These Raiders just won, baby
Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times
Marcus Allen’s 74-yard touchdown run remains one of the great plays in Super Bowl history.
Everything about the L.A. Raiders' 1984 champions was outsized, from their play-hard, live-fast ethos to their ostentatious Super Bowl rings
By Sam Farmer
Reporting from Tampa, Fla. -- The world champion Los Angeles Raiders.
The name has quite a ring to it.
A big, glistening Super Bowl ring -- the only one ever won by an L.A. team; a ring from the 1983 season that seldom leaves the finger of old Raiders such as defensive lineman Greg Townsend. He remembers Raiders owner Al Davis "wanted a ring so nice and clean, if we met the queen we wouldn't be afraid to show it to her."
Twenty-five years ago, the Raiders were king. This is, appropriately, their silver anniversary. That silver-and-black team dominated the Washington Redskins, 38-9, right here in Tampa, site of Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers.
"We weren't city champs, we weren't state champs, we were world champs," said Townsend, whose voice still cracks at the words. "If nothing else -- if nothing else -- they can say that about me."
They can say it about Coach Tom Flores too, and Jim Plunkett, Marcus Allen, Lyle Alzado, Todd Christensen, Mike Haynes, Lester Hayes, Howie Long and the rest of the roster.
Then, there's the massive rectangular ring, silver with a black background, and clusters of diamonds forming three footballs on end -- representing the club's NFL championships in the 1976, 1980 and 1983 seasons.
"People still go goo-goo and gaga over it," Townsend said. "I love looking at it. It's still a huge deal for me. All sparkly."
There are enduring memories from the game, at the time the most lopsided Super Bowl. There was Jack Squirek's interception for a touchdown at the end of the first half, Allen's field-reversing 74-yard touchdown run, Davis' raising his fist on the locker-room platform and giving the world a "Just win, baby!"
"Just like Al Davis said in the locker room, we weren't just the greatest Raiders team, but one of the greatest teams of all time," said Rod Martin, a star linebacker on that team. "We were so confident to the point where we just felt invincible."
And on that Super Bowl night -- with the world watching -- they were. But there are lots of behind-the-scenes stories the cameras didn't capture, the microphones didn't pick up, the players didn't talk about at the time.
Ten stories, mostly from the Raiders' side of Super Bowl XVIII, you're not likely to have heard or read:
IWashington is a lot closer to Tampa than L.A. is, but Davis wanted the Redskins to feel like strangers in a strange land.
And there's no land stranger than Raiderland.
So Davis, in a brilliant piece of psychological warfare, rented benches and billboards all over Tampa and plastered them with signs reading, "COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE." He made a special effort to post those along the Redskins' route from the airport to their hotel.
What's more, Davis had thousands of paper place mats printed with the Raiders' logo and sayings, and distributed them to all the fast-food restaurants around Washington's hotel. Anything to make the Redskins feel like guests who had worn out their welcome.
Lastly, he made sure that 60,000 Raiders pompoms were handed out by Boy Scouts in the surrounding parking lots before the game. The NFL wouldn't allow the Raiders -- or any team -- to hand those out at the gates.
By kickoff, the stadium was awash in silver and black. Instant fans!
IIDavis also knew what motivated his players -- and it wasn't pompoms, place mats or bus benches.
It was cold cash.
An undeniable incentive was the $38,000 each member of the winning team would receive. That was a staggering amount, considering the average NFL salary in 1983 was $152,800.
To inspire his troops the week before the game, Davis had team executive Mike Ornstein withdraw a huge amount of money in $1 bills -- Ornstein remembers it being $100,000 -- and form a massive pile of cash in a large meeting room. The money was then covered with a sheet that Flores pulled off with his team watching. The message: If you win, here's what your reward will look like.
"The players went nuts," Ornstein recalled. "When you see that much money sitting there, it's pretty impressive."
It wasn't all about the wallet, of course. Not even close.
"We knew the money was going to be there," Martin said. "We still had the love of the game. We wanted to prove to people that you can be the underdogs and still be the champions."
IIIOccasionally, with all the practicing they do, teams hit an emotional flatline during Super Bowl week. They go crazy waiting for kickoff. In those situations, some teams respond to a rousing pep talk.
The Raiders preferred a good fistfight.
"We had a reputation that every time we'd have a fight in practice, we were going to win," defensive tackle Reggie Kinlaw said. "Every week we had a fight. Grab a face mask, slap him around."
That's what happened during Super Bowl week, when offensive line coach Sam Boghosian pulled aside linebacker Matt Millen and told him to pick a fight with someone. So, on the next play, Millen came in on a blitz and started throwing punches.
His combatant? Guard Mickey Marvin, one of the friendliest, most gentlemanly guys on the team. In the retelling, different people have different versions as to why Millen picked Marvin. Some say it was because Millen decided before the snap that he'd fight whoever picked him up on the blitz. Others say it was because Marvin wasn't a very good fighter, and the smaller Millen figured he could get in a few good punches before the big bear turned on him.
