From there, Davis joined the coaching staff at

Al Davis: a football maverick remembered

During his many years as the coach and chief executive of the Oakland Raiders, Al Davis had one simply stated motto: 'Just win, baby.'
By Phil Elderkin, Contributor / October 11, 2011

the University of Southern California where two years of recruiting violations resulted in the Trojans football program being put on probation. When USC head football coach Don Clark retired and the Trojans gave the job to John McKay, Davis was so upset that he joined the American Football Leagues San Diego Chargers. Even though most fans have forgotten by now, it was Al who signed future pro football greats Lance Alworth and Keith Lincoln. In 1962 the AFL's Raiders were a disaster area. They turned in records of 2-12 in 1961 and 1-13 in 1962. Co-owners Wayne Valley and Ed McGah liked Davis's nine years of experience as an assistant coach and hired him to be both general manager and head coach. The only boss Al Davis would ever have to answer to was himself. For many years, Davis was consistently able to find quarterbacks, including Daryle Lamonica andKen Stabler, who fit the Raiders' long-ball passing game. But when Jim Plunkett retired after the 1986 season, Al couldnt seem to find anyone to take his place, perhaps the only time in his career when frustration tackled him from behind. Davis built an organization that basically was an extension of himself. He didnt believe in titles. Everybody under Davis was an administrative assistant. With Davis in charge the Raiders went 10-4 in Als first year as head coach. After that came 15 division championships, four conference titles, and five trips to the Super Bowl. Three of those visits resulted in Raider victories, in 1977, 1981, and 1984 the first with John Madden as head coach and the latter two achieved under Tom Flores, the NFL's first Latino head coach (Davis also hired African-American, Art Shell, a former Raider lineman, to break the league's

In this 1998 file photo, Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis gives a thumbs-up to fans prior to the game with the Kansas City Chiefs, in Oakland, Calif. The Oakland Raiders announced Saturday, Oct. 8, that longtime owner and Hall of Famer Davis died. Paul Sakuma/AP/File
LOS ANGELES

Brass knuckles were as right for Brooklyn-raised Al Davis, the owner of the NFL Oakland Raiders, as diamonds were for the fingers of Elizabeth Taylor. Davis, who died Oct. 8 at his home in Oakland, never did anything the conventional way. Al was a fiercely impatient man who was also a calculated risk taker. It didnt make a difference to Davis whether he was taking on the commissioner of the National Football League or his two original partners with the Raiders. The fact that many of his best players were picked up from rival NFL teams who got tired of explaining their off the field activities to police never bothered Al. The name Al Davis first began to grow to billboard proportions when he was an assistant coach at The Citadel, a military school in South Carolina, except that this man who once sold hotdogs at Ebbets Field was never an assistant anything.

coaching color barrier, and its first female chief executive, Amy Trask). The team's 1984 Super Bowl victory occurred while the team was based in Los Angeles. It would take at least another 500 words to explain why Davis, who became a part owner of the team in 1966, moved the Raiders to Los Angeles.

By RICHARD SANDOMIR Published: October 10, 2011

When F. Wayne Valley hired Al Davis to coach the Oakland Raidersin 1963, he could not have imagined that Davis would one day shrewdly maneuver him out as the principal owner.
Robert Klein/Associated Press

When rival NFL owners voted 22-0 against it, Davis hit them with a $160 million lawsuit. Davis won, collecting millions in the process. One of the things Davis explained after being named to pro footballs Hall of Fame in 1992 was the drive that helped him build the Raiders into champions. I always wanted to take an organization and make it the best in sports, Davis said. I admired theNew York Yankees for their power and intimidation. I admired the Brooklyn Dodgers under Branch Rickey for their speed and player development. I felt there was no reason the two approaches couldnt be combined into one powerful organization.

Al Davis, center, talking with Oakland Raiders players at the team's practice field in Oakland in 1963.

Davis, who died on Saturday, was the receivers coach of the San Diego Chargers at the time. When Valley was asked what he saw in Davis, he said: Because everybody hates him. Al Davis wants to win and hell do anything to win. And after losing all those games, I wanted a win, any way I could. Davis turned a dreadful American Football

Phil Elderkin is a former sports editor of The Christian Science Monitor.

League team that was 9-33 from its inception in 1960 into one with a 23-16-3 record in his three seasons as the coach. He left in 1966 for a brief stint as the A.F.L. commissioner. When he returned later that year to the Raiders, it was not as the coach. Davis had something much grander in mind. Now he was a general partner, head of football operations and a partowner after paying a reported $18,000 for 10 percent of the team. In 1969, he hired John Madden as the coach. That would be one step in Daviss climb to controlling the Raiders.

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A Brash Style and Power Plays Allowed Davis to Wrest Control

Associated Press

He got a piece of the team on the cheap and a managerial grip on the franchise. Still, Davis was a football guy without the wealth of other A.F.L.

Al Davis, head coach and general manager of the Oakland Raiders, watching an A.F.L. exhibition game in Oakland in 1963.

owners like Lamar Hunt (oil and real estate), Barron Hilton (hotels) and Bud Adams (oil). Nor was he as rich as Valley, a homebuilder, or Edward W. McGah, a developer, another one of the eight founding Raiders partners. Valley rightly saw a rare commodity in Davis, but it did not ensure a smooth relationship. They did not get along. Madden said of Davis on Monday on KCBS Radio: He wasnt a pushover for anyone. And he did like the battle. He did enjoy arguing. In 1972, Davis staged what looked like a coup dtat. With Valley at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Davis drew up a contract that he and McGah had signed to pay Davis $100,000 for 20 years and further consolidate his power as managing general partner. Once aware of it, Valley sued to nullify it. But Valley lost the suit, and in 1976, he sold out to Davis, said Jack Brooks, a former Raiders partner. His relationship with Valley wasnt very good, Brooks said Monday from San Francisco. Peter Richmond, who wrote a book about the Raiders of the 70s, said in a telephone interview on Monday: Al became dictator and emperor. Emperors become emperors for many reasons, and one is the hunger for power. But Als hunger for power wasnt to grind everybodys face in the dirt. It became a thing where he could say, I can build an empire and dominate it if I do well. By 2003, McGah had been dead for two decades and his family held his 31 percent of the team. McGahs daughter-in-law and greatgrandson sued to dismiss Davis as the managing general partner because he was denying them full

