108
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED AUGUS T 26 – SEP TEM
BER 2, 2019
It’s likely no coincidence that longtime NFLPA head
Gene Upshaw (class of ’87) played his whole career in a
Raiders organization that viewed players as the lifeblood
of the sport—as people, not dispensable labor. It’s no
stretch to suggest Davis’s most enduring legacy resides in
this sensibility, which expresses itself today in everything
from health and safety issues to the right to protest.
In Jackson’s first month as Raiders coach he suggested
organizing a spring alumni gathering. Davis had two
conditions: 1) No alcohol. 2) He needed to see the guest
list before invitations went out. Jackson understood the
first rule—“Who knows what could happen; I’d heard
all the stories.” As for the second, it eventually surfaced
that Davis was slipping payments out of his own pocket
to retired Raiders who’d fallen on hard times, and here
he wanted to be sure attendees didn’t share this infor-
mation, potentially creating jealousies or shame. “He
was a dictator in his way,” says Jackson, “but he always
dictated from the good.”
Sometimes this entailed crafting creative solutions.
“He thinks of things other people don’t think of,” Mike
Madden, a former Raiders exec, once marveled. “He
prides himself on that. You know when Dallas drafted
Herschel Walker, a star halfback in the USFL, using a
low-round pick [in 1985], Al was kicking himself. ‘That’s
never going to happen again—that’s something I do.’ ”
So it was that two years later the Raiders took a
seventh-round flyer on a running back from Auburn.
Bo Jackson had left football behind and was playing pro
baseball, but Davis had a plan: The two seasons didn’t
overlap much; tell Jackson he could moonlight. “It was
an unbelievable move,” Madden said. “Don’t ask him to
[pick a sport]? Who else would have thought of that?”
Mike Madden spoke from professional and personal
experience. His father, John, was a 32-year-old line backers
coach when Davis offered him the Raiders’ top job, in
- No matter that John Madden had never been a head
coach at anything above a junior college. Davis deemed
him the best man for the position, a notion Madden
(class of 2006) supported with seven division titles,
one Super Bowl win (XI) and nary a season under .500.
After Madden—who remained fiercely loyal to his old
boss, though he did say Al “isn’t for everyone”—Davis
hired Tom Flores, in 1979, making him just the second
Latino head coach in pro football. (Flores would later
become the first minority head coach to win a Super
Bowl.) Given plenty of opportunity to take a victory lap
for this diversity hire, Davis declined. He knew Flores
only as a former Raiders QB who, in Davis’s estimation,
was the most qualified man for the job.
In 1989, Davis made Art Shell the first black NFL coach
were made up of “oddities and irregulars, factory seconds
and chain-gang escapees.” Jim Plunkett, for one, had been
cut by the 49ers before Davis transformed him into a
Super Bowl QB. One of Plunkett’s favorite targets, Todd
Christensen, had been cut by four different teams before
Davis thought otherwise. Defensive end John Matuszak,
the top pick by the Houston Oilers in 1973, was a wild
and woolly washout... until Davis revived his career.
“He could always spot players who were undervalued,”
says Hawkins. “He was Billy Beane before Billy Beane.”
Davis discounted conventional metrics and empha-
sized his own. He placed particular value on speed. You
could add bulk and improve technique, he figured, but
your ability to beat an opponent to the spot was crucial,
especially in the vertical game.
This obsession with acceleration was so intense and
unwavering that friends today suggest it underscored his
toxic relationship with Marcus Allen. Yes, the running
back held out (and eventually sued the Raiders to become
a free agent, in 1991), but that was nothing compared to
Allen’s mortal sin, in Davis’s eyes, of lacking quickness.
One Raiders exec back then told the Los Angeles Times,
“Al is upset because Marcus can’t run fast enough....
Of all the silly damn things. Marcus will be in the Hall
of Fame and Al will say, ‘Yeah, but he could only run 4.7
[in the 40-yard dash].’ ”
Davis versus Allen (class of ’03) was, famously, less
a feud than a war. But it was also an exception. For all
of Davis’s quirks, this might be the most pronounced:
Despite the fact that he was never a player, he was—Allen
aside—uncommonly sympathetic toward his foot soldiers.
“One of Al’s firmest beliefs was standing on the side of
players,” says Hue Jackson, who coached the Raiders
in ’11. “In his mind, without them there is no league.”
BYE, BYE, BAY-BY
Oaklanders
begged Davis to
stick around in
’80 (right); 31
years later (left)
they bid him
adieu for good.
EZRA SH
AW
/GETTY IM
AGES
