by Mike Siani
“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.”
* * *
It only took one good hit to discourage a passive team.
“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: THE GOVERNOR
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.”
Quarterback David Humm quickly learned never to tell Upshaw to shut up.
“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.”
It was known that, whenever Madden and Upshaw would argue, Gene always won.
“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.
“I didn’t mean you got to hold them,” said Madden.
“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.’”
“How do you respond to that? You don’t!”
Willie Brown remembers the confidence that Upshaw possessed.
“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.
“What can I say? Gene had holding down to a science!”
Banaszak concurred with Marvin’s statement.
“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.”
John Vella called him “The Michelin Man.”
“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.”
MARK VAN EEGHEN
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.
Mark found his first training camp to be a little chaotic.
“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!”
Dave Rowe remembers van Eeghen looking like a Chia Pet.
“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.
PHIL VILLAPIANO: FOO
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.
This next story has to do with Phil, Jim Otto, and some “free” turkeys.
“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!”
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p; “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.”
In a game against Kansas City, Phil had no choice but to take the guy out.
“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.”
