stingley said he still would welcome a visit or a call from Tatum.”

“If he called me today, I’d answer,” Stingley said. “If he came to my house, I’d open my door to him. All I ever wanted was for him to acknowledge me as a human being. I just wanted to hear from him if he felt sorry or not. It’s not like I’m unreachable. But it’s not a phone call I’ll be waiting for anymore.”

“It’s hard to articulate,” Stingley said. “It was a test of my faith—the entire story. In who, and how much, do you believe, Darryl? In my heart and in my mind I forgave Jack Tatum a long time ago.”

“On August 12, 1978, I was involved in a terrible accident with Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver who played for New England.

“On a typical passing play, Darryl ran a rather dangerous pattern across the middle of our zone defense. It was one of those pass plays where I could not possibly have intercepted, so because of what the owners expected of me when they give me my paycheck, I automatically reacted to the situation by going for an intimidating hit.

“It was a fairly good hit, but nothing exceptional, and I got up and started back toward our huddle. But Darryl didn’t get up and walk away from the collision. That particular play was the end of Darryl Stingley’s career in the NFL. His neck was broken in two places and there was serious damage to his spinal cord. “

“For weeks Darryl lay paralyzed in a hospital and there were times when, because of complications after surgery, he nearly lost his life.

“When the reality of Stingley’s injury hit me with its full impact, I was shattered. To think that my tackle broke another man’s neck and killed his future, well, I know it hurts Darryl, but it hurts me, too.”

In one game Tatum didn’t knock out his own teammate George Atkinson once, he did so twice.

Author’s Note: Darryl Stingley died on April 5, 2007, from bronchial pneumonia, quadriplegia, spinal cord injury, and coronary atherosclerosis. Sadly, neither Tatum nor Stingley ever once spoke to each other since the tragic event had occurred.

“We were holding a 21–14 lead over the New Orleans Saints. Late in the fourth quarter, the Saints quarterback Archie Manning threw over the middle for his wide receiver, Danny Abramowicz, who was well covered by our strong safety, George Atkinson. In my eagerness to assist, I blasted in from the weak side and creamed everyone. It was a double knockout. I got Abramowicz, but I got George too.

“After that my play became sloppy. I’d go after the ball and slam into anyone that got in the way. It was early in the season and I had already knocked out seven men. That would have been a good start, except that four of those knockouts were Raiders. I knocked out Willie Brown, got Nemiah Wilson and cut his eye pretty bad too, and then there was George Atkinson. I knocked out George twice. It got to the point where our defensive people were starting to worry more about me than the real enemy.

“After George recovered from his second knockout, he took me aside and said, ‘Dammit, Tate, are you colorblind or something? I wear the same color jersey as you do. I’m on your side and the deal is getting the other team.’”

Even though Jack knocked out George twice, Atkinson still took the time to teach Tatum the tricks of the trade.

“George started teaching me a few of his tricks. He said, ‘I was going to teach you the hook when you first came into the league, but you were having identification problems. Now that you seem to know who’s who, let me show you the best intimidator in the business, the hook. Of course, the rules governing the hook have changed, but back then it wasn’t just legal but an important weapon in a good hitter’s arsenal.

“The hook is simply flexing your biceps and trying to catch the receiver’s head in the joint between the forearm and upper arm. It’s like hitting with the biceps by using a headlock type of action. The purpose of the hook was to strip the receiver of the ball, his helmet, his head, and his courage.

“Another trick that George taught me was the groundhog.” The groundhog is a perfectly-timed hit to the ankles just as the receiver is leaping high to catch a pass. The groundhog isn’t as devastating as it looks on TV, but it does have a tendency to keep the receiver closer to the ground on high passes.”

Following Atkinson’s advice, Jack tried out one of his new maneuvers on Denver’s Riley Odoms with a devastating hit to the head.

“If ever a man did have a reason to complain about my style of play, it had to be Riley Odoms, the 6’ 4”, 230-pound tight end with the Denver Broncos. During a game at Mile High Stadium, I leveled the best shot of my career against Riley. It was a clean hit, not a cheap shot, but I was upset because I really thought I had killed the man.

“When the play started to develop, I dropped back a few steps to give Riley the impression I was in deep coverage. Riley saw me dropping off and made a quick move over the middle and broke open. Denver’s quarterback Charley Johnson wasted little time releasing the ball toward Riley. I zeroed in on Riley’s head just as the ball arrived in his hands. It was a perfectly timed hit and I used my hook on his head. Because the momentum built up by the angles and speed of both Riley and me, the hit was extremely hard. I heard Riley scream on impact and felt his body go limp. He landed flat on his back and the ball came to rest on his chest for a completion, but Riley’s eyes rolled back in his head and he wasn’t breathing.

“Riley was scraped off the field and carried to the sidelines. He was shaken and hurt, but thank God he was still alive. After the game I went over to the Denver locker room and talked with Riley. He said, ‘Damn, Tate, don’t ever hit me like that again. You nearly killed me!’ Then he laughed and I slapped him on the back and smiled with relief. Very few people understand the camaraderie and mutual respect professional athletes feel for one another.

