by Mike Siani
John Matuszak had his own philosophy about the Raiders image.
“When you say I epitomize the Raiders, and then you say the Raiders aren’t very well liked, I guess you are trying to say that the Raiders, as well as John Matuszak, have always been controversial.”
Like the franchise he played for, Matt Millen was never afraid to tell it like it was.
“I didn’t know anything about John Matuszak other than he was supposed to be nuts. And he didn’t disappoint.”
Matuszak had his own thoughts on the game of football.
“It’s the closest thing to being a lion or a cheetah or a hawk that there is. It’s the most beautiful but the most brutal game in the world.”
The Raiders loved to have fun but they also knew how to work hard.
“Were they a bunch of guys who liked to have fun?” said Millen. “Absolutely! We had fun off the field and we had fun on the field. But the part that is missing is that we also worked hard. We were a hard-working group of guys who wanted to get better.”
MADDEN’S REPLACEMENT
Oakland’s coaching replacement for the Hall of Fame Madden was former Raiders assistant Tom Flores, whose low-key approach was a calming influence for the team.
Plunkett liked Flores’s relaxed attitude.
“Tom was laid back and a matter-of-fact kind of guy. He sits back and watches everything and doesn’t raise his voice very often.”
Upshaw respected Flores.
“I think what Tom brought to the table was confidence and a quiet approach to the game. And we wanted to play for him. When Tom Flores brought us out on the field, you wanted to win for Tom Flores.”
Flores’s team opened the 1980 season with a new quarterback and six new starters on defense. It also had to contend with the scorching heat of Kansas City.
“It was brutal!” said Millen. “It was probably 110 degrees on the field. It was an Astroturf field and it was hot!”
“The heat was almost unbearable!” said Plunkett. “It burned the bottom of your feet!
“In the middle of the third quarter they had a beer commercial on. Everyone turned to look up at the video board when Ted Hendricks said, ‘They’re killin’ me out here! They’re killin’ me! Somebody get rid of that fucking commercial!’”
Each day Millen was learning the Raider way. Play hard and have fun doing it. He began his NFL career by grabbing his first career interception. He also received a vital lesson in Raider etiquette.
“At Penn State we were instructed to address an official by saying, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Official.’ And then you asked the question. Now let’s fast forward to the Raiders in my first game. I didn’t know officials knew that kind of language. And I didn’t know you could address them that way. I was literally in shock. Ted Hendricks started cussing out an official and the official turned back and started cussing back. I thought, ‘Whatever happened to Excuse me, Mr. Official?’”
* * *
Dan Pastorini threw for 317 yards and two touchdowns as Oakland beat Kansas City in week one, 27–14. The revamped Raiders played like a contender, but it would take six weeks and another quarterback before they would finally become one.
During the season’s first five weeks, Plunkett remained on the Oakland bench with no playing opportunity in sight.
“I was disappointed, but I still had a job to do. It’s difficult to keep your edge and timing and keep focused on the chance that you will get in. I was just hoping for an opportunity to arise.”
The Raiders play added to Plunkett’s frustration. Oakland split their first four games as they struggled to adapt to Pastorini at quarterback.
“Dan had the bad habit of hitting his left hand with the ball before he actually threw it and we would think it was gone—but it wasn’t,” said Upshaw.
“They beat the piss out of him!” said Millen. “He would stand in there and see it coming and he would open himself up and get pounded. He came back the next week and did the same thing—and they got him and they broke him.”
In Week 5, Pastorini suffered a broken leg against the Kansas City Chiefs, and Plunkett finally got his chance. In his first substantial action of the season, Plunkett did little to help the Raiders.
“I hadn’t played in almost two and a half years,” said Plunkett. “I did throw a couple of TDs but threw quite a few interceptions. We were behind and I was trying to get back into the football game. I was very disappointed.”
The loss to Kansas City put the Raiders at 2–3. The Raiders were still confident, but could see their season slipping away.