access to the teams financial records. They said that Davis and the company he created to run the team conducted themselves as if they were the sole owners of the Raiders. Here was an unusual turn of events: Davis was being sued by the family of the man who ushered him into the seat of total power with the Raiders. But the lawsuit ended well for Davis. After it was settled, Davis reportedly acquired the McGah stake, raising his share of the team to an estimated 67 percent. At the time, Valleys son, Mike, saw something familiar in the McGah familys battle against Davis. The power that is being exercised against the McGahs today is the same power that was used to pry my dad away from the team, Mike Valley told The Contra Costa Times. I wish them all the luck in the world. A couple years later, Brooks said he sold his stake to Davis, not to settle a feud, but to plan his estate. He did not divulge how much of the team he owned, or what Davis paid for it. We got along fine, Brooks said. We were good friends, and Al never asked to buy me out. He added: Als irreplaceable. When I met him before we hired him as coach, I said, This guys different from anybody else we talked to before. By 2007, Davis had been associated with the Raiders for 44 years. He decided to get some cash flow out of his holdings and sold 20 percent of his Raiders to three investors for $150 million.
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Posted: Saturday October 8, 2011 2:38PM ; Updated: Sunday October 9, 2011 1:40AM

Peter King>INSIDE

THE NFL

Davis impacted football history, and did it on his own terms

Al Davis: 1929-2011

been anyone like him? In pro football history, I mean. I honestly can't think of one. George Halas and Paul Brown are close; they founded and owned and coached and scouted, and Halas played for 10 years. But the number of jobs Highlights Davis did in football is staggering: Story scout, assistant head manager, Al Daviscoach, was one of acoach, kind, ageneral man who did it all and had a commissioner, team owner, team CEO. And Despite recent history, Davis' lifetime accomplishments ar professional contrarian. He did many doing of those at the Davis had a history of always things his way, despit same time. The shame of being young today is all you've seen is Davis' Raiders flounder. In the last nine seasons, Oakland has been a bad team and adrift as a franchise, and he'd been unable to bring in a smart man to help him run the front office day-to-day. But look at the first 42 years of Davis' professional career, and it's clear he belongs on the Mount Rushmore of football history. In a 51-year pro football career, Davis scouted for the Chargers and Raiders, was an assistant coach for the Chargers, was head coach and general manager for the Raiders, served as American Football League commissioner in 1966, was one of the key burrs in the NFL's saddle that forced the 1970 merger of the two professional leagues, and presided over the Raiders' AFL Championship in 1967 and was part-owner and GM -- either in title or de facto -- ever since. No single person played more of a role in 63-year-old Pete Rozelle resigning in 1989; Rozelle was sick of fighting Davis in court over the movement of his franchise. For that reason, Davis was despised by many of the oldline owners in the league. In the bitter AFL-NFL signing war, Davis fired one of the very first shots as a Charger assistant, signing wide receiver Lance Alworth; he became the first AFL player elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His Raiders and the Steelers were the first teams to mine historically black colleges for talent. He hired the first black head coach in NFL history (Art Shell), the first Hispanic head coach in NFL history (Tom Flores) and he made Amy Trask the first female chief executive in NFL history, a job she still holds. He loved giving young people chances. The chance he took with John Madden, hired at age 32 to coach the Raiders in 1969, paid off. Madden coached 10 years, and he retired with the best winning percentage in history for coaches who won at least 100 games. Davis' Raiders won the AFL title in 1967 and NFL titles in 1976, 1980 and 1984. They lost a Super Bowl in 2002. The franchise is one of two to have appeared in Super Bowls in four different decades. Of the people I've met covering sports in the last 31 years, Davis was the most interesting personality.

Al Davis took a chance on hiring 32-year-old John Madden to coach the Raiders, but it paid off with a 1976 Super Bowl win.

Ron Riesterer/Oakland Tribune

Remembering Al Davis
My favorite Al Davis story: On a Friday night in April 2004, the night before the NFL Draft, Davis was giving me a tour of his offices at the Raiders' facility in Oakland. In his inner sanctum, there were four large TVs on the wall, in a diamond configuration. He said he watched games in his office quite often. "Basketball, women's basketball, baseball,'' he said. "All the sports.'' "Women's basketball?'' I said, surprised. And I decided to test him: "OK, what team took Diana Taurasi with the first pick of the WNBA Draft?'' Disdainfully, he said: "Oh, come on. That's easy. Phoenix.'' Al Davis wanted you to know he paid attention to everything in the world and knew something about everything -- and knew much more than you knew about football. *** When I heard the news about Al Davis' death Saturday morning, the first thing I thought was, Has there ever

Easily. He challenged me a couple of times over things I'd written -- one time months later deep in a story that even I didn't remember. Time after time, on issue after issue, Davis would abstain from voting at league meetings, often times his way of voicing his silent protest over a bylaw he considered short-sighted. And sometimes I'm convinced he did it just to be a contrarian, just to say, "I never want to be in lockstep with the NFL -- or with anyone. I'm my own man.'' Davis loved to take the new owners in the league and spend time with them one-on-one, to talk about how they could work in common and to tell them how he viewed the present and future of the sport. One of those men was Jerry Jones, who became close to Davis over the years. It was that relationship, in part, that helped embolden Jones to go outside the league's exclusive advertising deal with Coke to make a deal with Pepsi in the Dallas area. The league sued Jones, but eventually adopted Jones' contrarian way of selling and marketing beer and soft drinks both nationally and locally in separate deals. Jones, through Davis, saw the league was a collective entity, but also saw that each owner should be allowed to pursue deals in his own best interests. Once, columnist Dave Anderson of the New York Times described Davis, raised in Brooklyn, as "cunning." When Davis saw Anderson he said, "Come on Dave -- don't call me 'cunning' in the New York Times.'' "But you are, Al,'' Anderson said. "I know,'' Davis said. "But my mother reads the New York Times.'' So did Davis. He read everything. Talk to him for 10 minutes and you realize he was a lot more than a football man. Don't let the last nine years color everything you think about Davis. Davis, in his prime, was a holy terror for those he competed with.