IVPeople could see right tackle Henry Lawrence coming from a mile away.
Almost literally.
Lawrence, who answered to the nickname "Killer," drove a canary-yellow Cadillac Eldorado with whitewalls, running boards, a spare-tire case on the back, and -- just for show -- glistening chrome pipes sprouting up from the undercarriage.
"There was no mistaking whose car it was when you saw it anywhere in Los Angeles," Townsend said.
And Lawrence was a man about town. He used to hit the bars all over, particularly the ones with live music. He loved to sit in and sing, and he had a good voice. "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" was one of his favorites.
In light of his wheels, it's not surprising that Lawrence's favorite saying on the football field -- one yelled throughout Super Bowl week -- was, "Drive that car, man! Drive that car!"
Even if his teammates didn't always know precisely what he meant, they did know this: When the Raiders' offense was rolling, standing in their way was like stepping off the curb into traffic. Blindfolded.
VOn Thursday night before the game, Long learned more than he ever wanted to know about Super Bowl traffic patterns. He was rushing back to the team hotel after making a paid TV appearance, when cars slowed to a crawl about a half-mile from his destination. He was driving a generic rental car that was utterly nondescript . . . except for the giant Super Bowl decal on the side.
Realizing he was going to miss curfew if he stayed in that bumper-to-bumper snarl, Long simply left his car in the street and ran back to the hotel.
Ah, to be a 23-year-old football star . . .
Long, by the way, barely made it back to his room in time.
"Good thing Willie Brown started bed-check at the other end of the hall," he said.
VIOn game day, just as they did each week, Long, Alzado and Bill Pickel took a taxi to the stadium. (They liked to get there very early to prepare.)
"Today, if we were taking a cab to the stadium, roads would be blocked off, there would be concrete barriers, helicopter escorts, police escorts . . . " Long said.
Back then, traffic was the only problem -- and there was a lot of it. The players decided to get out of the cab and walk the final three-quarters of a mile to the stadium, through a sea of Raiders and Redskins fans.
"How surreal was that in 1984? Probably a little bit," Long said. "But today, it would be Martian level. It would be like seeing E.T. walking down the street. Imagine if you're at the Super Bowl now, and all of a sudden you see Ben Roethlisberger come walking down the street with his shoulder bag."
VIIWashington, which had beaten the Raiders at home, 37-35, earlier in the season, was favored by three points.
Judging by the body language of the Redskins during warmups, however, they didn't think the game would be that close.
"You know when the special teams go out a little bit early?" Haynes said. "When they came out, the crowd reacted and the players reacted like they were the best team. Like they didn't have to prove it. I had a feeling like, 'Gosh, these guys don't even respect us.' "
Haynes, a Pro Bowl cornerback, had yet to be traded to the Raiders when the teams played earlier in the season and second-year sensation Allen participated in one play because of a sore hip. Star receiver Cliff Branch also was sidelined by a hamstring injury early in that game. So these Super Bowl Raiders were a different team.
But Washington players didn't seem a bit concerned about that.
"There was definitely no fear in them," Haynes said. "You could see it in their body language, the way they warmed up, the way they looked at our players, the way they even said hello. It wasn't like they really had a lot of respect for us."
Oops.
VIIIRaiders-Redskins was the first Super Bowl for longtime NFL writer Larry Weisman of USA Today. Naturally, because he was a rookie, he didn't get the plum assignment.
His beat was waiting in the Redskins' hotel lobby and reporting on tidbits he could pick up from players. He was, in a way, a Washington lobbyist.
Truth be told, he didn't report everything he saw.
"There were certain comings and goings which decency and family standards limited my reporting," he said.
"Plus," he added, "I didn't want to get punched in the face."
IXTwenty-four hours before kickoff, Steve Sabol, then a jack-of-all-trades for NFL Films, was at Tampa Stadium going through a dry run with the rest of the crew.
At one point, heeding nature's call, Sabol walked into a men's room. There, he heard a woman's voice coming from one of the stalls. Then, he heard a man's voice coming from the same stall.
Awkward as it was, he walked over and slowly pushed open the door.
Inside was a sheepish and fully clothed couple dressed head to toe in Raiders garb. At their feet was a cooler, presumably containing their dinner. They had planned to sneak into the game by waiting it out in the restroom -- overnight! -- and made Sabol promise not to rat them out. Maybe they were going to use those paper toilet-seat covers as place mats. Or bibs.
Either way, Sabol kept his word.
"I didn't tell anybody," he said. "I don't know if they got into the game or not."
The guy sitting way up in the nosebleeds might have been happy to know his weren't the absolute worst seats in the house.
XThe NFL Films recap of Super Bowl XVIII was called "Black Sunday" and is a collector's item among fans of the great narrator John Facenda.
Why?
It was the final film for Facenda, 74, who died of lung cancer three months later.
Sabol penned the script for that film, and said Facenda made the words in the last line "sound like they were carved on stone tablets."
The words: "The 1983 Raiders are an honor to the team's glorious past, and the world champions of pro football's present."
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