Bound For Glory - John Madden and the AFL

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Buffalo, New York - August, 2006

San Diego, just before Christmas, 1965. The Buffalo Bills had flown west to defend their American Football League championship and had set up a pre-game training camp in a secure place, the U.S. Marine base in town.

The only observers came by invitation of Lou Saban, the Bills' coach. One of them was the head coach at San Diego State, Don Coryell, who brought along his young defensive coordinator, a large, enthusiastic red head named John Madden.

Even then Coryell had a reputation as a creative offense coach who would later bring his skills to the NFL as head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals and eventually back to San Diego to infuse the Chargers with "Air Coryell."

What Madden came to watch was the Bills' defense. The AFL was just finishing its seventh season of existence, far beyond the life expectancy of any challenge to the NFL. The young league was fermenting quickly with the aid of NBC's money as a result of the rich TV contract signed the year before. Nevertheless most of the fledgling league's teams still relied upon high-scoring attacks to attract fans and viewers. NFL people derided the AFL as "basketball in cleats."

John Madden and Al Davis after their first Super Bowl win.
Madden will enter the Pro Footbal Hall of Fame in August.

Buffalo was different. The Bills had two strong-armed quarterbacks, Jack Kemp and Daryle Lamonica, but the core of the team's attack was a power-running game and the kicking of Pete Gogolak which meshed with a suffocating defense. In the 1964 AFL championship game in Buffalo, the Bills defeated the Chargers, 20-7. The score was significant since San Diego had the highest-scoring team in the league, basically the same lineup which had defeated the Boston Patriots, 51-10, in the 1963 title game.

The Buffalo team Madden was watching had been established a two-touchdown underdog for a number of reasons. In the 1964 championship game the Chargers played without Lance Alworth, the most explosive and arguably the fastest receiver in football, who was injured. By the end of the first quarter they lost running back Keith Lincoln, the star of the championship victory over the Patriots. Lincoln suffered a broken rib when the football and Bills' linebacker Mike Stratton arrived simultaneously to produce one of pro football's most famous tackles.

With Alworth healthy and on his way to break the all-time receiving record of Don Hutson, the Green Bay Packers' Hall of Fame star, and Lincoln restored to the lineup along with another superb runner, Paul Lowe, the Chargers were a different team. Young John Hadl had replaced veteran Tobin Rote as the starting quarterback. The chemistry between Hadl and Alworth was immediate. The San Diego running game featured quick tosses to Lowe and Lincoln, whose success in turning the corner was helped greatly as a result of running behind two outstanding pulling tackles, Ron Mix and Ernie Wright. Like Alworth, Mix, who was assessed a holding penalty only once in his entire career, was headed toward the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Coaching the Chargers was another future Hall of Famer, Sid Gillman, father of the modern pro passing game. Despite 10 victories – tops in the AFL during the regular season – the Bills were a pronounced underdog for another reason.

Both of their game-breaking wide receivers, Elbert (Golden Wheels) Dubenion and Glenn Bass, were lost for the season because of serious knee injuries. In addition, the Bills had a much weaker running game since their star, fullback Cookie Gilchrist, had been banished by Saban in a punitive trade to Denver.

Madden came to see what the Bills' defensive coach, Joe Collier, planned to do in order to compensate for the disparity in firepower. The young coach learned a lot. Collier had prepared a game plan based upon the "Oklahoma," defense, basically a college strategy originated by Bud Wilkinson and his staff at the University of Oklahoma.

Collier's version had 312-pound defensive end Ron McDole frequently dropping into pass coverage with linebackers Stratton and John Tracey often disrupting San Diego's attack with sophisticated blitzes. Hadl and the Chargers were shocked at how quick and nimble McDole was in his surprise role. Five years later, when he was traded to Washington and began a new career under George Allen, Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen nicknamed McDole "the dancing bear."

The Bills completely stymied the Charger offense in a 23-0 upset victory. Madden added another page of ideas to his future coaching book.

