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u/GipsySafety · 5 pointsr/oaklandraiders

Read BadAsses


“I never felt it was us against the world; I thought we were better than the world,” Al Davis tells me, his voice soft but his words hard. His eyes turn to meet mine and bore right through me; they are not eyes to be defied, or questioned.

---

“John competed in the golden era of great coaches,” says Davis. “In his 10 years he coached against many who are enshrined in the Hall of Fame: Shula, Noll, Brown, Tom Landry, George Allen, Weeb Ewbank, Bud Grant, Marv Levy.

“And remember now: this was John’s first professional head-coaching job, and he did what we could call the impossible. He won more games than he lost against every Hall of Fame coach. His total record against them was 36–16 and two ties.” I do not ask Davis whether he knew this by rote or had to look it up. I suspect the former. Just as impressive to Davis is Madden’s Monday-night domination: an astounding 11–1–1.

“Now, no question,” Davis concedes, “someone had to get those great players. But someone had to coach them. And you worked together.”

---

“I was coaching at a time when you had to wear white shirts and ties,” Madden told me. “Well, you don’t have to wear white shirts and ties. Facial hair? That has nothing to do with winning or losing. Those things weren’t important to me. I didn’t give a damn. Some teams were making their decisions based on stuff like that. ‘I got to get rid of that guy because he has a mustache’? I always thought that was dumb.”

How could you not love a coach who let his players express themselves as individuals? Who saw the idiocy in thinking that conformity could instill pride or encourage camaraderie? That very freedom off the field bound the Badasses.

“Any rule or regulation on the Raiders had to do with nothing but winning,” says Mark van Eeghen. “Otherwise it was not a regulation.”

---

Down in Oakland, the mantra was one for all and all for one. On Sundays, the revelry always started with the weekly post-game party, hosted by Davis, win or lose—in the earliest years, at a place called the Edgewater West Motel.

“That was one seedy place,” Villapiano says now. “I mean, this was a dive.” In a time when salaries were closer to minimum-wage than white-collar, a free, all-you-could-eat-and-drink meal was like manna from the gods. The party was as highly anticipated as the games, not just because of the generosity of Davis, but because of the chance for 40-odd families to hang and get to know each other: the neighborhood cocktail party writ large.

“But, remember, the NFL was just getting started, and these teams didn’t have a lot of money to spend,” Villapiano recalls. “The Raiders were the only team that threw a full-fledged party for all the players and their friends. And if you didn’t go, someone would be down your fucking throat. We all went, we all had a good time…and shit happened.”

---

‘We want to take our first two picks and draft the best tacklers in college football. I’m tired of missing tackles.’ You can teach it and coach it, but you can’t practice live tackling. So if you can’t practice it, you better go get it. We drafted Tatum one and Villapiano two, and we never had a tackling problem after that. All you need is a couple of them, and everyone else feeds off them. He was a hell of a linebacker.”

---

“I heard about Wolf long before I saw him,” Tom Flores recalls. “In camp, I’d walk by this one room where he hung out. It was always dark. All I could hear was the sound of this old Bell & Howell projector. I’d think, ‘Who’s that guy?’ No one knew what he looked like. You just heard about him. But you never saw him.”

“Ron Wolf was a one-man full-time personnel staff,” Madden says, in near reverence. “And he was the one man who could be a one-man staff. I mean, Ron Wolf knew every player everywhere. Ron Wolf’s mind was amazing. You could ask him, ‘Ron, there’s this junior wide receiver someone told me about at Alcorn,’ and he would know him. He didn’t have to go through notes and read stuff. He’d say, ‘This is who he is, and this is what he does.’ He truly had a photographic mind.”

“I was just one of those guys lucky enough to be along for the ride,” Wolf says now, and you are welcome to believe him if you want. But the consistent excellence of those Raider drafts, from the mid-’60s until he left in the late ’70s, suggests otherwise.

---

“People said, ‘How do you draft a punter in the first round?’” says Madden. “Because every defensive guy wanted him because he helped the defense. Because every offensive guy wanted him because he helped the offense. And of course everyone on special teams wanted him.”

---

Guy had been standing five yards deep in his own end zone when he kicked the ball. It landed somewhere around Ole Miss’s 20, then bounced through the end zone. Officially, it was a 93-yard kick. Unofficially, the football traveled more than 120 yards before it came to rest against a fence.

