Davis still the man in charge of struggling Raiders franchise

OAKLAND, Calif. | There was an Al Davis sighting around here not too long ago.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a golf cart parked between two practice fields, Davis, the 79-year-old Raiders managing partner, watched his team work out against the San Francisco 49ers at Oakland’s training camp in nearby Napa.

Davis, who uses a walker to get around these days, chatted with 49ers general manager Scot McCloughan, whose father, Kent, is a longtime Raiders scout and former Oakland cornerback, and he spoke with other Raiders personnel.

When practice ended, Davis, rarely seen in public anymore, vanished — most likely to his office to watch video of the workout.

There is no doubt Davis is still in charge of the Raiders, even at his age, even if he’s barely visible to those on the outside and had not addressed reporters for more than a year until he issued a statement after Gene Upshaw’s death last week.

“This is still his baby,” said Hall of Fame cornerback Willie Brown, now a Raiders assistant coach. “He’s going to run it as he sees fit. By bringing in new players, by bringing in new coaches, Mr. Davis will do anything there is to help us win.”

In other words, “Just Win, Baby.”

That may be the watchword of the Raiders, but the franchise hasn’t lived up to the mantra in recent years. Since losing to Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl following the 2002 season, Oakland is a league-worst 19-61 and has gone through four head coaches. But Davis isn’t going anywhere, and without an apparent succession plan in place, there’s little indication the franchise will pull out of its malaise.

“Just Win, Baby” might ring hollow today to those outside the Raiders organization, but those three words have defined the rebellious and contentious Davis for more than 40 years.

Hall of Fame wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff distinctly remembers the first time he heard Davis utter the phrase.

It was training camp 1965. A brash, young Davis, the club’s coach and general manager, stood at the front of a meeting room, glared at a collection of trembling players and growled.

“I was just a rookie, and that’s all he cared about and all he talked about … ‘Whatever it takes to win’ … ‘Just Win, Baby’ …. and he got guys who had that demeanor to pull it off,” recalled Biletnikoff, who later would become MVP of Super Bowl XI.

Coach Tom Flores heard the expression during the trophy presentation after Davis’ Los Angeles Raiders beat Washington in Super Bowl XVIII.

“The team was teasing him about the size of the ring they’d be getting,” said Flores, head coach of the last two Raiders Super Bowl champions, “and all he said was, ‘Just Win, Baby.’”

• • •

That celebration in Tampa nearly a quarter-century ago was one of the last hurrahs for Davis and the Raiders.

Except for a brief blip during 2000-02 when Rich Gannon quarterbacked the Raiders to three AFC West titles and a fifth Super Bowl appearance, the club has deteriorated from one of the most dominant franchises in pro sports history to one of the most ridiculed.

“The mystique right now is just a memory,” said Flores, now the analyst for the Raiders’ radio broadcasts.

During an incredible run from 1963 to 1986, no team in the NFL could match the Raiders’ supremacy under Davis’ heavy-handed reign, as head coach during the first three seasons and as the club’s managing partner ever since.

The Raiders made four Super Bowl appearances in that time. They won three championships. They were the only team to play in Super Bowls in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s before returning for a fifth Super Bowl after the 2002 season.

But since 1987, little has come easy. While the Raiders went 237-99-4 during 1963-86, they are just 154-181 since 1987.

Most fingers point to Davis, whose health remains a mysterious topic around Raiderland. Davis still makes all the decisions, large and small. Who to draft. Who to sign. Who to cut. Who to hire. Who to fire.

Those who know Davis insist he is as alert as he was 40 years ago.

“He’s still sharp,” said Biletnikoff, who served as the Raiders’ receivers coach during 1989-2006. “He’s such a big help to the coaches. If he feels you’re overlooking something that is going to help your position group get better, he’ll tell you.

“Everybody gives Al a bad rap … but all he’s trying to do is make everybody better.”

But in the era of the salary cap and free agency, the process of building a team barely resembles the simpler times of 20, 30 and 40 years ago. Because there are so many off-field issues to consider — including drugs, arrest reports and multimillion-dollar signing bonuses — it usually requires more than one opinion to determine whether to sign a free agent or draft a certain player.

When Davis built the Raiders into a power, Ron Wolf was his right-hand man on personnel matters during 1963-90 and would challenge or question key decisions. Coach Jon Gruden and general manager Bruce Allen did the same in 1998-2001.

There doesn’t appear to be anyone in that capacity today.

“Once (Davis’) health took a turn, he became very controlling, very dominating, and it’s very difficult to work there,” said Michael Lombardi, who served as a Raiders’ personnel executive during 1999-2006.