The idea of earning his living by coaching football germinated during Madden's early teen years when his best pal was John Robinson, who would grow up to become the successful head coach at the University of Southern California and later the Los Angeles Rams. Long before fantasy football became a national fan pastime, Madden and Robinson would plot how they would run pro teams.

For Madden, fantasy began to meld into reality when his playing career was ended by a knee injury. The injury occurred in the Philadelphia Eagles' training camp in 1958 after he had been selected in the 21st round of a 30-round draft, the 243d pick overall. Even the low pick was a compliment for the big tackle, since players from his school, the University of California at San Luis Obispo, were seldom found in the pros.

Even at that young age Madden was a realist. He knew the injury to his knee was likely to have lasting effects, and even if he fully recovered, the Eagles had drafted several other tackles, while catching on with another team was a remote idea since the NFL was then a 12-team league with no major-league competition.

His old idea of becoming a coach was rekindled. Instead of returning to California to recuperate, he stayed with the Eagles and spent almost all his time soaking up football knowledge. Much of what he soaked came from Norm Van Brocklin, Philadelphia's newly-acquired quarterback, a man already destined for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "The Dutchman" long before had acquired a reputation as one of the greatest passers of all time with the Rams and their high-scoring offense. Van Brocklin was one of the smartest quarterbacks in pro football, and he had to stay sharply honed because the Rams possessed another future Hall of Fame quarterback, Bob Waterfield, when Van Brocklin arrived from the University of Oregon.

Van Brocklin's mentors with the Rams included Clark Shaughnessy, who popularized the "T" formation as a revolutionary college formation when he coached at Stanford University. With the Rams' Shaughnesssy virtually invented the modern position of tight end. In his later years in Los Angeles, Van Brocklin was coached by still another future Hall of Famer, Gillman, father of the modern pro passing attack and whose disciples included more Hall of Famers, Chuck Noll and Al Davis.

The "Dutchman" was a crusty, short-tempered man who liked to attach uncomplimentary nicknames to teammates and subordinates, but Madden was willing to suffer indignities because he knew that staying close to Van Brocklin was tantamount to earning a graduate degree in football strategy. The veteran liked to arrive at Eagle headquarters long before practice began to get an early start on studying film. Madden would arrive just as early, and Van Brocklin was so impressed he took on the kid tackle as a film-room companion.

When the season ended, Madden was released, but he was hired for his first coaching job as an assistant at Alan Hancock Junior College in California. By 1964, Coryell hire him to direct San Diego State's defense. The Aztecs had never seen anything like him. "John didn't even like to lose a scrimmage," recalled Coryell. "He was so intense he wouldn't permit his players to take off even one play in practice. He wanted them to be as intense as he was."

San Diego State was a popular visiting site for pro coaches from both the NFL and AFL in those days. Word was soon spreading to pro head coaches about the bombastic young assistant at the West Coast school. By 1967, the war between the leagues had ended, and Al Davis, who had taken time off from his twin jobs as Oakland's head coach and general manager to become the AFL's wartime commissioner, returned to the Raiders in a new role – managing partner minus the coaching portfolio. In his absence as commissioner, Davis named John Rauch to succeed him as coach. Upon Davis' return, Rauch still had the title of head coach, but Davis was calling most of the shots, one of which was to hire Madden as the Raiders' new linebackers' coach.

John Madden aleady with his Super Bowl ring.

Davis also made a franchise-altering trade with Buffalo which brought Daryle Lamonica, the Bills' promising development quarterback to Oakland. It was a renaissance for the Raiders, who easily won the AFL championship, advancing to Super Bowl II. The renaissance paused right there, as the Packers, in Vince Lombardi's farewell coaching season in Green Bay, destroyed the young AFL champions,

Despite the success of the Super Bowl Raiders, Rauch chafed at coaching in the shadow of Davis, deferring to him in all important matters. By the time of Super Bowl III in Miami, Rauch was looking for a friendlier place to land. Ralph Wilson, the Buffalo owner whose championship Bills had decayed into the worst team in football, offered that friendly place.

By Super Bowl morning, the word was all over Miami that Rauch was going to leave Oakland to coach the Bills. Hours before the Baltimore Colts and New York Jets would begin the most historic Super Bowl ever, I ran into Davis in the lobby of a Miami Beach hotel.

