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of the most agile and razored football minds he’d ever
encountered? Why not seek Davis’s insight on every-
thing from formation to motivation?
In 1966, Walsh had been an assistant coach under
Oakland’s undeniably brilliant and undeniably combat-
ive general manager, Davis. The two men were close in
age and shared a similar football belief system. Davis
would move on to become the Raiders’ majority owner,
and Walsh would move on to a series of coaching jobs,
his trajectory arcing ever upward, toward the Hall of
Fame. In the early ’80s, Walsh’s teams were compet-
ing with Davis’s for Lombardi Trophies—and yet the
two men stayed in regular contact. Like Millen, Walsh
didn’t advertise it.
One time, in conversation, Davis casually mentioned
to Walsh that he’d been speaking, too, with the 49ers’
young owner, Eddie DeBartolo Jr., another eventual
Hall of Famer—which Walsh, too, at first thought odd.
Wasn’t DeBartolo supposed to be a competitor, if not
an enemy combatant? The more Walsh thought about
it, though, the more sense it made. Why wouldn’t an
owner avail himself of one of the most agile and razored
business minds he’d ever encountered? Why not seek
the man’s insight on everything from stadium financ-
ing to relocation?
Here was the perfect encapsulation of Al Davis. His
football acumen was such that a player on a rival team
would call him in the middle of the season to talk shop.
His strategic acumen was such that the old coach of this
same player’s team would call during the season to talk
X’s and O’s. His business acumen was such that this same
coach’s owner would call during the season to talk about
how to master the universe. “He knew more about the
NFL,” says Millen, “than the NFL knew about itself.”
Today, if football fans under 40 know Al Davis at
all, it’s likely as the pompadoured persona non grata,
decked out in gaudy jewelry, a white polyester tracksuit
and a dismissive sneer. In his later years, when owners
became as notorious and as prominent as star players,
Davis was a sort of NFL anticelebrity, dressing, speak-
ing and running his team as if trapped in another era.
But there’s an abiding irony to all this: No single figure
has done more to shape the modern NFL.
Name a resonant issue, theme or innovation that
pertains to pro football in 2019—offenses predicated
on passing, teams moving markets, the NFL as the
dominant American sport—and odds are good that
Davis preordained it. Name a signature moment in
league history and Davis, most likely, was there. Name
a transformative figure and Davis, you can safely guess,
had a connection.
Not unlike the NFL itself, more powerful and yet more
maligned than any other league, Davis was—how to put
this?—an acquired taste. Here was a man who thrived
on conflict, almost as if incapable of functioning unless
locked in a feud. With his players and coaches. With
other owners. With his city. With the media. Above all,
with the league itself. Even his loyalists today choose
their words with a pained precision. “Difficult genius”
is a phrase in common rotation. Some go further. “He
was prickly, which can be shortened to ‘prick,’ ” says
Frank Hawkins, a top NFL exec in the ’90s and ’00s.
“And I’m one of the ones who liked Al.”
But Davis’s influence is, unmistakably, everywhere,
from Jerry Jones’s micromanaging to Bill Belichick’s
shroud of secrecy. The spread offense that has Patrick
Mahomes throwing almost 40 times a game? It bears
Davis’s fingerprints. The premium the league places
on speed? Sean McVay and the trend toward younger
coaches? Mel Kiper Jr. and the rise of the scouting indus-
trial complex? Even, ironically, the Raiders’ impending
departure to Las Vegas? All traceable back to Davis.
The occasion of the league’s 100th anniversary marks
as good a time as any to consider—and reconsider—a
man too often caricatured as the NFL’s cartoon villain.
Under the leather jacket and beneath the slicked-back
hair there resided a mass of connective tissue. For all
of Davis’s bluster and bravado and brashness, through
him we can braid together the league’s past, present
and even its future.
CURT GU
NTH
ER (2)
RAIDERS DIGEST
Davis’s very
early days:
just before
(left) and two
days after his
debut game
in Oakland, a
35–17 win
over the Bills.