“People called that hit everything from vicious to brutal but I never heard anyone say it was a cheap shot.”

“I remember one game, again it was against Denver, when the Broncos’ best running back, Floyd Little, took a hand off and swept around the left end with a herd of blockers leading the way. As he turned the corner, the red and blue jerseys of Denver had gone south and I was coming up fast. Floyd didn’t see me coming and there was a collision at mid-field near the sidelines, right in front of the Denver bench. I whipped my hook up under Floyd’s facemask and landed a solid shot flush on his jaw. Floyd looked like a magician practicing levitation just before the lights went out. His head snapped back, his feet straightened out, and the ball and one of his shoes shot into the stands. I was coming so hard that my momentum carried both of us into the Denver bench.”

In Tatum’s second year George Atkinson suggested that they start a contest for who would get the most knockouts over the course of the season. And you thought that Bountygate began with the 2009 New Orleans Saints.

“It sounded like a good idea, and we agreed on a set of rules,” said Tatum “First of all, neither of us wanted to get penalties called against us so we agreed that our hits must be clean shots and legal. Next, the man you hit would have to be down for an official injury time out and he had to be helped off the field. That would be considered a knock out, and was worth two points. Sometimes, one of us would hit a man and he’d take the injury time out but would limp off the field under his own power. We called that a limp-off, and it was worth one point. When the season started, so did we. Actually, it was all part of our job, but we made a game out of it. Guess who won?”

“I came into the NFL wanting to be the most intimidating hitter in the history of the game. But some people considered me a dirty player and a cheap shot artist.

“After a few questionable incidents, everything began to mushroom into a serious problem—enough for Howard Cosell to dedicate one of his halftime shows on Monday Night Football to George Atkinson and me and our ‘cheap shots.’

“It started in 1976 in a game against the Steelers, a few good hits, a knockout, and a certain coach’s criminal element speech. From there it was picked up by the press and traveled into the office of the Commissioner, Pete Rozelle. From there some fines were issued, which I refused to pay. After that, every official in the NFL threw a quick flag in my general direction. I’ll tell you like I told the Commissioner, ‘I plead guilty, but only to aggressive play.’”

“On the ice of Three Rivers Stadium, I caught Lynn Swan running a pattern across the middle. I hit him! I hit him hard and he went down. Then several plays later George just leveled Swann. He was knocked unconscious and suffered a severe concussion. Swann spent two days in the hospital.

“My collision with Lynn Swann was premeditated. I saw him coming across the middle for a pass, and even though Terry Bradshaw had thrown the ball in a different direction, Swann was still a fair and legal target.

“Later in the game, George and I smashed into Rocky Bleier and caused him to fumble. Everyone was scrambling for the ball except Steelers’ center Ray Mansfield. He set his sights on me and speared me in my knees with a cheap shot in retaliation for my hit on Swann. No flag was ever thrown.

“The Steelers tried that same play again but Bleier wasn’t in my area. This time I spotted Lynn Swann nonchalantly roaming over the middle, and I drew a bead on his rib cage. But then I saw George Atkinson homing in on Lynn, and with one quick swipe of a forearm, George sort of pulled Lynn down using a club-like action across the head and side of his neck. Lynn went down and George moved in toward the ball carrier. The shot to Swann was by no means an overpowering one. In fact, I thought that it had simply caught Lynn off guard and he had lost his balance. But Lynn needed some assistance getting off the field. The incident was so insignificant that George didn’t even get credited with a knockout or limp-off. As the game resumed, I could see Lynn running back and forth behind the Steelers’ bench.

“On the next series the Steelers’ offense came on to the field, but without Swann. He stayed on the sidelines running lazy patterns behind the bench. He seemed perfectly healthy and I wondered why he wasn’t in the game.

“On the next play I got John Stallworth. Stallworth caught the ball over the middle and a split second later, I hit him hard. As a result of the contact, John twisted his knee and had to be helped off the field. George gave me credit for a limp-off.

“When Swann was called up and told to go back into the game, he collapsed on the sidelines. One second he was perfectly normal and the next second he was supposedly out cold. It could be that it took George’s shot a long time to register, but then again, I really wonder.

“The next day, I received a call from my attorney. He told me that Lynn Swann was in the hospital with a serious concussion and Chuck Noll was blaming the hell out of me and George. Noll had taken his complaint to Commissioner Rozelle. That same day, Rocky Bleier wrote a letter to Rozelle regarding our tactics. This is the same guy who tried to take my knees out. In that letter, Bleier stated that I was ‘deliberately trying to hurt receivers and running backs.’ In addition, I was accused of being a cheap shot artist and of employing tactics designed to seriously injure my opponents. The letter also implied that many players feared for their lives when playing against me. They demanded that some type of disciplinary action should be taken immediately.