"Ralph is getting the wrong guy," he said in reference to Wilson's desire to make Rauch his coach. "The Raiders are getting the best young coach in football." Davis' reference was to John Madden, whom he intended to make the youngest head coach in pro football at age 31.

Madden inherited one of the most swashbuckling, zaniest and toughest band of merry men in the annals of sports. The roster included defensive tackle Danny Birdwell, once visited at a gas station he owned by a college coach who was interested in teaching Birdwell's pass-rushing technique to his players. The big lineman invited the coach down into his grease pit where he demonstrated by knocking the visitor into two inches of black goo. Birdwell's defensive line partner, Tom Keating, was known as the quickest lineman in football, as well as for possessing an encyclopedic memory of actors and actresses. He could name the actors and the roles they played, major or minor, in almost any movie you could name.

The Raiders loved to hang nicknames on their coaches. John Rauch was known as "Satan" because his face would turn deep red when he was irritated or excited about something. The red-headed Madden was known as "Pinky" because of his fair complexion. The coach had slimmed down considerably when he got the head job, but he would call short rest periods at odd times in his practices, and Keating was wise as to the reason. He led a group of his confederates as they sneaked up to the door of Madden's office and listened for the rustle of cellophane. The reason for the timeouts, swore Keating, were because ""Pinky" was starved and needed a "Twinkie" break."

The time of Madden's first seasons as head coach coincided with a period of great change in the AFL, mostly due to the aging of most of the league's original quarterbacks, and the fact that most of its quarterbacks of the future, other than Lamonica and Joe Namath of the Jets, had not fermented yet.

Madden was in a different situation, an embarrassment of riches. Davis not only traded for Lamonica, but also signed George Blanda as a free agent, and in the first common draft after the leagues merged, he selected Kenny Stabler, the crafty left-hander from Alabama. Having three good quarterbacks sounds like an ideal situation, but quarterbacks have egos, sometimes huge egos, and keeping three happy at the same time is beyond the diplomatic skills of most coaches.

Lamonica was a supremely confident free spirit with a strong arm, but not the greatest reputation for accuracy. At Notre Dame he was part of Coach Joe Kuharich's quarterback carousel, hence he was a low-round draft choice in both leagues. He once threw eight consecutive incompletions while playing for Buffalo, much to the consternation of the mercurial Lou Saban, his coach. Lamonica was unconcerned. "Don't' worry coach," he assured Saban, "I'm a .500 passer. I'll complete my next eight." As a Raider, he twice won American Football League offensive player of the year awards.

Blanda was a legend before he ever got to Oakland, then added to it. At first Madden was just another coach to him, since Blanda had played at the University of Kentucky for Bear Bryant, with the Chicago Bears for George Halas, and with the AFL's Houston Oilers for the irascible Lou Rymkus.

Stabler also played for Bryant at the University of Alabama, but his hide was far more tender, and he had a sensitive side. Just before Super Bowl XI as the Raiders came out of the tunnel in Pasadena's Rose Bowl and waited to be introduced, Stabler discreetly walked through the wheel-chair section and shook hands and spoke to every person in it. After the game I asked him what he said to them. "Ah, I just looked at the 100,000 people in the stands and how we were being fawned over," he told me," so I just wanted to let those people know somebody was thinking about them."

Few, if any, pro coaches ever juggled three outstanding quarterbacks, and not only kept them satisfied, but got enormous production from all of them. Lamonica won his second MVP award in Madden's introductory season in Oakland. The next year Blanda won the same award at the age of 43 after an unprecedented chain of game-winning performances.

In a five-game span, Blanda produced four victories and a tie in the final minutes with touchdown passes or field goals. It started against the Steelers when he threw the last of his three touchdown passes. The next week he tied arch-rival Kansas City on a 48-yard field goal with three seconds remaining. In the third game he beat Cleveland with a 52-yard field goal with 96 seconds left. Next he beat Denver with a touchdown pass and finished with a final-instant field goal against San Diego.