This is not biography. Neither is it history nor eulogy nor expert summing up of X's and O's. This is just a sketch of how Al Davis and those pass-happy Wild West AFL days of the 1960s seemed to me as a little kid. It's hard to remember now, but back then the NFL and the AFL were as different in type and kind as any two things could be. And not just different, but at war over their differences. At war, we were informed at the time, for this nation's very soul.
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AP Photo Daryle Lamonica undoubtedly had a receiver 2030 yards downfield in mind if he had time to get off the pass.

Because the NFL was all slow-motion teamwork and Norse mythology, a grinding siege of elbow grease and high-top shoes, antacids and good intentions. The NFL was as buttoned-up and buttoned-down as IBM or ITT or McNamara's Defense Department. The AFL was Bourbon Street. It was fun that felt wrong. Like you woke up one morning to discover your dad had traded the family Vista Cruiser for a Vincent Black Shadow and was dating Ann-Margret. Al Davis was the embodiment of this, of course. Maybe even the cause of it. On one side was the football establishment and its fedoras and cashmere topcoats and its dull Machine Age regimentation -- and over there was Davis, as loose and sleek and daring as a cat burglar. On game day his teams all looked like they had just made bail. He was the most thrilling villain in football history -something I could understand even as a 10-year-old boy in 1967. Because in '64 or '65 or '66 if you chose up sides for a sandlot game, it was even money you'd pretend to be the Colts or the Giants or the Packers; a safe bet you'd stand in the pocket of your imagination like Unitas, or run the sweep like Hornung. It was straight up oldtime football, missionary football according to the catechism of Halas and Lombardi.

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Updated: October 9, 2011, 7:44 PM ET

Al Davis (and AFL): Something different

By Jeff MacGregor, ESPN.com
Remembering A Pioneer "Al Davis Passes" isn't a headline, it was his playbook.

But by 1967, here comes Al Davis and his Raiders and his quarterback, The Mad Bomber, Daryle Lamonica. Your daydreams just got the upgrade. No more Starr to Dowler on the 6-yard buttonhook. Instead it's everybody go deep and I'll heave it. As unfair as it is to pioneers like Lamar Hunt or Sid Gillman or John Hadl, it felt like Al Davis was the one who set us all free.
[+] Enlarge

He seemed to me then and seems to me still a very great and terrible man. An American pirate. An original. An answer and antidote to the dismal little pieties and uptight fictions of the National Football League, he was a 60-yard go route just for the hell of it. He was the Raiders. He was the AFL. He was what I knew of rebellion at the age of 10. Looking back, what Al Davis brought to football was sex and freedom. And for that The League can never forgive him. And the game can never thank him enough. Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. You can e-mail him at jeff_macgregor@hotmail.com, or follow his Twitter.com feed @MacGregorESPN.

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Mario Tama/Getty ImagesShared attributes of Al Davis and the Vincent Black Shadow: Dangerous, dark and exciting.

Maybe it was those black uniforms. Or that logo. Or maybe because Davis embodied for me a very specific kind of anti-hero at a very specific moment in history. Lee Marvin in "Point Blank."Frank Sinatra in "Tony Rome." Steve McQueen in "Bullitt." 1967. 1968. Fictional hard guys caught between the antique days of Sam Spade and the new world order of Harry Callahan. That moment in time didn't last long. But what Al Davis brought to football was their aesthetic, their vibe, their wardrobe. Their situational morality. He wore the same wised-up tough-guy nihilism they did. The same hot cool. The same sunglasses. This wasn't the harmless ring-a-ding-ding of the Rat Pack just passed; nor was it yet the turned-on, tuned-in chronic fugue state of Fonda and Hopper and "Easy Rider." Rather, it was a weird little break in our cultural progression -- not quite out of the Fifties, but not fully into what we now understand as the '60s. So a couple of years of violent cinematic alienation and imminent rage in wingtips and two-button suits; of Angie Dickinson and Jill St. John. All of it overwrought corn and inauthentic and completely American. One minute it's hip to be square, the next thing you know it's the Summer of Love and even the league bosses are rocking turtlenecks and ankle boots. And what's sort of endearing about Al Davis -- at least to those of us who've traveled down the timeline with him -- is how this remained his look and his sound and his ethos for the next 40 years. The revolutionary authoritarian. The anti-corporate capitalist. Just win, baby, whatever the cost or contradiction or existential consequence.

The advice Al Davis gave me ...

October, 8, 2011, 4:27 PM ET By Paul Kuharsky
In the summer of 1995, as I prepared to move across the country and start the job that qualified as my big break, I read Slick by Mark Ribowsky. The biography of Al Davis was required reading, a mentor had told me, before I started covering Davis Oakland Raiders for The Oakland Tribune. Its a gripping account of Davis life, and I felt I had a good sense of him as I embarked on the move as a raw 26-year-old whod written a lot but was about to take on his first beat. There was no sign of Davis as I struggled through my first days at training camp in Oxnard, Calif. But not too long after I started came several days of joint Raiders-Cowboys practices in Austin, Texas. And there, in the white sweatsuit, he emerged. The three fields at St. Edwards University ran end to end, so it was a pretty good walk from the second or third down to a fenced-in pathway that led players and coaches to the locker rooms. Reporters walked with them as they left the field.