“Several weeks later, I received a certified letter from Rozelle fining me $750. The fine was for punching Grossman, slapping Franco, and slugging Bleier. I was charged $250 for each incident. Because there was no hearing, I refused to pay the fines and filed suit against the NFL.

“At the hearing, the evidence was not conclusive, so Rozelle fined me $500 for ‘unnecessary roughness’ charges. Pete later dropped the fine to $250, but the money was not the issue. I wasn’t guilty of unnecessary roughness or unsportsmanlike conduct. I was a victim of the system and resented it. I was even more resentful of Rozelle for not hearing my side of the story.

“I cannot stress enough the fact that football is a violent and brutal game. When people start pounding each other, they bleed. Whenever I step onto the field for a game, I expect to get knocked around, and I consider the possibility I will sustain a serious injury. If I get hit and injured, whether by a clean block or a cheap shot, I just consider it part of the game. I get hit and I hit because it is a part of football.

“The verdict was in and I was guilty regardless of favorable evidence or the NFL’s lack of proof that a crime has been committed.”

“When I played, the Vikings, Browns, and Bengals were just a few of the passive teams that could hang in there for a quarter or two against the Raiders, but pain and punishment have a way of warping their will to win,” said Tatum.

“When playing against a passive team, one hit—a good hit—will usually discourage the entire offensive team from getting fancy.”

In terms of players who Tatum knew he could get an edge on, Hall of Fame Steelers running back Franco Harris was at the top of that list.

“On paper, running back Franco Harris was big, fast, and devastating. On paper his stats looked good, but in reality Franco was a big man who would sometimes back down. Franco lacked aggressiveness. He ran from sideline to sideline instead of aggressively straight forward.

“From my point of view, a running back is paid to carry the ball forward, and if that means running through, over, or around the defense, he ought to make the effort. Franco either ran for the sidelines when it got a bit sticky or he gave way to one of his patented slips. This made him a target for me and the entire Raiders defense.

“In one game, the Steelers were driving for a touchdown. Franco took the ball and tried [to go up] the middle. There’s wasn’t a hole, so I knew he would either fall down or run for the sidelines. Since the last few attempts on Franco’s part had been no gain slips in the backfield, he moved outside and made a straight path for the sidelines. I had a good angle, and Franco was going to get busted before he reached safety. He realized the fact, too, and before I could get within five yards of him, Franco slipped and fell to the ground. I was mad. Damn! If a man is going to put on a uniform and play football, he should at least play it like a man!

“Under the NFL rules, a ball carrier isn’t officially down until a defender either has made the tackle or has physically touched and downed a man. Franco still had the chance to get up and run because no defensive man had yet touched him. I realized that Franco wasn’t going to attempt to get up and I really wanted to blast into him. I wanted to stick my helmet in his ribs or face or anything. I just wanted to hit him, but instead, lazily downed him with a light slap on his helmet. I didn’t give the incident a second thought until I got up and saw the penalty flag.

“Once again I was the villain. The official felt that I had hit Franco too hard and he flagged me for unnecessary roughness and a fifteen-yard penalty. What a fucking, ridiculous call!”

According to Tatum, Harris wasn’t the only Steeler on offense that played cautiously. “Swann looked for the easy way out.

“Lynn Swann, although a great receiver, lacked consistency on patterns over the middle. Against the Raiders, he rounded everything off and looked for openings in the zone rather than making those bold dashes across the middle.”

But it wasn’t only the Raiders who played above the rules. Steelers defensive back Mel Blount tried to use Cliff Branch’s head for a pile driver.

“Early in a game against the Steelers, our wide receiver Cliff Branch caught a short turn in pass and was quickly scooped up by Steelers defensive back, Mel Blount,” said Tatum. “Cliff wasn’t a very physical receiver and when Mel had him shackled, that should have been the end of the play . . . unfortunately it wasn’t.

“Instead of just making the tackle, Mel grabbed Cliff, turned him upside down, and then tried to pile drive his head into the ground. It was obviously a deliberate attempt to hurt the man and it got some of our defensive people talking about payback to the Steelers’ receivers.”

Gene Upshaw was drafted out of Texas A&M Kingsville (then known as Texas A&I). The Raiders drafted the 6’ 5”, 255-pound guard in the first round of the first combined 1967 NFL-AFL draft. Just for the record, Upshaw is the only players ever to start on championship teams in both the AFL and NFL. Gene was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.

“Gene was my roommate,” said Willie Brown, “and sometimes he would talk so much I’d fall asleep on him. I’d wake up three minutes later and he’d still be talking.”

“Upshaw was talking 100 miles per hour all the time, pumping you up, pumping himself up, but that was part of his leadership role,” said Pete Banaszak. “His mouth was going all the time, but he played all the time. He never dogged it. That’s what a leader does. Shit—if you can walk it, you can talk it.”

“One day in the huddle [during a game] I said, ‘Gene, would you shut up!’ He came across and grabbed me around the throat and walked me out of there right past the ref. He said, ‘Rookie, I’ll tell you when to talk.’ He was shaking me like a rag doll. Madden’s going crazy. I get to the sideline Madden says, ‘Can’t you handle that damn huddle?’ I said, ‘I’m having a few problems.’”