“He wants to run the show. Typically, he likes to make decisions based on where he can blame somebody else. The circle of people around him tells him what he wants to hear. And if you have a different opinion, then it doesn’t really matter.

“He’s doing everything. Don’t let anybody kid you. They’re not making one decision in that building he doesn’t sign off on.”

• • •

Lane Kiffin needs his team to get off to a respectable start this season, or he’ll be the latest head coach to be run off by Davis.

“When you take this job, you realize who the owner is and you realize most guys don’t last really long, so that is what it is,” said Kiffin, who went 4-12 after he was a surprise hire in 2007.

Gannon, in his role as analyst for CBS Sports, has noticed the dysfunctional relationship, saying, “The thing that concerns me is the rotten communication or the rotten cooperation between the owner and the coach.”

Davis and Kiffin have had differences over the makeup of the coaching staff, and the owner tried to force Kiffin to resign last spring. With three years remaining on his contract, Kiffin, 33, stood firm.

“We have a working relationship,” Kiffin says, “and I think we have the same goal, and that’s to get this team to win.”

John Madden, who was just 32 when promoted to head coach in 1969, enjoyed his 10 years under Davis.

“He was the best owner in the world because he knew football,” said Madden, coach of the Raiders’ Super Bowl XI champions. “There was never a time that I wanted anything. I was one of the first guys to start a minicamp, one of the first guys to start filming every practice, one of the first guys to start practicing with other teams, and these were all crazy ideas he went along with. He never said no to anything because he understood when I wanted something, and I didn’t have to go through a general manager or some suit.

“The best job you could have as a coach is the fewest number of guys between you and the owner. I had no one between me and the owner. And when you have the owner who knows the game, it makes it that much easier.”

Flores, a former Raiders quarterback who replaced Madden as head coach in 1979, always knew who was boss, even though he sometimes made light of working in Davis’ considerable shadow.

“When we played in the Super Bowl in New Orleans, it was billed as ‘Dick Vermeil and the Philadelphia Eagles vs. Al Davis and his Raiders,” Flores said. “I had to introduce myself at the first press conference … ‘I’m coach of the Raiders’ … and I got no chuckles from anybody.”

Flores’ successor, Mike Shanahan, couldn’t acquiesce to Davis and lasted just 20 games in 1988-89 before moving on to Denver, where he won two Super Bowls.

“Mike proved that he was a good coach, but he came in with a chip on his shoulder, like ‘We’re going to run this thing the way we’re going to run it,’ ” Flores said. “He forgot who owned the ball.”

• • •

From day one, Al Davis believed in intimidation and putting fear into his opponents. When his first Raiders team took the field against Houston on Sept. 7, 1963, they displayed new silver and black uniforms with a patch on the right eye of the smug Raider depicted in the club’s logo.

Davis reveled in being the villain, and his players performed with an edge that bordered between nasty and dirty.

“If they had a chance to take a cheap shot at a quarterback, they were going to take it,” said Chiefs Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson, who still recoils at the memory of Raiders defensive end Ben Davidson spearing him in a 1970 game at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City.

Davis attracted renegades, misfits and miscreants who may not have fit in with other teams — non-conformists such as linebacker Ted “The Mad Stork” Hendricks; defensive tackle Otis Sistrunk, who did not play college football; quarterback and party animal Kenny “The Snake” Stabler; and perhaps the zaniest of them all, defensive lineman John “The Tooz” Matuszak, who went on to a Hollywood career before dying of heart failure at 38.

The team had few rules and flaunted the ones it had, such as curfews.

“Al let you do whatever you wanted to as long as you came to play on Sunday, and I respected him for that,” said Hendricks, a Hall of Famer who played for all three Raiders Super Bowl championship teams and one with Baltimore.

“When he asked me about John Matuszak and how he would fit in, I looked over my shoulder and two of the defensive backs were flipping towels at each other in the locker room, and I said, ‘One more isn’t going to hurt this group.’ ”

Davis was also a rebel among his fellow owners. As short-lived commissioner of the AFL in 1966, he escalated signing wars against the NFL while Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and Dallas general manager Tex Schramm were working toward merging the leagues.

Davis and NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle seldom agreed on anything, and Davis rocked the league when he ignored its rules by moving the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles without permission in 1982, only to return to Oakland in 1995.

The case went from Federal District Court, where the Raiders were awarded $35 million in compensatory damages from the NFL for antitrust and bad faith violations, to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling in favor of Davis.

“The same owners who probably stood up and criticized him are owners who benefited by it,” Flores said. “(Robert) Irsay, moving from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night … Al didn’t do anything under the table, he did it above board.