I was ready to introduce myself to Davis. I waited a reasonable distance from him as he signed autographs and charmed fans until he stepped away to start that walk. He knew of me and the Tribune's plan, he said, and was welcoming. We chit-chatted about a variety of things, including where I went to high school -- he said hed heard of it, though we didn't have a football team and there no reason for him to know it. It had gone well, I thought. But we still had a distance to cover and so my mind started racing. What else could I turn to in an introductory conversation when it was clear Id be walking with him all the way to the building? And the question I came up with produced the greatest answer Ive ever gotten from a prominent sports figure. It was something like this: So can you give me some advice, one Northeastern guy to another? How do I adjust to California? We had been walking side by side, but Davis stopped, and turned to face me. I responded in kind. He put a hand on my shoulder and he said: You dont adjust. You just dominate.

thing he can imagine? In 99.9 percent of all possible scenarios, such paradoxical absorption would be dark and meaningful. It would be twisted and bizarre, and it would be perceived as the ultimate manifestation of selfloathing. Unless, of course, the Jewish person in question was Al Davis. Then it makes perfect sense. Of course Al Davis was interested in the Nazis. Of course he was. Somehow, it would have been more surprising if he hadnt been. When I woke up this morning and discovered that Al Davis was dead, I was surprised. Now, how could this be? How could I be surprised by the death of an 82-yearold man who already seemed unhealthy in 1988? Yet I was. It did not seem like Davis was killable. He was a hard man a genius contrarian who seemed intent on outliving all his enemies in order to irrefutably prove his ideas were right. No one ever personified a sports organization the way Davis embodied the Raiders, and no one ever will. No one can. Its not possible. The league he helped invent no longer exists in the manner he devised. Its difficult to visualize another man who could

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Chuck Klosterman: Remembering Oakland Raiders Owner Al Davis

Posted Saturday, October 8, 2011 4:48 PM Chuck Klosterman

coach a team, then manage that team, and then own the team. Equally amazing was the way Davis remained at the organizations dead center on all three levels: As a coach, he created the attack the Raiders have stubbornly used for almost 50 years (run between the tackles, pass vertically, and feed off intimidation). His gambling personnel philosophy throughout the 1970s and '80s built the superstructure for three Super Bowl victories speed came first, reputation mattered least, and loyalty (or at least his weird definition of that word) was placed above all. As an owner, he was always (always!) in control of the ship, even when the ship was on fire and

Malcolm Emmons/US Presswire What is one to make of a Jewish person who is fascinated by Adolf Hitler? How do we comprehend a man who goes out of his way to study the most hated

hitting an iceberg. Was he impossible to work with? Im sure he was. He did not merely have more power than anyone else in the organization; he had more power than the rest of the organization combined. If God had wanted

to trade Cliff Branch, he had to convince Davis first. And Davis probably would have said no. Certainly, Davis did some troubling things during his 49year tenure with the Raiders. Even his friends considered him ruthless, and Davis probably wouldnt have been friends with them had they thought otherwise. Marcus Allen gave an interview to ABC in 1992 in which he openly claimed that Davis was trying to destroy his life and ruin his legacy, even though Allen had essentially won Super Bowl XVIII for him. It occasionally seemed like Davis was trying to wreck the NFL out of spite; no man ever made Pete Rozelles life more complicated and less comfortable. (Although it must be noted that upon Rozelles unexpected resignation, Davis was the first person to shake the commissioners cigarette-stained hand.) His behavior was impossible to predict. He enjoyed holding grudges. His clothes seemed to matter more than half the players he ever drafted. He was my favorite owner, ever. I have no idea if he was a good person. When writing about the history of any sport, its common to use the phrase the modern era. What those words signify is the historical point where a game begins to resemble whatever it is now; in pro football, we often use the advent of the Super Bowl, the AFL-NFL merger, or the 1978 rule changes that opened up the passing game. However, football is still relatively young.

adult life. He was the Raiders. Thats a clich, but its absolutely true. There was no one else. In his final years, Davis looked strange. He looked like a skeleton. He looked a little like the logo on the Raiders' helmets (all he needed was the eye patch and the knife). He physically became what he emotionally was. And that will never happen again. From here on out, its just football.

Chuck Klosterman is the author of six books. His novel The Visible Man was released this month.

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Insider: Al Davis was true 'godfather' of NFL

Posted Oct. 09, 2011 @ 5:34 p.m. ET By PFW staff

The following quotes are from NFL scouts, coaches and front-office personnel, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Nobody worked harder or sacrificed more than Al Davis in building the NFL into what it is today. He gave EVERYTHING. He was the true 'godfather' of the NFL. He was one of a kind. I don't agree with everything he did a lot of people would probably agree with that but everyone respected him." "QB is the most important position on the field. You need to have a plan or short list at all times. You can't wait until there is an injury to know who is available. (Dolphins GM) Jeff Ireland is being exposed when a team works out all the quarterbacks on the street that is a sign he doesn't know who can play or who to sign. (From my perspective,) it was embarrassing." "If you are one of the bottom teams in the league for a couple of years, you better be able to turn it around. With the new CBA, teams are not going to get strangled by a rookie contract for $50 million. I don't think you'll see another team like the Colts going to the playoffs nine consecutive years with the new rules. It's going to be harder and harder. And if you look at it, is it good to have teams like the (New York) Yankees in the NFL or is it good to have a new Super Bowl winner and six new teams in the playoffs every year? That's how the league was built trying to level the playing field so everyone has a chance every year."

Someday (unless America becomes a dystopia), it will be hundreds of years old. Someday, it will be ancient. And when that moment is reached, the so-called modern era will be defined as starting today. It will begin with the death of Al Davis. He was the final survivor of pro footballs seminal period; he designed the way aggressive teams play, he was the heart of the AFL, and he was the last man to carry the total burden of a team for his entire

 "Left tackles are difficult to find. I don't think you can draft tackles and cornerbacks by always picking that (low) in (each round). Look at New England and Pittsburgh (the Steelers) had that bad year where they drafted (11th overall) and they used it to get (Ben) Roethlisberger. Pittsburgh has not been high enough to draft a tackle. The top two tackles are usually off the board by (No.) 20. Do you draft for need or do you draft the best player on the board? If you look at the best drafts, they are always looking for the best player at priority positions." "Players in Pittsburgh are starting to see through Mike Tomlin. You've got to remember he's not much older than some of the players there. The team is old and very mature. That is a well-oiled operation now. If he had a young team like Raheem Morris (does) in Tampa, who knows how it would be going? I think he would have a harder time. The guys that are (in Pittsburgh) now they keep the locker room in line." "You have to give (Packers GM) Ted Thompson credit for letting Brett Favre go when he did in the sense that Brett would have continued to hold the team hostage, not wanting to go to camp, but wanting to play. Throw all that aside, and look at the amount of money invested in starting quarterbacks. It eats up a very healthy piece of the salary cap. You look at what (the Colts) are paying Peyton Manning you could have a couple more starters right now if he were not consuming as much cap space as he is. They are the one organization I think that deserves a pass for how they started (in 2011)." "I think one of the biggest problems you have in Jacksonville is that the head coach's time ran out a few years ago. Any time you have a situation where a coach is sticking around only because his contract is too much to swallow, you have an unhealthy situation. Unfortunately, Jacksonville is in a market that puts the franchise at a competitive disadvantage. They don't have the resources the cash on hand to be competitive in that division. The other three (Indianapolis, Tennessee and Houston) do have the resources. So it's a frustrating organization." "(Bills owner) Ralph Wilson has good intentions, but he has always been extremely meddling. He gets an idea in his head from somewhere or somebody and he gets stuck on them. He needs a patient GM that's why a lot of good ones left." __________________________________________________