Gene wasn’t just the spokesperson for the team, but he was also the spokesperson for his coach, John Madden.

“Upshaw handled me like butter. We’d start off with a big argument. He was a great politician, not in a negative way. He knew how to manipulate and get what he wanted. He’d come in and say, ‘The guys could use a day off.’ I’d say, ‘The way they’re practicing today, they’re not doin’ piss anyway.’ But I wouldn’t do it then—I’d do it two days later. But I’d do it.’

“Or, I’d want him to talk to the team. I would say, ‘There’s something going on, and guys are doing this or that, and if you’re really the captain, get it knocked off,’ and he would. We had a really good relationship, because he could get stuff done. He was such a good guy.”

“During one of our games,” said Madden, “Stabler was constantly getting sacked. I went nuts on the sideline. I screamed at the offensive line, ‘Do anything you have to! Hold them! But, I don’t want goddamned Snake to get hit!’ A few players later, Gene got hit with a holding penalty.

“A few days later we were watching game films when I made the remark, ‘We’ve got to cut down on the holding.’ All of a sudden a voice rang out from the back of the room, ‘You said if we can’t block them, we got to hold them,’ said Upshaw.

“Upshaw responded with, ‘Oh, no, I remember exactly what you said. You said, If you can’t block them, hold them. You didn’t want Snake to get hurt. So I held him.’”

“When I think of Gene, I think of his confidence. He not only had confidence in himself, but in the teammates around him. He played at such a high level with such confidence in everything that guys couldn’t help but rise to the occasion with him.”

Raiders 6’ 4”, 270-pound guard Mickey Marvin commented on Upshaw’s blocking techniques.

“Upshaw was the greatest holder on our line. You’d have to get an ice pick to get the thread out from underneath his fingernails after a game because he was grabbing so much—red thread if it was Kansas City, black if it was Pittsburgh.

“But what he really had was speed. He was quick, real quick off the ball. Shit, he was fast. I had to run my balls off just to keep up with him on a sweep, and he knew that. He’d say, ‘Rooster, we got to get out of there quick.’ I’d say, ‘Holy shit, I just gotta try and get behind him and try and hold on to him.’”

Defensive tackle Kelvin Korver remembers what Gene used to do after the ref’s warm-up check before a game.

“Not only did he tape and wrap each forearm, he would soak them! The refs would check your arms during warm ups, right? Then Gene would come back and put them under hot water, and if you took that tape and put it under hot water, it’d set up like a cast . . . then he’d hit you with that.”

“He looked like the Michelin Man, but I’ll say this about Gene, players know when other guys are exceptional. We knew he was great. You knew he was a special guy. I would say that if there was one constant, it was Gene Upshaw.”

The Raiders opened the 1975 season in Miami on Monday night and devastated the Dolphins with a 31–21 win. During the game, Marv Hubbard separated his shoulder and had to be taken out of the game. Madden replaced him with second year players, Mark van Eeghen.

Van Eeghen was a 6’ 2” 223-pound running back out of Colgate. He was drafted by the Raiders in the third round of the 1974 NFL draft.

“That first training camp couldn’t have sucked worse. Whatever I thought it was supposed to be it wasn’t what I was doing on the field. It was just a battleground with rookies and free agents. It was chaos.

“So one day I’m sitting there in the shower, and I’m thinking, I don’t have to do this. I didn’t go to school to do this. It was never my goal to play professional football. It was never my dream. But when the veterans returned in August, Marv Hubbard took me under his wing. It was then that I realized that we had a real football team. But I also found out that I was a choirboy compared to most of them. You couldn’t have found a more bizarre group of people!”

“He put Stickum on his arms ‘cause he thought it’d be better to hold the ball. By the end of the first two series he looked like a Chia Pet. He has grass all over him. We started calling him ‘Grass Monster.’

In my opinion, Mark was the last, true fullback. I thought he was the most underrated fullback in the history of the game. He wasn’t the type of player to run around anybody. He wasn’t going to put a move on anyone. His weapon was a stiff-arm and he’d just run over you, pound you, and then get up and do it again.

When they made Phil Villapiano, they broke the mold. Phil was a one-of-a-kind player who will never again be replicated on the gridiron.

Phil came to the Raiders from Bowling Green University. The 6’ 2”, 225-pound linebacker was drafted by Oakland in the second round of the 1971 NFL draft.

Phil had played defensive end in college and had to learn the linebacker position.

“As the opposing quarterback called signals, Phil would look over at Dan Conners and say, ‘Where do I go?’” said Stabler. “Dan would tell him, and Phil would go to it. In between getting burned, he just knocked the shit out of people. He was one tough wild man from the beginning.”

Matuszak and Villapiano got along famously. Matuszak once said that Phil was “all heart.”

“He would pump me up before a game by pulling me to the side, looking me straight in the eye and saying, ‘Tooz, I was talking to that fucking quarterback the other day. You know what he said? He said you weren’t worth shit. That’s exactly what he told me.’