This was not just a punter; this was the Roy Hobbs, The Natural, of punting, although in college his talents weren’t limited to kicking. As a defensive back, Guy intercepted 18 passes in three years at Southern Mississippi. It was during his sophomore year that he began to gain notice with his punts, as he grew to 6'4" and some quirk of kinetic leverage kicked in. By his senior year, he was an All-American.

But if he’d had his way, Guy would have been starting at safety for the Raiders—or quarterback, a position to which he was named all-state in high school in rural Georgia, where he grew up on a farm. Ray Guy was a stellar small-town athlete who happened to be too good at punting to allow him to pursue his dreams of being a full-contact guy.

“Ron Wolf told him he could play safety when he signed him,” Madden recalls. “The first day we practice, I look up and we have Guy in at safety, and I tell him to get the hell out of there. He said, ‘But Wolf told me that if I signed with you I could play safety, too.’ I told him, ‘Ron Wolf lied.’ We never had another conversation about him being a safety.”

Madden would let Guy practice with the safeties over on the side, but not in a team drill or scrimmage. He was way too valuable. “See, he was a hyper guy. He couldn’t just stand around. He’d always want to jump in and help, play defense against the receivers when you were walking through practices. He could throw the ball farther and harder than any of our quarterbacks, so then we started letting him throw the ball, which was safe, and it got his energy out of him.”

---

Irons vividly remembers his first exposure to the team, as a rookie in 1970: a seminar in the Raider way of doing things. He’d expected professionalism. He just hadn’t expected the level of commitment he encountered. “It was my first practice. Madden blew the whistle, calls the whole team up: ‘Great practice, guys. Go get some lunch. See you this afternoon.’ I felt good. I take off running to the locker room, and suddenly he called me back: ‘Irons, where you going? Turn around and look at where your teammates are.’”

None of his teammates had left the field. They’d all stuck around to get in some extra work. “Biletnikoff had his 20 or 40 balls with Stabler, working on his timing. Tatum and those guys are working extra on pass coverage. I was the only one going into the locker room.”

That was the day when Irons discovered another key to the Badass’ success at their craft: they took it more seriously because they seriously enjoyed the game. Football was far more than a job. The lesson stuck with Irons the rest of his career. “After that, I was out there with them, every practice, after morning and after noon, for 30 minutes at least, working on blitzing, working on shedding blocks, on wrapping up the tackle, on covering guys out of the backfield. Little things you don’t get a chance to work on during practice, right down to things like keeping your feet in bounds, tiptoeing on the sidelines. You’d always get a couple of other guys there to help you improve. That was just the Raider way.”

“Guys would always help each other out,” says Madden. “Branch would help Shell on speed rushes. Or if a defensive back wanted more work to prepare for a guy who had a good inside move, someone would stay after to help the DB get his inside foot up. During the regular season, you can’t get a lot of repetition, so that’s where they’d work on the extra stuff. Biletnikoff would stay out ’til no one was left to throw to him. Then he’d use the Jugs machine. But everyone did stuff like that. Guys would always practice after practice. They enjoyed it. They had fun doing it; that was the key. Because they were all friends. They loved each other.”

Irons would be a stalwart at linebacker until he was traded to the Browns. Eventually he would be named one of the top 100 Browns of all time. But today, it’s not Cleveland he wants to discuss: “Even if you go to the Cleveland Browns, you’re always a Raider. Once a Raider, always a Raider. That’s a beautiful legacy. We were the class of the league.”






u/Grimmetal_Heavy · 4 pointsr/oaklandraiders

I've actually read two books in the past couple of months. "Badasses" by Peter Richmond:

https://www.amazon.com/Badasses-Legend-Maddens-Oakland-Raiders/dp/0061834319

and "Just Win, Baby: Al Davis and His Raiders" by Glenn Dickey:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151465800/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and I also have on my shelf 'Slick: The Silver and Black Life of Al Davis' by Mark Ribowsky. I have not started this one yet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0026025000/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

​

Badasses covers the team mostly through John Madden's years up through 1976 and a few words through the '78 season, I believe. It was actually a really good book if you want to know more about how the Raiders established themselves and finally broke through after losing the eventual champions for so many years. I loved it. Absolutely one of the best football books I've ever read and a key to understanding the establishment of what it meant to 'be a Raider'. It was published in 2013, so it's certainly a bit more recent than either Al Davis biography.


