16. He Wouldn’t Let Us Lose

Al died on October 8, 2011.

The call telling me he was gone came at about 3:20 am. I was not surprised, yet I felt a sense of shock. I understood that I had to push aside the deep, profound sadness that was washing over and through me and collect myself, as there was so much I had to do. I called several of the Raiders’ other owners and coworkers with whom I worked the most closely, and I called Roger Goodell. I don’t remember precisely what Roger said, but I do remember that he was tremendously kind and compassionate.

We had a lot to do. We needed flights for Al’s wife and son from Houston to Oakland and then a flight back to Houston for his son. We needed to alert everyone who was part of our organization, people who were close to the Raiders and some of Al’s closest friends. We also needed to craft an appropriate statement to the public. There was so much to do.

Six hours went by and I hadn’t slowed. Then, suddenly, I stopped for a moment and I burst into tears. I sobbed so hard that I couldn’t speak and was barely able to breathe. In fact, I am crying now as I write this.

My husband was nearby at the time and I choked out these words to him: “Who is going to call me in the middle of the night and motherfuck me now?”

That was the first thing that I was able to articulate once the reality that Al was gone had set in. Al would have loved that.

As exasperating and infuriating as Al’s dead-of-night, motherfucking phone calls were, I knew they were special. I also knew that I would miss them for the rest of my life. Now, years after his death, I still miss them terribly.

Very late that night, I flew to Houston. Our game the next day was surreal. The Texans understood how difficult this moment was and they offered a private area in which to watch the game. I invited a handful of other Raiders employees to join me if they wished to do so and we watched together.

Across the league, every stadium had a pregame moment of silence in Al’s honor.

Late in the game, with just 2:56 left, we were winning by a slim margin of 25–20. At that point, I wanted to be on the field to watch the end of the game on the sideline with our team. I had never done that before, but on this day that just felt right. I told my coworkers with whom I was watching that I was headed to the field and I asked them to join me if they wished to do so.

We got to the field just as the Texans started their final possession. I was standing between the end of our bench and the end zone. The Texans were moving the ball easily. They had reached our 39-yard line with just under one minute remaining. On third-and-23, Texans quarterback Matt Schaub completed a pass down to our 5-yard line and then spiked the ball with only seven seconds left in the game. On the next play, Schaub moved to his left looking to throw. It seemed like he had hours. It appeared to me that Schaub had room to run but choose not to and instead attempted a pass.

I saw him throw the ball. I saw a Texans receiver who appeared to be wide open in the back of the end zone. We lost the game, I thought. We lost the game. I actually doubled over, so excruciating was the thought of losing.

Because I couldn’t see over the photographers who were kneeling on the sideline I didn’t see our safety, Michael Huff, who was in front of that receiver, as he was blocked from my view. Then, suddenly, I saw all of our players rushing to the end zone, throwing themselves on what I believed to be the ground. Only it wasn’t the ground, it was Michael with the ball in his arms. I realized then that we won the game and I started crying very hard, as I am now. For a very brief moment I thought about running into the end zone and throwing myself onto Michael too – but I didn’t. I simply cried and walked with the coaches, players, and others off the field and up the tunnel toward the locker room.

I found myself walking with Willie Brown. We clung to one another and cried.

The entire team was emotional after the game. Players were crying and our coach, Hue Jackson, sank to his knees, put his face in his hands, and also wept.

A day or so after the game, we were back at our facility, and I was at a lunch table in our dining area with Huff, our other starting safety Tyvon Branch, and a few other players who were on the field for that play. One of them noted that we only had 10 men on the field. He was right. I had seen one of our linebackers mistakenly run off before the play.

I shared my observation that the quarterback could have run into the end zone and that I couldn’t believe that he didn’t. Tyvon told me that when he saw our linebacker run off the field, he decided that he would follow Schaub and that if Schaub was going to run, he was going to have to go through him.

We were finished eating but before leaving the table, I told the players we didn’t have 10 men on the field; we had 11. A few corrected me. One player started to explain which linebacker mistakenly went off the field right before the snap. I shook my head no, and again said that we had 11 men on the field. Michael and Tyvon understood what I meant.

“No, she’s right, we had 11,” one of them said.

There is no way Al would let us lose that game.