I can remember the mounting, self-imposed pressure to this day and, most importantly, how Al Davis handled it so perfectly. In 1980, my 10th season in the NFL and my third with the Oakland Raiders, I was at a crossroads. As we got ready for the sixth game that season Don Coryells offensive juggernaut from San Diego was coming to town I was going to get a chance to start for the first time in more than two years. For most of my life, starting was a foregone conclusion. But after seven mostly unproductive seasons on struggling teams in New England and San Francisco, I was relegated to backup status with Oakland. For a time, being a backup was OK. It was a chance for me to get my confidence back. But now, I had this chance to prove to fans and the rest of the league that I still could play. I desperately wanted to show everyone that I wasnt a has-been, a former No. 1 overall pick and Heisman Trophy winner whose athletic highlights seemingly came and went by the time I was 23. And that was just the personal side. Throw into the mix that the Raiders were 2-3 at the time. I had played a role in that, coming in as a backup the previous week when Dan Pastorini broke his leg. I threw five interceptions as Kansas City won for the first time. I could explain away that performance a little as getting thrown into a bad situation. Those games happen. This game against San Diego was different. This was my chance to be on stage again, to be the man in charge and to be at the center of what was probably going to be a high-scoring game. Thats when Al came up to me and did everything he could to make the pressure vanish. Thats when Al helped turn my career around. Its not important you play well, Al said. Its important we win. If you go five of 15 and we win, thats OK. I was good that day, going 11 of 14 with one touchdown. More important, the Raiders were great that day, winning 38-24, and from that moment forward. The rest of the story of that season is well-chronicled. We went 9-2 the rest of the season, made the playoffs, won the Super Bowl against Philadelphia. I was Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year. I was the Super Bowl MVP. I proved everything I wanted to and more. Three seasons later, we won the Super Bowl again before I finished the rest of my career as a backup, finally retiring in 1986. Of all my moments with Al in the more than three decades I have been with and around the Raiders, I remember those three sentences and 21 words most. Al did for me what he had done for so many others. He unlocked the best in me. That, to me, is the real story of Al Davis, who died Saturday at 82.

Plunkett on Davis: He unlocked the best in me

By Jim Plunkett Special to Yahoo! Sports Oct 8, 2:18 pm EDT

Sure, you can get lost in the controversies. Thats easy and, to a large extent, Al liked it. He liked the image he projected of himself and his team. He liked being a maverick. He liked the mystique. But he always did that with the intent to achieve greatness. While critics will look at the last decade or so as a sign of how much Al had lost, you have to understand how much he had. Al wasnt just a brilliant football man, both on and off the field. He wasnt just a great coach and personnel evaluator. He wasnt simply dedicated to being great for himself. He was all those things. Plus, he was the antagonist who drove his opponents to be great just so they could beat him. While some people dismiss him as sinister, he was the very definition of sand in the oyster. Without Al, the NFLs journey to becoming the crown jewel of American sports would have been much longer. Al was more than happy to play the villain. He poked and prodded and cajoled the best out of everyone. He made football more than a great sport; he made it a drama with the Raiders as one of the teams you either loved or loved to hate. For me and many other Raider greats like John Matuszak, Lyle Alzado and Ted Hendricks, he also was able to coax something out of us that didnt materialize at other places. Sure, a lot of that had to do with talent, but it was more than that. In some cases, he drove us to be champions just by giving us another chance. That was especially true for Matuszak, Alzado and me. Each of us had the talent all along, but for a variety of reasons it didnt come out completely until we got to the Raiders.

Al, you always had to listen for a while when he got going. I signed to back up Kenny Stabler, and I truly was a backup. My first year, I never played. In 1979, I threw 15 passes. When Stabler and the Raiders got into a contract dispute in 1980, he eventually was traded for Pastorini and I stayed the backup until Pastorini got hurt. What I learned to appreciate during that time was how dedicated Al was to the team and the players. Al was more than an owner. On most teams, the owner is the owner, you dont see him very much. Al was at practice all the time, especially the heavy practice days on Wednesday and Thursday. He was always yelling encouragement or teaching. Youd hear him say, Hold the ball high when youre dropping back. The most important quality is that he treated us like men. At that stage of my career, I wasnt going to be able to play for someone like Dick Vermeil, who ran everything like a boot camp. Al let men be men. If you were two minutes late for a meeting, he didnt fine you. If you were habitually late, it got taken care of by the players. There was structure even if it didnt seem like there was structure. Al picked guys who might have been a little different OK, some of us were a little nuts but everyone cared about winning. You might not get every guys undivided attention during the week, but come Sunday everybody was ready to play. Al understood that and he could expect it because the guys saw him all the time. They saw his dedication. He was accountable and the players couldnt help but feel the same way. I think that may have been part of the problem the last few years. Al just couldnt physically be out there as much as he got older. I think the current players didnt get a chance to see what Al really was about, and the accountability was lost. The same was true of personnel. When Al could see the players up close and really understand who they were, he was amazing at picking guys who could help us. Maybe this guy could be a good third-down back. Or this linebacker who got cut by some other team, Al saw that he had a couple of good years left and could help us as a pass rusher. Als vision went beyond the field. He saw the future of pay television and of marketing the team. Whenever the league would do a marketing deal with one company, you always saw Al work with the other company to work a deal. He knew he would have to upgrade the stadium and he knew he never was going to get the cooperation from Oakland. Thats why he moved to Los Angeles. When Los Angeles didnt follow through on the promises made to him, he had to go back. Really, I think that worked out better. The Raiders really never were an L.A. team. They were a small-town team, a neighborhood team. Oakland fit much better, but Al knew he had to push the business side of the team. Of course, there were the lawsuits and the controversies. I think some of that took away from his