“Losing was not something you got used to in Oakland,” said Upshaw. “We got hammered, lost our quarterback, and now we were going into this unknown. But together we felt we still had enough talent to win this thing.”
The team now turned to Plunkett, and nobody had any doubts that Jim could do the job.
“I was a little apprehensive, but in the back of my mind I knew I had to do well or I might be out of football again,” said Plunkett.
Al Davis gave Jim the confidence he needed to hear.
“I told Plunkett that he was part of this team, not the focus of it. I told him that it’s not important that you play well, but that we win.”
“I kept telling myself to stay in the pocket and hold the ball to the last possible second and not run too soon,” said Plunkett. “These were things I had to do in order to be successful.”
With this, Jim revived the Raiders’ offense.
With Plunkett in charge, Matt Millen and the rest of the team gained back their confidence.
“We took on the San Diego Chargers who were acknowledged as the best and highest scoring team in the NFL, and we whipped them. And what comes with a good whipping for a team that’s struggling? It’s called the great equalizer—confidence. And here I am as a young kid and I’m looking around the room and these guys are starting to believe that we have a chance. And so we finally start to show that we are starting to define ourselves—and Plunkett was our main guy.
“We had just beaten Dan Fouts and crew and now we were going to play the defending World Champions on Monday night. And with the Raiders I learned fast. When the lights turned off, we turned on.
“There was a lot of electricity. We were back in the Steel City on a Monday night. The criminal element was still there. You had the Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers. What an incredible rivalry!”
“We were down 17–7 early in the ballgame and had to claw and fight our way back in,” said Plunkett. “On the next play, the Steelers went into a curtain defense that allowed Cliff Branch to be covered one on one. As soon as I saw it, I audibled to it, and there went Branch for a long touchdown.”
Bradshaw never recovered.
“We put a beating on Terry Bradshaw,” said Millen. “We knocked Terry down I can’t tell you how many times. Terry was lying on the ground and I was talking to Jack Ham and said, ‘Gee, I hope he’s alright.’ Jack says, ‘What? Are you kidding me? It’s Monday Night Football! He knows there’s good camera time!’
“I think that was the game where we knew that we had a chance, because we just beat the defending Super Bowl Champions on Monday night in front of a national audience. And Pittsburgh needed that win.”
The question that needed to be asked in terms of the 1980 Raiders was: Do you get confident because you’re winning, or do you start winning because you’re confident?
Behind Jim Plunkett, Oakland won six straight games. The man who was out of football just three seasons earlier was now the league’s comeback story.
“It was a different area of the football team contributing to our victories week after week,” said Plunkett. “Our defense for the first half of the season was literally giving up 27 to 28 points a game, and right after that Pittsburgh game, they cut that in half.”
The Raiders took an 8–3 record into Philadelphia to take on the Eagles, the best team in the NFC.
Matt Millen, like the rest of us, despised the E
agles’ home field.
“Veteran’s Stadium was a dump. They had seams in the Astroturf, it was hard as a rock, but when it was cold outside, it was even worse.”
Raiders defensive coordinator Charlie Sumner gave Millen special instructions for the Eagles’ biggest weapon.
“Charlie told me, ‘Harold Carmichael is six-eight and, the first time they run a deep end, you go hit him in the middle of the chest and don’t worry about the flag. We’ll handle the flag.’ So the first time he ran that deep end, the ball was overthrown and I just tried to kill him. Hit him as hard as I could. I ended up hitting half of him and half of one of our guys. I think I hurt our guy.”
The Eagles didn’t hurt Plunkett—they just pressured him all day.
“They got eight sacks on me. They could have had more sacks. Art Shell felt I was dropping back too far. I was trying to give myself more time.
“When Philly scored their touchdown, one of our linebackers had Jaworski in his grasp. Jaworski ducked and slid over the top and made the play.”
Final score: Eagles 10, Raiders 7. The Raiders were 8–4 and still had a shot at the playoffs, but other things were brewing with the organization. Al Davis was about to go up against Commissioner Pete Rozelle.