When Stabler was ready to move ahead of the others, his style of play became a graphic illustration not only of how adaptable Madden could be as a coach, but also how his sense of diplomacy allowed him to flourish under Davis, with whom so many other coaches failed. "Why wouldn't I listen to Al and get along with him?" reasoned Madden. "He knows football as well as anyone in the game, and he was a great coach himself."

Davis was always a proponent of the vertical passing game. He felt that attacking far downfield was at the heart of the Raider personality. That is why he made the trade for Lamonica. Stabler did not have a particularly strong arm, but he was an accurate passer, mobile and a strong field general. Combining his wily talents with a powerful ground game is what carried the Raiders to many victories in the Madden years. The big redhead won 100 games faster than any coach in pro football history.

The surprise was that Madden's Raiders, despite all their winning, did not make it to the Super Bowl until his sixth season. The explanation is a matter of fate, time after time; fate and the fast company the Raiders kept in the newly-formed American Football Conference in those years.

Madden's first season as head coach was also the last for the AFL. After the merger with the NFL became fait accompli, the young league held what amounted to a going-out-of-business sale. At the end of the 1969 season, the league would be morphed into three cross-over NFL franchises to create the "American Football Conference," and then inter-conference play would begin in 1970. The AFL was feeling good about itself in the wake of the Jets' monumental upset against the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. The NFL, smarting from the Colts' mortifying upset loss, and convinced the Jets' victory was a fluke, would have no chance to get even until January in New Orleans when Super Bowl IV would be played.

Madden after Super Bowl victory #1.

The Raiders' new coach was a spectacular success, compiling the best record in pro football – 12 victories, a tie and a single loss. More significantly, Oakland twice defeated arch-rival Kansas City, by far the best defensive team in the AFL, allowing fewer than 13 points a game. In the playoff semifinal, the Raiders scored four touchdowns in four minutes, 22 seconds on their way to a 56-7 destruction of the Houston Oilers. The road to the Super Bowl seemed clear.

The final AFL game was played in the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium, home advantage for the Raiders, who held a 7-0 lead as halftime neared. One other good omen was that Kansas City quarterback Lenny Dawson had thrown seven consecutive incomplete passes. Then Dawson broke the streak with a 41-yard completion to Frank Pitts on the Raiders' one. Three plays later Wendell Hayes scored the tying touchdown for the Chiefs.

That play and another big one by Dawson in the third quarter changed the complexion of the game. The Raider defense had the quarterback trapped on his two-yard line on third and 14, but he scrambled free and completed a 35-yard pass to Otis Taylor. That ignited a 94-yard touchdown drive, which gave Kansas City the lead for good. The Raiders' chances of regaining momentum dissipated when Lamonica jammed his passing hand on the helmet the Chiefs' Aaron Brown. The final was Chiefs 17, Raiders 7.

A personal note: A few nights later, during Super Bowl week in New Orleans, before the Chiefs met the Minnesota Vikings, I was caught in a rainstorm in the French Quarter. I took cover under the marquee of the Hotel Monteleone on Royal St. and stood alongside a solitary figure. It turned out to be John Madden. He was alone and uncharacteristically glum. We stopped in the bar for a drink, and I tried some amateur therapy to buck him up. No dice. It would be a long time before he got over the loss to Kansas City and some other unhappy endings.

Kansas City's domination of the Vikings in Super Bowl IV left Madden with mixed feelings. As an AFLer, there was pride and confirmation that his league had proven for good that it was the NFL's equal and probably more. As the Raiders' coach his feelings were "that could have been us."

The Chiefs' victory – and that of the Jets in Super Bowl III – signaled work ahead for the coach of the Raiders. Pro football moves in cycles, and the ‘70s were to be the decade of the AFC. Two NFL power teams, Baltimore and Cleveland, were joining the younger conference. The third crossover team, Pittsburgh, had never won anything, so the Steelers philosophy was "why not?" when asked to move with a rich financial incentive included. As it turned out, the cycle of the ‘70s would feature the Steelers more than any team, and they would become the blood enemy of the Raiders.