AL DAVIS
FROM HEAD COACH TO COMMISSIONER, TO MERGER Persuaded by American Football League owners who viewed him as the perfect person to lead their battle against the established NFL, Davis reluctantly became league commissioner on April 8, 1966. Remarkably, Davis would spend less than 16 weeks in that role, but the shots his administration fired during that short period still reverberate today. For the first half of the 1960s, the AFL and NFL fought a tenacious fight for college talent, but they battled with a significant unwritten rule that veterans were off limits. A little more than a month after Davis took office, the NFL’s New York Giants violated that rule, signing veteran Buffalo kicker Pete Gogolak. As longtime Raiders executive Al LoCasale remembered, the NFL took a shot with a revolver and Davis shot back using a machine gun. Davis passionately and strategically convinced AFL owners to go after established NFL stars. In a short period, the AFL had signed many of the NFL’s veteran playmakers, including the NFL’s leading passer John Brodie, and Roman Gabriel from the Los Angeles Rams. “We had about four or five quarterbacks all lined up,” Davis said. “Three or four of their other great players had already signed. It was a preliminary strike to let them know what’s going to happen if they continue this.” Within months, the two leagues had agreed to a merger that formed the league familiar to today’s fans, including as part of the agreement a world championship game now known as the Super Bowl. Having served as the driving force behind that merger, Davis resigned on July 25, 1966, returned to Oakland as head of football operations and purchased an interest in the franchise. Davis, who became managing general partner in 1972, teamed with head-coach successors John Rauch, John Madden and Tom Flores in building a stalwart that would become the league’s most successful franchise.
intelligent could take all the qualities, the great qualities of both, and put them together and use them.” In addition to those qualities, he also instilled in the Raiders tenets that were all his own, and in the process, he revolutionized pro football. Offensively, Davis created the vertical game, now known as stretching the field. “When we came out of the huddle,” he remembered about his Raiders, “we weren’t looking for first downs. We didn’t want to move the chains. We wanted touchdowns. We wanted the big play, the quick strike. It’s No. 1 to say that you want to do that, it’s No. 2 to say that you have the players to do it, but it’s No. 3 to do it. Do it on first down of any football game, on that defense that you’re playing against. For those cornerbacks that play out there on the corners, to know that the Raiders are coming at you, they’re coming at you on top, they’ve got the speed to do it, and they will do it. It’s like having the bomb and being willing to drop it. The adage that goes around in professional football, and I hear everyone say it, ‘Take what they give you.’ That all sounds good to everybody, but I always went the other way: We’re going to take what we want.”
On the other side of the line, Davis also wanted to attack, to put pressure on the pocket, and do more than just disrupt the offense physically. “I do believe that this is a game, psychologically, of intimidation and of fear. I don’t mean cowardly fear, but fear. I think this: That somewhere within the first five to 10 plays of the game that the other team’s quarterback must go down, and he must go down hard. That alone sets the tempo for a game.” Once that tempo was established, taking a cue from college basketball, Davis was the first to utilize his cornerbacks in a bump-and-run principle. “We used to call it the press. We got the idea from John Wooden, when he had his great zone press, with his great basketball teams, where they picked you up as soon as you took the ball out, and they pressured you. And we got the idea and called it press. And then I think Don Shula started calling it bump-and-run, so we changed to bump-and-run.” Davis’ vision to see where the game was headed, or to pave a new road to winning, led future successful coaches like Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick to regard Davis as the NFL’s most intelligent individual. From 1963-2002, the Raiders dominated pro football, posting the game’s best cumulative won-loss record. Earning the moniker “Team of the Decades,” the franchise posted 17 winning seasons over an 18-year stretch from 1963-80. The Raiders then posted 11 more winning campaigns from 1982-2002, including double-digit wins in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1990, 1993, 2000, 2001 and 2002. All told under Davis, the Raiders won four league championships -- Super Bowls XI, XV and XVIII and the 1967 AFL title.
A CHAMPION OF DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY A trailblazer, Davis innovated not only how the game was played and coached, but also changed who held those roles, opening countless doors for qualified individuals, regardless of skin color. Davis was 17 when, a short distance from his home, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Shortly after, at Syracuse, Davis befriended Bernie Custis, who would fight racism and become pro football’s first black quarterback. At USC, Davis started recruiting players from historically black colleges, and convinced future Pro Football Hall of Famer Willie Wood to remain at the school as the Trojans’ quarterback. Wood and Ron Mix became the school’s first interracial co-captains, and Davis helped Mix understand how athletics could serve as a leader in ushering needed social change.
Continued on page 13
Las Vegas Raiders 2022
10
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online