Jim Plunkett knew a side of Al Davis many didn't get to see. (US Presswire)

When I got cut by San Francisco after the 1977 season, I was devastated, depressed. It was the low point in a string of years I never expected coming out of Stanford. That offseason, my agent, Wayne Hooper, set up a meeting with Al. Hoopers office also was in Oakland, so it was easy. There were several teams interested, but I didnt want to pick up and leave the Bay Area again. More important, when Al came to meet me, all he did was talk about how much he liked me coming out of college, how tough he thought I was and how much he admired what I had done under the circumstances. With

focus on the team, but it wasnt like he was off doing something else. Again, everything about Al was about being great in football. If you returned that dedication, he loved you and he was loyal. You look around the Raiders, and you see all the old players who work for the team maybe in scouting or coaching or somewhere else. I used to hear from other players that they couldnt get jobs with their team. They had to go somewhere else to get started after they were done playing. That wasnt how Al ran things. He was all in and if you were all in, there was a bond. It was always about football, always about pushing the right buttons with people, like what he did for me. Or like the times, hed call my house late at night during the week of a game. Al would call between 10 and midnight all the time, just to find out what I was thinking about the game, what was on my mind. A couple of times, Id be out drinking with some friends or whatever, and hed end up talking to my wife. This was before cell phones, so shed take a message, but he always would be a little upset that I wasnt around. That was Al. All day, every day, he was all about the game and being great.

sense of competition that often pushed the boundaries of what some people thought was acceptable. In the 1970s, for instance, Davis funded a lawsuit filed by former Raiders safety George Atkinson against Pittsburgh coach Chuck Noll for defamation. Noll had accused the Raiders of having a criminal element after Atkinson hit Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann with a blindside forearm to the back of the head. Although Atkinson eventually lost the suit, the trial heightened the already bitter rivalry between Steelers and the Raiders, and caused huge rifts throughout the league between Davis and other owners. Those rifts continued when Davis went to court time and again, such as when he moved the Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982. Davis even had rifts with his own people, such as when he fired former coaches such as Mike Shanahan and Lane Kiffin or warred with running back Marcus Allen. In a sense, Davis life story is long -

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Combative Davis made his mark on the game

By Jason Cole, Yahoo! Sports Oct 8, 2:11 pm EDT

running joust. You cant overstate how great Al Davis has been for the NFL, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said earlier this year. Jones, who was very close to Davis, then smiled wryly and said, But he was different. The cause of Davis death wasnt immediately released but it is believed that he had a long battle with skin cancer which severely hindered him physically over the

In August, one NFL owner was asked to discuss Al Davis place in NFL history. The owner, who asked to remain anonymous, looked at the ground uncomfortably before answering. Obviously, Al is important, nobody would ever say thats not the case, but , the owner answered and paused for almost 10 seconds before finishing. Sometimes you just wondered if he really had to do it the way he did. Davis, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and one of the icons of the modern game, died Saturday morning at 82. He was considered a driving force in turning the NFL into the nations most popular game, as well as turning the Raiders into a three-time Super Bowl champion. He did that with an uncompromising and bold

past six years. During a business meeting within the past year, Davis had a brief seizure. Mentally, however, Davis remained incredibly sharp, even if he was sometimes perceived as paranoid. When you would see him, it was really quite scary, another owner said with complete sincerity. I remember walking into his suite when we played the last time. My wife had her arm around mine and when she saw Al, I could feel her grip tighten. It was fear and it was sad. But when you talked to him, he was still clear, quick-witted and incredibly focused.

Longtime Oakland executive Amy Trask once told a group of NFL executives: When you see Al, its heartbreaking. But when you talk to him over the phone, its the same Al Ive always known. Many believed that Davis physical constraints had a direct relationship to the downturn of the team in recent years. After making the Super Bowl in the 2002 season (when they lost to Tampa Bay), the Raiders went on a horrendous run of seven consecutive seasons with at least 11 losses. That streak ended last season when the Raiders finished 8-8. Prior to that downturn, Davis, who first served as a coach when he broke into the NFL, had a huge impact on the on-field operations of the team. He not only handpicked the personnel, he had a strong say in who played at a given time, particularly on defense. On Sept. 30, as New England was preparing to play at Oakland last Sunday, Patriots coach Bill Belichick fondly remembered being interviewed by Davis in the late 1990s before Davis hired Jon Gruden.

that a coach would talk about, thats really what he talked about. That made it pretty unique. But he hired a good coach, Gruden. Which is again, in all honesty, the way that I expected it to go because thats been all the Oakland coaches from Art Shell to Mike White, Joe Bugel, Shanahan, you know right down the line, Lane Kiffin, theyre all offensive coaches. Davis style helped create a player-driven atmosphere that both insiders and outsiders said walked the narrow line between driven and chaotic. In the glory days of the Raiders, players like Ken Stabler, Ted Hendricks and Lyle Alzado were the face of the team. Later, as the team fell apart, it was the likes of JaMarcus Russell and Jerry Porter .
( notes) (notes)

When Al was around the team only saw who was focused and into it, but he drove those guys to be behind him because he was so devoted to them, former Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett said. Guys wanted to play hard for Al but I think some of that was lost when he couldnt physically be around as much. Former Oakland defensive end Trace Armstrong once