“I would play along by saying, ‘This guy thinks I’m shit, huh? We’ll just see about that.’”

John and Phil were well known for their pranks. Tooz describes what he and Villapiano did to offensive lineman, Steve Sylvester.

“One night at the Bamboo Room we got Steve Sylvester and totally took advantage of him. First we grabbed him and tore off his shirt, but that only wetted our appetites for more. Next, we ripped off his sweat shorts. Next we began spinning the 6’ 4”, 260-pound guy around like a top. I don’t know how much fun it was for Steve, but Phil and I enjoyed it immensely!”

After summer practice, the players would shower, change, and stop by the Bamboo Room. Phil and Matuszak decided to go in full uniform—including cleats.

“One sweltering afternoon, Phil and I were badly dehydrated. We walked right from the practice field to the Bamboo. We were fully dressed—cleats, pads, jerseys, everything but our helmets. We told the patrons we wanted to be just like any other working class person—right from the job to the tavern. Phil was in the middle of a story and it was loud in there. He felt he was having some trouble getting his point across. So he decided to stand up on a table so he could be heard. Phil is Italian and likes to speak with his hands. He was on the table, swinging his hands around, when his metal cleats began to slide from beneath him. He fell to the floor with a crash. Drinks and pretzels flew across the room. Phil banged up his elbow. Case in point: Never let a 220-pound Italian linebacker climb up on a table with his cleats on a sweltering day in Santa Rosa.

“One Thanksgiving, Phil told some rookies about a local meat market that was giving away free turkeys to all the Raiders,” said Matuszak. Phil laid it on thick. He told them that these guys really loved the Raiders and if the rookies didn’t go and get some turkeys, we’d probably lose some extremely devoted fans. This was an old Raiders routine. Rookies being rookies, these guys bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

“Unbelievably, so did our veteran center, Jim Otto. He overheard Phil and figured it was a pretty good deal. Even though he’d already ordered his own turkey for the holiday, Jim cancelled it to get the free one. It gets worse. Phil had found a meat market in one of the seediest, most dangerous sections of Oakland. You wouldn’t go there on a dare. I can imagine the look on Jim’s face as he drove there. When Jim walked in and asked for his complimentary turkey, the employees thought he was nuts. They shooed him away like they would any other freeloader. Phil thought he was done for but, because Otto was a peaceable man, he decided to spare Phil his life.”

Phil may have been a prankster off the field, but on the field he tallied a lot of hits while with Oakland, but his most important hit came in the 1977 Super Bowl.

The most important hit I ever saw Phil make was in the 1977 Super Bowl against the Vikings,” said Villapiano. “It was scoreless in the opening quarter when Ray Guy had the first punt of his career blocked. When Minnesota recovered all the way back to our three, it looked as if the Vikings would take the early lead.

“Chuck Foreman ran the next play down to the two. Then the Vikings tipped their hand. They inserted Ron Yary, normally a tackle, as an extra tight end. Phil knew the next play was coming his way.

“Slipping beneath Yary’s block, Phil stuck his helmet directly in the vicinity of Vikings running back Brent McClanahan’s heart. McClanahan fumbled and we recovered. The offense drove to the other end of the field for a field goal. The momentum of the game swung to the Raiders and we beat the Vikings, 32–14 to win the Super Bowl.”

As you can see, tight ends and linebackers are like oil and water, according to Matuszak. “They just don’t mix!”

“The worst shot Phil ever took was from a 49er tight end by the name of Ted Kwalick, who would later play for the Raiders.”

“Tight ends and linebackers have never cared for each other anyway. When a tight end goes out for a pass, it’s the linebacker’s duty to bottle him up at the line of scrimmage. This leads to encounters you’d normally find in professional wrestling. Kwalick’s and Villapiano’s dislike for each other went far beyond this. They would go looking for each other.

“It was one of those shots you never see coming. It came on a reverse. Phil had changed directions and was running full speed in pursuit of the wide receiver. Running from the blind side, Kwalick struck Phil’s helmet with his own. Phil was a bloody mess, his forehead cracked down the middle. John Madden had to run on the field and literally pull Phil to the sidelines. Phil could care less about all the blood. He just wanted to discuss the matter with Kwalick.”

“George Atkinson handed a vicious blow to the head of Chief’s running back Ed Podolak,” recalls Matuszak. “They rolled through Kansas City’s sideline. When one of the Chiefs came rushing at Atkinson’s blind side, Phil had no choice but to take him out with a flying block. The opposition’s sideline is the one place you don’t want to be at a football game. Phil somehow wound up beneath the Chiefs’ bench, where the Chiefs were kicking his ass—literally. I ran over to their bench and threw three or four guys out of the way. Then I picked Phil off the ground and carried him back to the playing field.”

One night Phil returned the favor to John. They were together at a local bar when Matuszak cracked a joke that the bartender did not find very funny.