“Bill Bidwill going (from St. Louis) to Phoenix … Al proved it could be done, and by doing so, he improved everyone’s value.”

• • •

It’s no accident that the recent demise of the Raiders coincides with the retirement of Gannon, forced out of the game because of injuries in 2004.

“If you don’t have a quarterback in this league, you can’t win, and it takes four or five years to get one,” Madden said. “Then you have to go through that long process.

“Sometimes you can draft into it like Eli Manning or Peyton Manning; sometimes you can luck into it like a Tom Brady or Tony Romo. After they lost Rich Gannon, they haven’t lucked into it, and they’re trying to develop it with JaMarcus Russell.”

Gruden, hired as head coach in 1998, persuaded Davis to sign Gannon as an unrestricted free agent from Kansas City, and the Raiders soon reestablished themselves as an AFC power. Gruden left for Tampa Bay after the 2001 season, and though the Raiders advanced to the Super Bowl the next year under Bill Callahan, Gannon sensed signs the franchise was about to implode.

During the offseason following the 48-21 loss to Gruden’s Buccaneers in Super Bowl XXXVII, Callahan made what Gannon called “a major, major, major, major mistake.”

“One of the worst things that ever happened to me in football is Bill Callahan really felt like everyone spent the offseason watching what we had done offensively and we had to change things, and we spent the whole offseason trying to doctor our offense and do more things at the line of scrimmage. As smart a guy as I was, it was confusing and complicated to me.”

The Raiders got off to a 2-7 start, and Gannon was injured in the sixth game of the season. Because the Raiders did not extend Callahan’s original two-year contract after the Super Bowl, the players knew he was a lame-duck coach. They walked all over him and, in the case of cornerback Charles Woodson, ripped him in the media, leading to Callahan’s departure to Nebraska.

Then came a succession of coaches. Norv Turner lasted two seasons. Art Shell, the coach during 1989-94, returned for 2006. And now Kiffin.

“I tried to get to know him a little bit,” Gannon said of Davis. “The guy wants to win, but wanting to win and going about it in an efficient way is another thing, and I’m not sure they’ve done that since Gruden left.

“They’ve had some good people go through there and come out not the same people.”

• • •

The first time safety Gibril Wilson heard the words “Just Win, Baby,” he was in junior high in nearby San Jose, a Raiders fan who idolized Willie Brown, George Atkinson and other Oakland players.

It’s why he left the Super Bowl champion Giants and signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Raiders.

“I know when I was growing up, when I thought about the Silver and Black, I thought about nasty, knock-guys-out on defense,” Wilson said. “That’s what we need to get back to.”

Davis went on a spending spree this offseason in an apparent effort to add one more championship to his legacy.

Besides handing Wilson $16 million in guaranteed money, he gave $18 million to defensive lineman Tommy Kelly, who missed the last nine games of 2007 because of injury; $16 million to wide receiver Javon Walker, who is coming off knee problems at Denver and Green Bay and a broken jaw absorbed when beaten and robbed in Las Vegas last June; and acquired cornerback DeAngelo Hall, a gifted but temperamental player in Atlanta.

But today, Davis’ touch with reclamation projects is no longer unique. Wide receiver Randy Moss tanked in two seasons at Oakland before thriving for autocratic Bill Belichick in 2007 in New England.

“At one time, the Raiders understood how to deal with those players who didn’t fit into a system or were deemed to be too much trouble,” said Michael MacCambridge, author of America’s Game. “Now, in an age where everybody has a player-development coordinator, people have caught up.

“How many times do we hear, ‘Well, he’s going to the Raiders, they understand guys like this.’ They could not get Randy Moss to play in the way the Patriots could. That is the classic condemnation of the Raiders system and what it has come down to.”

• • •

If this group of Raiders — including Russell, the first overall pick of the 2007 draft, and running back Darren McFadden, the club’s first-round pick this year — fails to restore the franchise’s glory, then it might be time for Al Davis to pass on the control to someone new.

No one knows who that might be. Davis’ son, Mark, usually clad in a white Raiders T-shirt, ballcap and blue jeans at training camp, says his role is “special projects” but does not appear to be an heir apparent.

“It’s not the last hurrah for him,” Willie Brown said. “Mr. Davis will be around for a long time. Are you kidding me?”

And even if the Raiders fail to return to another Super Bowl under Davis’ watch, his legacy is secure.

“His legacy is when you think of the Oakland Raiders, who do you think of?” asked Ron Wolf. “That’s his legacy.

“There’s not any pro franchise you can do that with. You say ‘the Raiders,’ and right away, only one individual comes to mind. It’s Al Davis.”