Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
The Raiders’ owner, Al Davis, has endured five consecutive losing seasons. He recently fired coach Lane Kiffin after a public dressing down.
ALAMEDA, Calif.
Before his team left for New Orleans for a crucial game on Sunday against the Saints, Al Davis stood on a bad leg with the assistance of a walker and shouted encouragement to his players as they walked off the practice field. Some waved, others nodded. No one ignored.
Davis, at age 79, eats, drinks and sleeps — but not so comfortably these days — Oakland Raiders football. But after five consecutive losing seasons — five last-place finishes — there has been the inevitable speculation that the game has passed Davis by, that the Raiders’ legendary owner has lost touch and lost control.
Maybe the game has passed Davis, but he has not lost control. He proved that two weeks ago in extraordinary fashion.
After weeks of public conjecture, Davis fired Coach Lane Kiffin — figuratively giving the young Kiffin a public spanking. He then addressed the news media to explain what he called “the propaganda and lying” from Kiffin that led to the dismissal.
That was old-school, glory-days Raiders football replete with mud in the face, elbows to the throat. If Kiffin used the news media to fight his battle, wanted to play rough and tumble, Davis would remind him that he invented rough and tumble.
“I realized I didn’t hire the person I thought I was hiring,” Davis said. And that was the nice stuff.
Among other things, the feud accentuated N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s lack of authority — or an unwillingness to use his authority to publicly officiate a bloody squabble involving an owner. Goodell’s responsibility is to enforce league rules and policies, but he should have stepped in before this fight reached the news-conference stage, where it has become must-see YouTube.
Goodell watched the news conference and told reporters last week: “No one likes to see a dispute like that happen. I think Mr. Davis made it very clear that he didn’t like it. I think it’s something that’s unfortunate. You don’t want to see it happen, but it is a reality of our business and they’ve moved on now.”
On Friday, I made the one-hour drive south to San Jose, where the New England Patriots — Oakland’s hated rival — spent the week preparing for Sunday’s game with San Diego. Several Patriots are from California. Most have watched the developing Raiders drama through the prism of Californians who had boyhood rooting interests in the Chargers, the Rams — when there was football in Los Angeles — the Raiders and the 49ers.
Logan Mankins played at Fresno State and grew up a 49ers fan in Catheys Valley. When he thinks of San Francisco, he thinks of Jerry Rice, Joe Montana and Steve Young.
Oakland Raiders? “You think of Al Davis,” Mankins said. “He’s always been above the team, he was always in the spotlight, whether it was moving them form city to city, or just his persona. He was always above the team.”
Mankins has been with the Patriots for all four seasons of his pro career.
He is biased, obviously. There has been no love lost between these two team since 2002, when Oakland lost the infamous tuck-rule playoff game at New England. Still, he offers a perspective on the Raiders that may be shared by more players than not.
“I don’t think anyone thinks Oakland is in the spot where they need to be,” he said. “I know I wouldn’t want to be on that team with all the chaos that’s going on there all the time. I don’t really know what’s going on there, but from an outsider’s view, I know I wouldn’t want to be around there. I don’t know what really is going on, but it doesn’t look good.”
Walking cold into Raiders wonderland is like beginning a great novel in the middle. You will digest great lines and wonderful concepts, but the complexity of the larger narrative is bound to escape you. The Al Davis portion of the Raiders’ narrative began in 1963, when Davis, at age 33, was named head coach and general manager.
In April 1966, Davis became commissioner of the American Football League, at the end of its blood-and-guts war with the rival National Football League. Three months later he resigned and rejoined the Raiders as managing general partner, beginning an incredible 42-year ownership reign.
The Raiders’ coaching carousel began in 1988 with the resignation of Tom Flores and the hiring of Mike Shanahan. He was fired in October 1989. A day later Art Shell was named head coach.
Shell was fired in 1995 and Mike White was hired. White was fired in 1997 and Joe Bugel became the coach; Bugel was fired in 1998 and Jon Gruden became the coach. In March 2002, Bill Callahan replaced Gruden and led Oakland to the Super Bowl, im which the Raiders lost to Gruden’s Buccaneers.
In January 2004, Norv Turner was named the coach. In 2006, Shell, in for a second tour of duty, replaced Turner. In January 2007, Davis named Kiffin to succeed Shell.
On Sept. 30 Kiffin was fired and the offensive line coach Tom Cable became the Raiders’ coach. The thread running through all of this is Davis.
Under Davis, the Raiders have been one of the most successful N.F.L. franchises ever. They have appeared in Super Bowls in four decades, winning in the 1976, 1980 and 1983 seasons, and losing in the 1967 and 2002 seasons. And they have always been ahead of the curve: they made Eldridge Dickey, an African-American quarterback, a first-round pick in 1968; and they made Flores the first Latino head coach, in 1979.
Davis is the cause, he is the cure, he is the Raiders’ dilemma and, ultimately, must be the franchise’s solution. The problem is that owners never see themselves as the problem. Never.
Kiffin wasn’t the answer, but after 40 years, the Raiders need a new vision and a new voice. And Davis’s son, Mark, is waiting in the wings.
Perhaps Davis will initiate yet another innovation and become the first owner in the history of sports to remove himself.
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