treadmill. When he ate, late at night, often alone, he had
a phone brought to his table so he could take work calls.
Even in the years before his 2011 death, at 82, Davis
was still attending owners’ meetings, still asking indeli-
cate questions, still pushing boundaries. Matt Millen was
in attendance for some of those sessions, representing
the Lions, for whom he was GM. And Millen noticed that
when Davis raised his hand to speak, other owners would
snicker and giggle. “It used to piss me off,” Millen says.
“Here’s a guy who was the NFL. He didn’t just see the
changes, he made the changes. He had a tie to everyone
from George Halas to Vince Lombardi to John Madden
to Joe Gibbs to Bill Belichick. They thought he’d lost his
fastball? He was still two levels ahead.”
On the subject of two levels: Go up to the second floor
of the Raiders’ corporate facility in Alameda, head to
the back and there sits Davis’s old office, untouched,
out of some combination of tribute and
superstition. Davis’s personal effects still
dot his desk, his art still lines the walls,
his books—mostly covering football and
the Brooklyn Dodgers—still occupy the
shelves. Occasionally Mark Davis, Al and
Carole’s son as well as the Raiders’ cur-
rent owner, will duck in to take a call. But
otherwise the office is akin to a museum
exhibit, the workplace of a transformative
figure, that must be preserved.
SUCH IS the life cycle of a pioneer,
as well as the nature of competition
and capitalism: Others build on ideas and
refine concepts, catching up and often
turning the innovator into a laggard. You
could make the case that Al Davis became
a victim of his own visionary success.
His vertical game? Innumerable pass-happy coaches
have taken elements and evolved it. Davis’s states’ rights
philosophy would undergird the Cowboys’ commercial
wars with the NFL and the Patriots’ us-against-the-league
ethos. Since the Raiders moved to L.A., a half-dozen other
teams have moved markets, and virtually every franchise
has threatened relocation. (To paraphrase Svare: “Al
Davis, I know you’re in there!”)
Davis knew he was onto something when he recog-
nized the importance of talent assessment, of gauging
when a player would hit or pass his prime. This turned
into analytics departments, and eventually the Raiders
lost this competitive advantage.
Team slogans would be outsourced to marketing de-
partments. Color schemes wouldn’t be approved until
they fared well with focus groups. Silver-and-black is a
good start—but what if we added a splash of teal?
Beyond that, the very idea of Davis would become
obsolete. The NFL would become a league of specializa-
tion. A football Zelig whose NFL CV included entries
for scout, position coach, head coach, GM and owner
would be as absurd today as a two-way player who also
kicked field goals.
What would Davis make of the NFL in 2019? Would
he be pleased that franchise valuations start around
$2 billion, a vivid illustration of football’s growth as a
business? Or would he be resentful that teams are avail-
able for purchase only to titans of finance?
Would the tough guy prone to military analogies—
the man who famously said, “The quarterback must go
down, and he must go down hard”—cringe at the rules
protecting passers as a profaning of his sacred game? Or
would the godfather of the aerial assault
be pleased by the effort to safeguard the
men throwing those bombs?
“He would probably see it as soft,” says
Jackson, chuckling, “that it’s more about
money than the love of the game.”
Would he be pleased that today’s Raid-
ers, revisiting the trail Davis first blazed
in the 1980s, are relocating after finding a
more hospitable and profitable market in
Vegas? Or would he fear that the East Bay
and the fan base cultivated in his image
would be left bereft? Would he accept the
attention that comes with Hard Knocks as
another of his brand extensions? Or would
he resent the media gadflies invading his
foxholes and war rooms?
For her part, Trask has given much
thought to how her old boss would
have reacted to the recent anthem protests, given that
they would have pitted his deep sense of individualism
against his deep sense of patriotism. “It would have
been a fascinating conversation,” she says. “He would
have talked about the right to peaceful protest, and how
quintessentially important it is to this country. And yet
he would have discussed his great love for the country
and the people who served it. Not everything is binary,
and Al knew that.”
One would hope, though, that Davis would scan the
NFL landscape and realize: He had not just won, baby.
He had conquered. He had laid the groundwork for so
much, and now others could build on his ideas. This
would mark a rare time Al Davis would be happy to have
others take the ball and run with it. ≥What would Davis
make of the NFL in
2019? “He would
see it as soft,”
says Jackson—
“more about
money than the
love of the game.”