“Phil and I were with a couple of the Raiders and we walked into a bar that was normally popular. That night, the place was nearly empty. We were standing around when I looked at the bartender and made a joke.

“Not hysterically funny, but a harmless statement, right? Apparently this guy didn’t agree. He reached behind the bar and pulled out a 9mm pistol. He aimed the damn thing about twelve inches from my head and looked crazy enough to shoot me!

“‘There isn’t a judge in the world that would convict me for blowing away an asshole like you,’ he said

“I literally started to sweat. The last place I wanted to die was some bar in Oakland but I wasn’t about to let this guy get away with this. Just as quickly as he’d blown up, the maniac suddenly cooled down. When he lowered the gun, Phil said, “John, it’s not worth it. Let’s just go.” “Thanks to Phil, I lived to see another day.”

Before he was known as Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies, Carl Weathers was a 6’ 2”, 220-pound linebacker out of San Diego State. Undrafted, he tried out with the Raiders in 1970 and made the team. Even though he only played for two years, he made his mark with the franchise.

“One night at Al’s Cactus Room, I got talking to a fellow rookie named Carl Weathers, a linebacker from San Diego State,” said Stabler. He was 220 pounds of sculptured muscle. Carl, a reserve linebacker, was real quick and a really tough hitter on special teams.

“‘That’s my game for now,’ he said. ‘I like to be the first one downfield.’

“‘Yeah, and I’m only gonna do it one more year if I can’t play linebacker, too’” he said. ‘This game is not my life’s work. I’m gonna be an actor.’

“Carl Weathers gave us one more year, then went into acting and finally hit it big playing Apollo Creed in the Rocky series. It’s no doubt his height helped him win the role opposite Sylvester Stallone, who is only five-eight or so. I just wish he had a better shot at linebacker with us because he had that mean streak in him that you need to be a good ball player.”

Nemiah Wilson was a 6’ 0”, 165-pound defensive back out of Grambling State, who was traded by Denver to the Raiders in 1968.

“I was drafted in the second round of the ’73 draft. Coming in from Nebraska, Bob Devaney was my coach and Tom Osborne was an assistant. Our team was disciplined and structured. You said ‘Yessir’ to the coaches.

“I remember one day sitting in the Raiders training room and one of our defensive backs, Nemiah Wilson, was on the phone cursing the person he was talking to. I asked someone, ‘Who in the world is he talking to?’ They said, ‘Al Davis.’ I practically fell off the bench!”

In 1963, Ron Wolf began his career as a scout for the then AFL’s Oakland Raiders. In 1972 he was the Player Personnel Manager for the Oakland Raiders of the NFL. According to Wolf, “The 1972 Oakland Raider draft was the best by far.

“We never had any restrictions on what program they would come from. We were trying to find football players. It didn’t matter where they were or what their level of competition was. It was how good they were.”

“In camp, I’d walk by this one room where he hung out. It was always dark. All I could hear was the sound of this old Bell & Howell projector. I’d think, ‘Who’s that guy?’ No one knew what he looked like. You just heard about him. But you never saw him.”

“And he was the one man who could be a one man staff. I mean, Ron Wolf knew every player everywhere. Ron Wolf’s mind was amazing. You could ask him, ‘Ron, there’s this junior wide receiver someone told me about at Alcorn,’ and he would know him. He didn’t have to go through notes and read stuff. He’d say, ‘This is who he is, and this is what he does.’ He truly had a photographic mind.”

“I was just one of those guys lucky enough to be along for the ride and you are welcome to believe John if you want.

“Al had this desire to always find a sleeper. Someone no one really knew about. We hit with a couple of them. We always tried to pick the best player for the Raiders. There wasn’t anything like need for position or that type of thing. To be perfectly honest, what Al Davis did was design that team in his mold. Those of us who were there can take some credit, but really and truly, with the exception of Lamonica, those were all his trades—from Willie Brown to Ted Hendricks. I look back at the moves he made, and they were remarkable moves.”

“Getting your nickname was a sign that you’d finally been accepted into the club,” said Tatum. “For example, most of the guys called Coach Madden ‘Big Red.’ Madden was a burly guy with red hair, but for some reason Skip called him ‘Pinky.’

“No one is given a nickname; one must earn his title, even Skip. Most of the time we let ourselves go at training camp. We hardly shaved and we never wore fancy clothes. After all, nobody was going to see us except the coaches and maybe the Queen. And who wanted to look good for her?

“One day, Skip was walking over to the practice field looking the way he thought a Raiders athlete should look. His appearance was bad even by Raiders training camp standards. Someone said that Skip looked as though he was coming back from one of his frequent trips to Mars and all points beyond. Bob Brown, our big offensive tackle, saw Skip coming up the path and jumped back ten steps and said, ‘Damn, Skip, you look like death warmed over, swallowed down whole, and spit back out.’ Skip looked terrible, but the next day he looked even worse. After a week of letting himself go, Skip earned the nickname ‘Dr. Death.’

“Everyone who’s been through the wars has a nickname. My friends called me ‘The Reverend,’ not ‘The Assassin.’ They knew that I was a saintly person off the field.