DAVIS VS. ROZELLE
“If I had to sum up the Oakland Raiders with only a couple of words, it would start with Al Davis,” said Upshaw. “He is the Oakland Raiders. He is what the team is all about.”
“He wanted to win as bad as anybody if not worse,” said Plunkett.
Davis’s combative style often put him at odds with the rest of the league.
Plunkett continued: “Ever since I joined the Raiders in 1978, there was always some controversy surrounding Mr. Davis and the organization.”
After failing to extend the Raiders’ lease in Oakland, Davis began preliminary plans to move his team to Los Angeles for the 1981 season.
Pete Rozelle made it clear to Al as to what needed to be done in order to move his team to another city.
“Al told me that he was seriously thinking about moving to Los Angeles. I said, ‘Well, if you are, if you decide you want to pursue it further, let me know and I will schedule a league meeting and it will be reviewed.’ He said, ‘If I decide to move, I do not intend to ask for a league vote.’ I said, ‘That clearly was against the constitution and it would put us on opposite sides.’”
Upshaw was on Al’s side.
“Al felt he should have the right, if his lease was up, to move to a better facility in another city. He sued the NFL and spent many years in court. I felt Al was right and that the Coliseum was not up to the same standards as some of the other stadiums in the NFL.”
Davis was committed to his word.
“I’ve had three different owners, the commissioner, and league officials come to me and say if I were to stay in Oakland they will give me whatever I what. But I made a commitment and it’s too late.”
Rozelle differs with Davis.
“There were representatives from fourteen or fifteen teams who were at that meeting whose story will sharply contradict what Al Davis said.”
* * *
While Oakland fans rallied to save their team, the Raiders were racing toward the playoffs. Oakland won three of their last four games to clinch their first playoff berth since 1977. The key to the Raiders’ resurgence was “The Judge,” cornerback Lester Hayes. Hayes, who led the league in 1980 with 13 interceptions, had four more called back because of penalties.
“Lester had a year in 1980 that was arguably the greatest year a corner has ever had,” said Millen. “He just took the game over.”
On the field, Hayes’s play spoke volumes. But off the field he struggled with a speech impediment.
“Lester approached his stuttering like he did everything else. He attacked it straight on,” said Millen. “He didn’t make you feel uncomfortable with it because he knew that you knew he was struggling. He just stuck with it and he expected that you would stick with it too.”
Hayes worked tirelessly to improve his speech and used Stickum to help his hands. He put Stickum everywhere and stuck to opposing players like glue.
“Of course, Stickum is no longer allowed in the NFL,” said Upshaw. “But back then if you touched him, you would stick to him. That’s why he got all those interceptions.”
Matt Millen recalls a game with Houston where Lester left his mark.
“We were playing the Houston Oilers and they had a center by the name of Carl Mauck. They’re getting ready to kick a field goal. They’re in the huddle, Judge walks out with a big hunk of Stickum and slaps it on the ball nonchalantly and walks out. The Oilers come out and Carl reaches down and grabs the ball right on the Stickum. The veins pop right out of his neck. And he’s like, ‘That stuttering son of a bitch did something to the ball!’ He was screaming at the officials and they had to calm him down. We came off the ball, Carl snapped it over his head, and I always wondered how much the Stickum had to do with that.”
In that Wild Card playoff game against the Oilers, the Raiders drew first blood with a 47-yard field goal by Chris Bahr. Earl Campbell made the only score for Houston. The Raiders continued to roll with scores by Todd Christensen, Arthur Whittington, Lester Hayes and a second field goal by Chris Bahr. Oakland sacked former Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler seven times and cruised to a 27–7 victory. In the fourth quarter, the Judge delivered his final verdict with an interception taken back for a touchdown.
DIVISIONAL PLAYOFFS: RAIDERS @ BROWNS
The Raiders would have to travel to Cleveland to play the Browns in the bitter cold in the divisional round. The ground was completely frozen and the locker room showers didn’t work.
“It was freezing and our center, Dave Dalby, was in a T-shirt,” said Plunkett. “Why? I’ll never know.