We had a good couple days of conversation, Belichick said. I told him when I got out there, it really seemed like a waste of time because I felt pretty certain that he wouldnt hire a defensive coach because he hasnt since Eddie Erdelatz in [1960]. Its a parade of offensive coaches out there. Hes really a defensive coordinator and has been. You know, it was good because we talked a lot about football and hes very, very knowledgeable about the game, personnel, schemes, adjustments and so forth. He was asking a lot of questions about what we did defensively. You kind of dont want to give too much information there because you know, hes running the defense. He wasnt really too interested in talking about offensive football. Hes a great mind. It was unlike any other interview Ive ever had with an owner because he was so in depth really about football, about Xs and Os and strategy and use of personnel and acquisition of all the things really

said, Al loves the players, no question. But some guys didnt always get it and when the older guys left, there was nobody around to run the asylum. Davis death Saturday morning creates a mountain of questions throughout the NFL and perhaps paves the way for the league to return to Los Angeles, where Davis once saw the future and then had to abandon it. IN the immediate, Davis wife, Carol, and son, Mark, are expected to assume control of the team. However, numerous sources around the NFL believe that neither will want to keep control of the team in the long run and are expected to sell relatively soon. Al tried to float the idea that Mark would run the team, but most people look at that as Als dream, not a reality, an owner said earlier this year. I dont see any wa y Mark holds onto the team. Hes just going to cash out.

NFL owners are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Houston. The Raiders were on the way to that city Saturday to play the Texans.

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be funny, he would be funny and it was intentional. He was a little different than other people with regard to a sense of humor. He was very much an all-business man: It was football, football, football and there werent too many funny things that happened with football. People scorned him for his successes. A lot of people dont like successful people and Mr. Davis has been very successful in the things that he has done. People dislike that very much.

Jim Otto on Al Davis

Jim Otto (left) with Al Davis at Otto's induction to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.

He was a very loyal person. I know a lot of people have said that. (He was) very loyal to me and my family. Ive had a lot of physical problems since I retired. There were several times when I was very ill. Every time I was ever in the hospital and I was in the hospital many, many times he called every day, checked me out, made sure I was all right. Sometimes, I found out later that he was very disturbed by the way I sounded. Thank God, Im here and I always came through it. He worried about me and he worried about a lot of different people. Thats the way Mr. Davis was. He was a caring man, very caring man. Many times, he told me how much he loved the Raider fans in Oakland and as we were coming back to Oakland, he couldnt get back there fast enough. _____________________________________________

Pro Football Hall of Fame center Jim Otto had a particularly close relationship with Davis. Heres what he said in an interview with Chronicle Staff Writer Steve Kroner. Ive been loyal to him and hes always been loyal to me. The passion that he had for people and life was phenomenal, witnessed by his time spent with his wife when his wife was deathly ill. He never left her side until she came out of her coma. His passion for life was tremendous with regard to everyone, not just his people, but other people, too, that he wanted to help. In the early to mid-60s, the passing game. He was very instrumental in the passing game, the wide receivers, the split ends and spreading across the field for the passing game and going vertical. That was his game. Basically, he also ran the West Coast offense before the West Coast offense was run. We did all that type of stuff. Bill Walsh got the West Coast offense from us and he took it where he went. Mr. Davis was an innovator of all those things. He was quite serious in private, too. His sense of humor, he derived it himself. When he wanted to

Tom Flores on Al Davis

Tom Flores (right) and Al Davis in 1981.

Former Raiders coach and current Raiders broadcaster Tom Flores talked with Chronicle Staff Writer Steve Kroner in the wake of Al Davis passing. Heres what Flores said. First of all, the fact that he passed was not surprising but the fact that he passed was shocking if that makes any sense because we all knew that he was in poor health and was struggling and doing the best he could to do what he had to do, but its sad. How else can you say it? Its just sad when reality hits you right in the face, and thats what happened, reality hit us right in the face this morning when I was awakened very early. Ive known him for 48 years. We were both young people when we first started and trained together. It was quite obvious, his passion for the game, the game of football itself, the people that played it, the people that coached it and owned teams and were part of the growth of the game. And with that came his compassion and passion for players that have played for him and players that have played elsewhere. He just loved the game and respected it so much. His loyalty to those that were close to him was just without equal. He was my coach, my mentor, but most of all, he was my dear friend. One of the things that I remember vividly is when I was in Seattle and my wife took ill. She had breast cancer, and the first call that I got was (from) him. I wont go into any detail but the first call that I received was from Al. How he heard about it, I dont know, but he called and he was there. Some of the things that he did that you never hear about. You just never hear about it because he did it quietly, without fanfare, but he did it because of his love and respect for whomever he did that gesture. First of all, his vision for the game sometimes was taken out of context, but then as the years went by, people would look back and say, Well, Al was right about this. Al was right about that. He was big on size and speed. Speed and size were always a big part of his evaluation and his direction. He loved the wide-open game. He loved the big plays and all of those are a part of the game today. This league has turned into almost a passing league. I dont know if he envisioned that as much as it is today, but he certainly liked that part of the game when I was involved with him, which was a long time. There are so many things. Right now, its kind of hard to reflect on everything because its such a sad day.

I think sometimes people didnt think he had a heart, but his heart was bigger than life. _____________________________________________
"For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writesnot that you won or lostbut how you played the Game."

Grantland
Al Davis' Strategic Legacy
What the "vertical pass" guru contributed to football
By Chris Brown OCTOBER 11, 2011

Andy Hayt/Getty Images

n recent years, it became easy (and sometimes even

appropriate) to mock Al Davis and his beloved Oakland Raiders. From the poor on-field results and questionable personnel moves to Davis' infatuation with speed and his seemingly never-ending quest to find a modern version of the "Mad Bomber," Daryle Lamonica, the past few years have been ugly. And nothing, perhaps, was uglier than the Raiders' ill-fated selection of quarterback JaMarcus Russell with the first overall pick of the 2007 NFL draft. Russell had a strong arm, but he ate and robo-tripped sipped sizzurp until he became persona non grata in the NFL. But none of this should overshadow what Davis built and also what he left behind, even if at the end he seemed to be grasping at