“George Atkinson was ‘The Weasel.’ George got himself into impossible situations but had a knack for weaseling his way out.

“Some of the guys liked to use their mouths a lot. Gene Upshaw, our All-Pro guard, was ‘The Pelican Jaw.’ He fancied himself a politician and kept his jaw moving while talking about the issues. Dave Rowe liked to hear himself talk, too. We called him ‘Radio Rowe.’

“All-Pro wide receiver Cliff Branch ran the hundred in 9.2 seconds. Naturally, Cliff was ‘The Rabbit.’

“Neal Colzie, our punt return specialist, thought he was a ladies man. We called him ‘Sweet Pea.’

“Dave Casper was ‘The Ghost.’ Dave was the whitest white person I had ever seen. At the opposite end of the color spectrum was ‘Black Angus.’ Football fans knew him as All-Pro tackle, Art Shell.

“Mark van Eeghen isn’t black, but his kinky Afro hairstyle started the rumor about his mother running off with a black man. Most of the time we called Mark ‘Black Blood,’ but if he didn’t crack a smile with that nickname, we came back with ‘Bundini Brown, Jr.’ Skip said that Bundini and Mark looked alike.

“Clarence Davis is another man with two nicknames. Most of the time, we referred to him as ‘C. D.,’ but the bigger guys on the team called him ‘The Militant Midget.’ C. D. is only about five-feet nine, and when people get on him about being short, he started making threats about the little people taking over the world and shooting everyone over five-feet ten.

“If you’re going to have nicknames, you must hit Al Davis with one, too. Everyone did call Al a variety of different names behind his back, but no one said anything to his face.

“As the general manager, Al was the man who controlled the contracts and the money. It’s not that anyone treated Al like a special person, because he really wasn’t, and never put on any airs, but the players had this unwritten law to simply ignore the man. Treat him like he wasn’t there until it was time for contract talks.

“But one night Skip forgot his wallet in the locker room and we drove back to pick it up. Al was in the weight room working out with his skinny arms. Skip started blasting on Al’s physique and it was a heavy scene. Al responded with, ‘Skip, we’re both the same size. You wear a size 44 suit and so do I.’

“The next day at practice, to prove his point, Al came out dressed in a suit, size 44. Seeing how Al is more at home in a size 40, the jacket and pants fit a little loose. That’s all Skip needed. Skip ran over and grabbed Al by the seat of the pants and started poking fun of the baggy suit. Skip was carrying on something terrible, and before long everyone was on the ground laughing, including Al. Finally, after Skip had nearly tugged Al’s pants off, he blurted out, ‘El Bago!’

Superstitions are a part of every Superstitions NFL team. The Raiders were no different. Here Jack talks about the superstitious nature of the team, their coach, and their owner. The Raiders were strong believers in ‘luck’.

“I knew that coaches and players alike believed in luck, and Al Davis, John Madden, and the Raiders were no exception to that rule. The only trouble was that the Raiders carried their luck charms and superstitions a little too far. I’m talking about Coach Madden and Al Davis for the most part, because they really seemed to sail off the deep end when it came to mumbo-jumbo.

“The superstitious phases of Raider mania hit the hardest in 1973, when fifteen or sixteen of the guys wanted to play in a golf tournament instead of practicing. Coach Madden understood, I guess, because the guys went golfing. Then, on Sunday, we smashed the New York Giants, 42–0. That just happened to be the most points we scored all season and the only shutout our defense recorded. After that, Coach Madden encouraged the guys to go golfing and even started a special team golfing tournament.

“The golf tournament was simple compared to the many other superstitious beliefs the Raiders held on to. It’s just throwing salt over your left shoulder for good luck (Al Davis did it all the time) or the team not traveling on the thirteenth day of the month. As time went by, superstitions included eating the same pregame meal (if we won the last game), staying at the same hotel, and coaches wearing the same clothes. If we lost, then everything changed.

“In Denver, we always stayed at the Continental Hotel and we always beat Denver and we always won our division championship. I guess the Denver management also has some superstitious blood in them because they took over the Continental and moved us out. The team never really liked staying there anyway. It was an old, cinder block building, drafty and cold, and not my idea of upper-middle-class living.

“But Al Davis insisted that we beat Denver because we stayed at the Continental. Al fought to keep us there, but the management of the place said we had to go. In 1977, Denver beat us twice and won the division title for the first time in the history of their club. Al Davis went around growling at everyone and saying, ‘I told you so!’

“I didn’t believe in that sort of witchcraft, but then we went to San Diego for a game, and strange things started to happen. In the past we’d stayed at the Stardust Motel and the Chargers hadn’t beaten us in eighteen games. As a matter of fact, San Diego couldn’t muster enough points on the scoreboard to make the games respectable. But just before we played the Chargers for a second time in 1977, their management decided to move their team into the Star Dust and shifted us over to the Hyland. I don’t know if superstition spurred the move or not, but we were quartered on the other side of town and San Diego had our winning motel.