Dickey's book is centered strictly around Al Davis with plenty of anecdotes, mostly from the viewpoint of an old beat writer. It felt a little light at times but makes for a great continuation from what 'Badasses' established. From memory, it really focuses on the more high profile incidents involving Davis including the feud with Rozelle around the Raider's move to LA and it does a GREAT job of highlighting the negotiations between Davis and Oakland and Davis and LA. You have to keep in mind that the Raiders wouldn't return to Oakland until 1995 and this book was published in 1991.


I believe Richmond cited Ribowsky's book quite a bit in 'Badasses'. As mentioned, I haven't read it yet, but it looks a bit more dense than Dickey's book. It seems like it was released at the same time as Dickey's book and perhaps was a bit of competition between book companies based on the fact they were both released about the same time.


As far as being 'hit' pieces, 'Badasses certainly isn't, as it is centered around the team more than Davis himself. Dickey's book was fair enough and reads like an Oakland beat writer wrote it. Nothing that really made me stop and think, 'Well, that was a unnecessarily harsh.'

u/ahydell · 1 pointr/oaklandraiders

I'm reading a great book right now it's called Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden's Oakland Raiders by Peter Richmond, and it's fucking awesome and a great read. I'd totally recommend it.

u/Spiffiestspaceman · 4 pointsr/oaklandraiders

The entire game is on this Raider complete history DVD and a great watch. I highly recommend it.

u/FrosteeDariusRucker · 2 pointsr/oaklandraiders

Older than my son. 1986. Haha. I have it on audiobook. I would also like an original print of this to go with my copy of Badasses.

So much of my memorabilia has been lost in moves, or destroyed by lack of care and time.

I wish I could go back and vacuum seal my stuff and bury it somewhere to protect it from my old careless self.

Edit: formatting error and also: Snake

66 left, we better get on it

u/Raydahz · 3 pointsr/oaklandraiders

I wish he would of issued a statement as to why he took Umcka. Did he take it as cold medicine like it's sold by Nature's Way on Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Way-Umcka-Original-Alcohol/dp/B00185OHAK

Or did he take it consistently when he wasn't even sick knowing it would give him some sort of advantage?

If the latter -- you gotta be real careful with that shit or things like this can happen.

u/GrandpaGruden · 9 pointsr/oaklandraiders

Ha! This is totally the band! I just found the the CD on Amazon. I remember this tracklist like it was yesterday. Thank you so much!

u/oaktownraider13 · 5 pointsr/oaklandraiders

Snake is another good one. Autobiography of Kenny Stabler, our qb in the 70s. Great read, very insightful, and funny as all hell.

u/Cyberflection · 13 pointsr/oaklandraiders

What's been the hardest for me to accept throughout all this is that the rich minority just got fucking richer again, and the poor got screwed in the process, like always.

Just like with the corporate and political corruption we read about every day, today, the cold calculating scam artist got what he wanted. The SB Champion Patriots got what they wanted. And our team, who seemed very accommodating and supportive throughout this entire process, was duped and screwed. And there will be no repercussions.

I don't care about the 5th rd pick; we signed several undrafted FA's. The 3rd is a bit harder to swallow.

But what hurts the most is that in this world, being a heartless scumbag will get you success, money, and probably superbowl rings. Whereas people who aren't total assholes, like Gruden - who probably won't press charges for wiretapping - get stabbed in the back. Psychopaths climb the ladders of our society with ease. Such is the world we live in, and today was yet another reminder. That's the hardest part for me to get over, especially with all these celebrities celebrating AB's "mastermind genius chess finesse" on his instagram posts. Mack's trade was arguably a win for everyone involved. This is only a win for AB and the Pats.

u/Trapline · 1 pointr/oaklandraiders

This would be a good start then.

u/newBreed · 2 pointsr/oaklandraiders

I have some Raider mugs I use constantly. Also look into the new book Badasses.

u/CarlCaliente · 2 pointsr/oaklandraiders

If you want a very basic intro to the game (what position groups do, zone vs man), check out Pat Kirwan's book Take Your Eye Off the Ball

If you're interested in certain schemes that dominated football, how they evolved, how they are used today, and an overall history of the game check out Chris B Brown's Blog and his two books

If you're interested in specific parts of a scheme, say fronts, coverages, run blocking techniques, etc. check out Matt Bowen's NFL 101 Series. Unfortunately these aren't well organized but I learned a ton reading his articles

I also second /r/footballstrategy, specifically the wiki. Grizzfan has put an insane amount of work to that sub, tons of knowledge dumped into that page.