the shadows of the Raiders' past success. Among his greatest contributions is the least well understood: the vaunted Raiders "vertical passing game." Davis picked up the aerial bug from passing-game guru Sid Gillman when he was one of Gillman's assistants with the San Diego Chargers in the 1960s. Gillman, the "Father of the Modern Passing Game," introduced several innovations to the air attack, the first of which was timing. Gillman preached meticulous practice to sync the precise timing between quarterback and receiver, or, more precisely, between the quarterback's dropback and the receiver's route. If the quarterback took a five-step drop, the primary receiver had to run his route based on a precise number of steps, such that quarterback would throw the ball before the receiver had turned to look for it. The secondary receiver in the quarterback's progression ran his route a split second after the first receiver, so that the quarterback could look for the first receiver, reset his feet, then look for the second and still throw before that receiver turned to look for the pass. Nowadays, this emphasis on timing is so universal in theory if not entirely in practice that it's difficult to believe how influential Gillman was in establishing it. His second insight was to understand pass defenses and how to defeat them at a level far beyond the old command to "get open." Defeating a man-to-man defense, then as now, is about identifying a receiver who can get open versus a particular defender. Zones, on the other hand, require more thought. Gillman realized that the key to defeating zones was spacing between receivers; specifically, if a defense had only four underneath defenders, then five stationary targets even five trash cans spaced evenly horizontally across the field are uncoverable. The defenders are outnumbered. Thus, the idea of the zone "stretch" was born.

When Davis left Gillman's staff he took Sid's playbook and, more important, his ideas with him.1 But Davis wasn't content to stretch the field horizontally; he wanted to get vertical. If Gillman could get a trash can open against a zone, Davis tested how good he'd do if he added his favorite ingredient: speed. Gillman, of course, used "vertical stretches" passing concepts that spaced receivers not left to right, but deep to short but for Davis they became the centerpiece of his offense. Indeed, this is what Davis meant when he brought the "vertical game" to Oakland. It was not a matter of throwing deep bombs (though it was sometimes), but was instead the science of stretching defenses to their breaking point. With receivers at varying depths, a small defensive error often meant a 15-yard pass play for Davis' offense, and a serious mistake meant a touchdown. Davis continued to tweak the Gillman offense by adding more formations, adding options for running backs in the passing game, and generally expanding the possibilities of what an offense could do with the football. This was innovative stuff, so much so that it had an outsize effect on a young Raiders assistant coach by the name of Bill Walsh, who went on to craft his own multi-Super Bowl-winning offense with the 49ers that looked a lot like what Davis had created in Oakland. As Walsh explained in his book Building a Champion: "[Al Davis'] pass offense included an almost unlimited variety of pass patterns as well as a system of calling them, and utilized the backs and tight ends much more extensively than other offenses. To develop an understanding of it took time, but once learned, it was invaluable." This is not the description of the Al Davis offense you usually see as some kind of simplistic, backyard, "heave it up" strategy. Sure, Al wanted to hit the long ball, but it was all part of his system. Al Davis' "vertical game" was, in short, built on stretching the defense

vertically while using all available receivers deep, intermediate, and short to take what the defense gave up anywhere on the field. It's not Al's fault that defenses often yielded big plays to the Raiders. In Davis' offense, as is the case today, the ultimate vertical stretch passes are true "flood" or three-level vertical stretches, with one receiver deep, another at an intermediate depth, and a third short. Pass defenses generally have only two layers of defenders deep safeties and underneath coverage players so when there are receivers at three depths it is extremely difficult to cover them all. For example, Davis' early Raiders teams often used the "strongside flood" route, a pass concept still popular today. On the play, an outside receiver runs a "go" route straight upfield, trying to beat his defender deep and otherwise taking the coverage with him. An inside receiver here the tight end runs a corner route at 15 yards, breaking to the sideline while an underneath receiver here the running back runs to the flat. On the backside, the outside receiver runs a post route as an "alert" for the quarterback. He's not the primary read, but if the deep defenders overreact to the three receivers to the right, the home run shot is always available. Because the defense has only two defenders (the corner and the safety) to cover three receivers, it shouldn't be able to defend the play. Al's secret and it is the same secret Gillman discovered and Walsh extended is that the surest way to hit those deep passes is to consistently hit the underneath ones. Courtesy of Chris Brown. These vertical stretch passes help explain why Davis became obsessed with speed. Obviously, speed gives a vertical receiver a chance to get behind the defense, but, even if he does not actually get open, he still stretches the defense, thus opening up the entire field. Speed distorts defenses, forcing them to cover wider swaths of the field, and thus exposing the weak defenders and the voids around them. If Davis could have a receiver like Warren Wells, who in 1969 totaled Courtesy of Chris Brown Davis also pioneered the use of "slot" formations, in which the tight end lines up to one side by himself, and two split receivers position themselves to the opposite side. From this they could run all manner of vertical stretches, but one the Raiders used quite well (and which many teams also use today) began with the slot receiver running vertically downfield and the outside receiver on a deep square-in or "dig" route. This pattern more directly attacked the deep safeties and linebackers, defenders Davis knew would be vulnerable to his fleetfooted receivers.

1,260 yards on only 47 catches for the Raiders a staggering 26.8 yards per completion then his other receivers would have plenty of room to roam. And yet, while Davis may have been hooked on speed and the vertical game, those addictions weren't responsible for the Raiders' struggles in recent years. Instead, the Raiders have been derailed by weaknesses at the two most important positions for implementing Davis' vision as owner: head coach and quarterback. Throughout the 1970s, Davis had John Madden, a coach who could make Raiders football a reality. And for more than a decade Oakland had two quarterbacks, the "Mad Bomber" Lamonica and Ken Stabler, who could execute the sophisticated vertical passing game the way Davis wanted. But long after Madden, Lamonica, and Stabler left the Raiders, Davis remained. As the years went on, Davis couldn't expect his coaches to run the offense exactly as he'd taught it to Bill Walsh nor did he want them to, at least not exactly. But he always knew how he wanted it to look, and at times the Raiders achieved something close to the brilliance that had once been the norm. In football, great teams and great organizations exist only in the moments before the next signing season or injury or retirement, or even the next death. It's simply not reasonable to expect what Davis accomplished early in his Raiders career to continue into perpetuity. But, despite whatever bitterness or decay emanated from the Raiders in recent years, the fact remains that Davis gave all of us more than we gave him. He didn't just mold his football team and his coaches and his players in his image he molded the game itself. Chris Brown runs the website Smart Football. Follow him on Twitter: @smartfootball.

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