“Al Davis and John Madden were upset over the deal, but it didn’t shake up any of the players. We still went on with a normal pregame night (five wild parties) and showed up at the stadium early Sunday afternoon in time for kick off. The game was simply unbelievable. The Chargers won, 12–7. After that experience, every member on the team started to avoid stepladders, black cats, and new hotels. Every pregame burp and sneeze became a new ritual.”

John Matuszak was fascinated with the superstitious rituals of his teammates. Here he talks about the crazy and bizarre rites they would perform before a game.

“Football is a funny game, all right, and one thing I always found amusing was the superstition. I, personally, didn’t have many, but if a player did something a certain way and his team went on to win, he usually did it that way forever—or at least until a loss.

“When we were on the road, Mark van Eeghen would climb on top of his TV set, and then dive off it onto his bed. If he didn’t do that, he couldn’t fall asleep. But that was only one of his habits.

“He and Dave Casper would get back-to-back, drop their pants, lock their elbows together, and lift each other off the ground. You won’t find it in many astronomy books, but it was the rarely sited double moon.

“Dressing for a game, any game was a ritual with him. He took great care with his shoes. He made sure his cleats were tight and new because he didn’t want to slip. Next he put on two pairs of socks and jammed his foot into the shoe. He wanted a tight fit. Then he taped his shoes on tight so there was no chance of the shoe giving way under the stress of starting and stopping.”

“After that, he taped his wrists and forearms. Once all the gear and tape was in place, he channeled all his attention to the game and the people he’d be going up against.”

“Lester Hayes always wore the same chinstrap he bought in junior high school for a dollar. He used to wear a towel hanging from his uniform belt, and he’d always have to have it taped exactly seven times. If the trainer didn’t tape it exactly seven times, Lester felt naked out there. If that weren’t enough, after every coin toss, Lester would touch the helmets of one of the veterans, usually Hendricks or Upshaw. Since they had been through the wars so many times, Lester wanted to soak up some of their aura.”

The use of performance enhancing drugs in the NFL has been an ongoing issue since the late 1950s. It wasn’t until 1987 when the NFL finally began to test for steroid use.

But up until there was reported drug abuse on the San Diego Chargers in the early seventies and the league tried to cut back on the use of amphetamines, there was always a big jar of them in the Raiders’ dressing room. Players who wanted some extra energy could just dip in.

“The big Raiders’ candy jar contained gray colored amphetamine capsules that the players called ‘rat turds.’ I had taken some speed in college when I was seeing a girl in Mobile and staying up all night. Typically, it would make my brain race and my mouth so dry I couldn’t even spit. I’d feel like I was so wired with energy that I could go forever and do anything I wanted without having to sleep. As I was a hyper, high-energy guy anyway, I had to be careful with speed.

“I hadn’t seen myself on speed, but I did see my teammates on the sidelines before and during games. Their eyes would get real big and they would have a kind of wild, distant look to them. They would be so wired they couldn’t stop moving their jaws and grinding their teeth. I was standing next to Blanda before one game in early 1970 watching guys seemingly grinding their teeth down to nothing, and I said, ‘They’re gonna have to wear a mouthpiece out to dinner.’

“The guys were constantly downing Gatorade because of the chronic thirst from the pills. Everywhere you looked you’d see wild eyed guys guzzling that yellow liquid and moving their jaws like an old man gumming food—but you knew they were ready to play.

“It was all part of the game. If it made a guy play better, or made him think he played better, fine. The team owners and the league itself didn’t care how much speed was taken until the Chargers headlines appeared. Then there was an outcry in the media, public opinion turned against the league, and that worried the TV networks that paid the NFL millions of dollars every year. The networks feared advertising would withdraw from NFL telecasts if the drug situation was not cleared up. So the NFL said it was policing the situation and, therefore, only team doctors could dispense amphetamines and other medications.

“But I played over ten years after the so-called NFL crackdown on speed, and it was always readily available to players. Guys took it for diet reasons, for hangovers, and for that extra jolt they liked to bring with them into games.”

“It was my rookie year, one of the first games we had. When I was in college, I had a habit of taking salt tablets. So I walked into the training room and I asked someone where the salt tables were.

“I walked over there and grabbed a handful. I’m moving my hand up to my mouth to pop them in, when all of a sudden someone reaches out to grab my arm. My hand opens up and the pills go everywhere. The guy says, ‘The other Coke cup.’

“The amphetamines were nicknamed rat turds and they were just in a jar (or Coke cup) sitting there,” said guard George Buehler. “You could take all you wanted.”

“Sure, there was some of that taken. I ain’t gonna deny that. But steroids? I really doubt it. Hey, our steroids came in a brown bottle. It was Budweiser we loved. Kept your weight up, too. The trainer always said, ‘Instead of Coca Cola, have three or four beers.’ We had to listen to the trainer, right?”

“We didn’t use performance enhancers,” said Atkinson. “I smoked a little weed, whatever, you know, but not none of that steroid shit.”