Ha, okay, I gotcha ya. To be honest when I was in my late teens the Oakland Raiders were my team. Ken Stabler was the quarter back and he loved passing the tide ends such as Dave Casper. I would go crazy, the Raiders were always down, losing by more than a touch down with 3 minutes to go and I would turn the TV off, then back on, then off and so on. Stabler would look like he didn’t have a care in the world and work his way down in 57 seconds and get the first touch down, then the D would hold, back in Stablers hands, another touchdown the win, it was insane. After he left I didn’t watch football until I was in my 30’s. That how stressed out I got during those days ...
We’re about the same age. I grew up in the East Bay during the 70’s. Madden was coach. Sistrunk, Van Eegan, Bilitnekoff, Branch, Casper, Stabler, Lamonica, Blanda, Otto, Ben Davison, the Assassin (the guy that hit Daryl Stingley and paralyzed him) . . .
The list goes on and on. Then in the 1980s with Flores, you had Plunkett and his crew. This was after Star Wars, and a guy would show up with a Darth Vader helmet and a Raider uniform with a cape. Dude was huge too, as tall as the guy in the movie.
Three Super Bowl trophies in lowly Oakland. All balls. All heart. No brain.
Stabler recently passed. He called games in New Orleans where he was raised for a long time. He should be in the Hall. Only Montana had his poise. The late 20th century was a good time for NorCal NFL teams between the Raiders and the Niners. Great time to become a fan.
I respected Landry so much I hated the guy. The O-Line for Dallas would hitch themselves up before the Staubach would snap the ball - they were a machine. Tearing off yards in chunks. Cold - boring during Thanksgiving, as they’d face Detroit and beat them by some obscene amount - Christians to lions.
Landry took the NFL’s dignity with him when he left. Madden was exactly the guy you saw on TV, only much smarter and he could run a prison. Landry and Bill Walsh, and to a lesser extent, the Tuna, made the NFL something smart people could watch. Very cerebral, and their offenses stayed pretty healthy because of the way they dominated time of possession.
Do you remember NFL films? Do you remember Cosell’s halftime show during MNF? We’d BEG my parents to allow us to stay up past 8PM on a school night until Cosell’s show was done. He was absolutely the best announcer ever to sit in front of a microphone. I include Joe Buck, Vin Scully, Kevin Calabro, Harry Cary, all of them. Cosell didn’t need a research guy - he had an eidetic memory for dates, events, and stats. He did it all by himself.
I’m not one of those old guys that think it was better then and today it isn’t. It was just more pure, but wow did people get hurt and not really get taken care of. Aroldis Chapman throws 105. That’s never happened before, and the medical community said it would never happen, ever. Human body couldn’t do it - that simple.
Russell Wilson before the injuries - probably one of the best to pick up a football - ever. The Packers have had one great QB after another, continuously to this day, from Starr onward.
I’m just saying that it felt a lot more like a game freely played back then. Stickum and all.