“The wind was ferocious coming off the lake. There were 80 to 90 passes thrown during that game and only a few were completed against the wind.”
In the first quarter, Cleveland’s defensive back Ron Bolton intercepted a pass from Plunkett and ran it back 42 yards for the score. The Browns missed the PAT, but were still on top, 6–0. Cleveland took the lead in the third quarter and held it until the final nine minutes of the game, when Mark van Eeghen scored, which put Oakland up by two.
But Gene Upshaw was still a little nervous about a possible comeback from Cleveland’s “Kardiac Kids.”
“They were known as the Kardiac Kids—an offense that could move the ball down field and score within two minutes. And they started marching down the field again, and all we could do was stand there.
“I’m standing there thinking, ‘We’ve come this far. We’ve fought this hard.’ And I can tell you this: I had never felt that low in my life.”
“Now they’re going into the open end zone where the Dawg Pound was,” said Millen. “We had already blocked one field goal going in there.”
“And we look at their bench and we keep thinking that they are going to kick and we are going to lose,” said Upshaw. “Well, they go back for one more pass. I just could not believe it. I don’t think that anyone on our sidelines could believe it.”
“I don’t blame their play calling,” said Plunkett. “You’re taking a chance and their kicker Don Cockroft already had missed an extra point and they were afraid they were going to miss the field goal.”
As the Browns’ offense came out of the huddle and lined up for the play, nobody thought that quarterback Brian Sipe would chance throwing the ball . . . but he did.
The Raiders defensive back, “Mad Dog” Mike Davis, made the game-saving interception in the end zone on a play known as Red Right 88. Sipe’s pass fluttered in the strong wind, and Davis stepped in front of receiver Ozzie Newsome to win the game.
What was ironic about that play was the fact that Davis could not catch the ball very well; but when it counted he made a phenomenal catch!
Gene Upshaw agrees about Mike’s catching skills.
“Mike Davis was so
bad that he couldn’t catch a cold in Alaska barefooted. So you go from as low as you could possibly be and in one snap of the ball you go as high as you could possibly be. Also, I could not believe that Mike Davis actually caught the ball because I’m telling you, he had absolutely the worst hands in that secondary.”
Final score: Oakland 14, Cleveland 12.
For the AFC Championship game, Oakland would travel from the Cleveland cold to the San Diego sun.
AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME RAIDERS @ CHARGERS
“Going into the Conference Championship, we knew that we would be playing our old rivals on their home field. But deep down inside, we knew that we were destined,” said Upshaw. “We outplayed them the first time, so we approached this game with a lot of confidence.”
Against the NFL’s fourth-highest-scoring team, Plunkett went to the air early in the first quarter with a 65-yard pass to Raymond Chester. Following a Charlie Joiner pass from Dan Fouts to tie the score, Plunkett put the Raiders ahead with a 5-yard run to the end zone. On the next possession, Kenny King caught a 21-yard pass from Plunkett to take the lead to 21–7.
In the second quarter Mark van Eeghen rushed in for three yards to give Oakland a 28–7 lead, but San Diego responded with 17 unanswered points. The score was now Oakland 28, San Diego 24. Entering the fourth quarter, Oakland was worried.
Ted Hendricks grabbed Jim by his jersey.
“San Diego was getting back in the ballgame when Ted Hendricks grabbed me by the jersey, shook me and said, ‘Keep scoring. We can stop them. All we have to do is hold on to the ball, control it, run out the clock and we’re there.’”
And Oakland did just that.
“After Bahr’s two field goals, we were just minutes away from a Super Bowl,” said Millen, “an opportunity that we weren’t going to let slip away.”
“Our defensive back Burgess Owens and I were standing on the sideline and he’d say, ‘How are we doing?’ I said, ‘We picked up six.’ Two more first downs. One more first down and the game is ours.’ He said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘We’re going to the Super Bowl!’ And he was beside himself! ‘New Orleans, here we come!’”
