He didn’t win multiple Super Bowls for the Oakland Raiders, but history will show that Ken Stabler was the most important player to ever wear the Silver and Black.
It’s been more than four years since the football world lost Ken Stabler. The quarterback of the Oakland Raiders for 10 illustrious seasons, “Snake” passed away on July 8, 2015, a date many fans should remember.
The Raiders are coming up on a season that is becoming a far too common occurrence not just in the NFL, but in professional sports. The Raiders will leave the confines of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum at the conclusion of the 2019 season for a shiny new stadium in Las Vegas. As history closes out an amazing run in one city, a new chapter will begin in another.
For fans with a long memory or fans to young to know, Stabler was, for my money, the quintessential Raider. No. 12 was the quarterback in a decade of rebellion, individuality, a lot of fun and a lot of winning in Oakland.
Stabler played for the Silver and Black from 1970-79. He was part of a decade where the best teams were in the AFC, where the conference dominated in the Super Bowl, and where they were probably the second-best behind only the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was also part of a team coached by a Hall of Famer in John Madden.
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With Madden and a roster loaded with generational type talent, Stabler would lead the Raiders to their first Super Bowl win, beating the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 9, 1977. In that game, Stabler completed 12 passes on 19 attempts for 180 yards and one touchdown. While his stats for Super Sunday aren’t gaudy by today’s standards, his play was critical for an organization who had been on the doorstep of a championship but hadn’t either gotten there or won it.
It was, by every definition, a watershed moment for a Raiders team who had flirted with greatness but had never defined it. In the win against Minnesota, a team who itself had come so close only to come up short, it was vindication for Stabler and for Madden. Two prominent figures now in the Hall of Fame after a ridiculously long wait.
As for Stabler, who’d go on to play for both the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints, his decade in Oakland lends itself to why he is the most important player to ever wear the Silver and Black. Further, if you think about it, it’s not complicated.
Jim Plunkett, himself still not in the Hall of Fame despite two Super Bowl wins, might be, on that basis alone, the best quarterback in Raiders history. It’s a curious argument but doesn’t recognize the period in which Stabler played and the remarkably great play of teams in the AFC. Plunkett never faced the dominance of a Steelers team over a decade, an organization who is prominent in the halls of Canton.
Further, it’s worth recognizing that era. An era where the AFC dominated on the NFL stage. The conference was no longer an upstart group challenging the “old guard.” They were, in fact, dominating them. Teams like the Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers helped define the 1970s. The Raiders, who always seemed to come up a game short, helped to shape that era.
Eventually, they would win that first Super Bowl. Stabler was the player who led that team, that organization, that group of future Hall of Famers to a championship long due in the East Bay. Without him, that Super Sunday in Pasadena doesn’t happen, and Madden knew that:
This quote from John Madden on Ken Stabler. pic.twitter.com/5f8bMITiDp
— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) July 10, 2015
The HOF head coach was correct then, and he’d be correct today. The 1970s were groundbreaking for the NFL and the AFC. In the East Bay, fans will always know and will remember that no one was better in that moment, or in that decade for the Oakland Raiders than Ken Stabler.