Guest historian Scott Perry explores Raiders history. He examines the Raiders as the Broncos’ chief rival and traces the franchise’s rise to multiple championships and its prolonged decline since 2002. I recount the team’s origin in Oakland, the impact of Al Davis, and the Super Bowl titles in 1976, 1980, and 1983. We describe pivotal games and moments that shaped the rivalry with Denver and influenced NFL history. I document the post-2002 downturn, noting only two winning seasons and sustained mediocrity thereafter. We also discuss my book that ranks teams by winning percentage since the 1970 merger and provides detailed team histories. I direct listeners to our website and show notes for further information and resources.
Scott frames the conversation around his book, NFL Since 1970, which provides a visual record of franchise standings.
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Transcript
Hello, folks.
Speaker A:We are glad to have Scott Perry join us once again to grab another aspect of team history and NFL history.
Speaker A:Scott, welcome back to the Pig Pen.
Speaker B:Hey, thanks for having Professor Perry back.
Speaker B:Being part of the show on a regular basis is really great and it's helping my mission of educate fans as to whether or not their organization is above 500 or below 500.
Speaker B:Since the greatest moment in sports history when the AFL and NFL became this greatest league and created the super bowl, which had already been taking place for four years.
Speaker B:But it's the greatest spectacle in sports.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:That was a definitely a big moment in football history.
Speaker A:So it looks like you have a particular team you want to talk about today and give us some history.
Speaker A:So why don't you tell us a little bit about the Raiders.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You'll notice that we previously have talked about the Titans, the Broncos, the Bills, and I wanted to go to the jets, but I.
Speaker B:And I have pictures of me in jets pajamas growing up and that's the most harmless organization to be a fan of.
Speaker B:You can be a Jet fan in the midst of the team that you really like and they're like, that's not that big a deal.
Speaker B:It's like having your little sister around or something.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Anyway, we're going to talk about the opposite now.
Speaker B:When I give, I give talks to senior communities as my main thing that I do.
Speaker B:But I'm looking for other younger audiences.
Speaker B:But I love the seniors because when I say who is the biggest nemesis of ours, I'm coming to you from, from Littleton, Colorado, actually Denver proper.
Speaker B:And our biggest rival will always, always, always be the Raiders.
Speaker B:Wherever they're playing, whether it's the Oakland, Louisiana, Las Vegas or the Martian Raiders, it's always going to be our biggest rival.
Speaker B:So, so it's.
Speaker B:Let's talk about their background.
Speaker B:Okay, so the AFL started in 60 and they gave Minneapolis a club.
Speaker B:But the NFL being the NFL, they got a hold of the owner and said, hey, if you can wait a year, we're going to give you the team known as the One Eyed One.
Speaker B:Horn flying.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Aaron?
Speaker A:The Purple People Eaters.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm old enough to remember that song.
Speaker B:All right, good.
Speaker B:So the Vikings come in as a huge crane that lifts the AFL franchise out of Minneapolis and plants it in Oakland.
Speaker B:And they have a naming contest in Oakland.
Speaker B:Now, I, to me, Raider Nation is.
Speaker B:er want to compliment, but in:Speaker B:I should say the team comes out and says hey, at the end of the contest, this is it.
Speaker B:Here is your new:Speaker B:So I cannot imagine.
Speaker B:I talked to fans here and said can you imagine going to the Broncos senor game?
Speaker B:I do not want to root against the senor.
Speaker B:I want to root against a pirate.
Speaker B:So I mean, what a correction.
Speaker B:The team said, okay, we're getting really a big pushback.
Speaker B:We're going to take that second team Raider name and, and make it the, the eighth organization in the afl.
Speaker B:So early on they're bad.
Speaker B:They're really bad actually.
Speaker B:Luckily.
Speaker B:But Al Davis shows up and by 67 they are the AFL champions.
Speaker B:So they play in Super Bowl 2.
Speaker B:the same team, the five time:Speaker B:And their, their coach John Rouch goes to Buffalo.
Speaker B:Is that right?
Speaker B:No, if that's the, it wasn't maddening in that Super Bowl 2 game.
Speaker A:Yeah, that I'm not, I'm not sure of.
Speaker A:I'm not sure who the coach was for them.
Speaker B:Professor Perry, I, I like to give homework and that's, that's part of it.
Speaker B:So as I mentioned, homework, your homework is to go to, to YouTube and listen for the Mighty Wind is a Pirate.
Speaker B:It's a song on NFL Films about the Raiders and it's just so compelling.
Speaker B:It's hard to be a Raider hater when you're listening to that because it's just brings up the best in football on a fall day.
Speaker B:So I digress.
Speaker B:So the Raiders start off 70 in the AF and the NFL and they're, they're pretty dominant.
Speaker B:They are very few teams in my book.
Speaker B:My book ranks every team from the very best winning percentage in the regular season down to the worst.
Speaker B:And for two years 78 and 70.
Speaker B:77, 78.
Speaker B:iders are the winningest team:Speaker B:They're old unis.
Speaker B:They, they have a big turnaround.
Speaker B:They go from 3 and 11 in 75 to 11 and 3 and 76.
Speaker B:But they're the wild card.
Speaker B:They go to Oakland to play the Raiders and it's a big deal because in the regular season the Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders and had they not beaten them the Raiders would have finished 170 that season and, and watered down the Dolphins 72 season.
Speaker B:So I'm very happy the Patriots made that victory happen.
Speaker B:But they lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Raiders that year.
Speaker B:the Raiders went on to be the:Speaker B:And it's upsetting to me because I'm a, I'm a good patriotic American.
Speaker B:d to have the patriots be the:Speaker B:So that's one thing I've stuck in my crawl.
Speaker B:But we'll progress.
Speaker B:,:Speaker B:They lose to my Denver Broncos.
Speaker B:And that's pretty awesome.
Speaker B:That's a good plug for again to the AFC championship game the year after winning the Super Bowl.
Speaker B:But I, I, I have to stop and talk greater history.
Speaker B:And I moved here in:Speaker B:And something happens to the world champions later on in the season.
Speaker B:They play the Detroit Lions, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos.
Speaker B:The week Prior to those three games, they beat the Seahawks.
Speaker B:The week after those three games they scored 18 points and beat the Buccaneers.
Speaker B:So the two expansion teams from 76 are the bookends to this wonderful fact that the Raiders scored zero points in those three games against Detroit, KC and Denver.
Speaker B:And I love, I love that when you have a least favorite team and you can talk about something as horrible as what would happen back in the 20s, in the early days of the NFL happening to the world champions in the early 80s, I just, I hang my hat on that fact and I don't want to skip that.
Speaker B:But let's keep going by, by 82 years later, they are the world champions by beating the Redskins.
Speaker B:They are in there in Los Angeles, baby.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, so that 81, they were the defending champions having beat Philadelphia.
Speaker B:So now it's 83 and they beat Washington.
Speaker B:So they're three time champions.
Speaker B:The:Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:t what's happened in the year:Speaker B:ady era is a result after the:Speaker B:I don't know, I don't, I could make an opinion on the, what's the play called, Darren?
Speaker B:That happened.
Speaker A:The tuck rule game.
Speaker B:The Tuck rule game.
Speaker B:So that's, that's pretty frustrating.
Speaker B:But you know our, my buddy John Gruden, he had the Raiders winning two division titles.
Speaker B:That's a big deal because they hadn't been as dominant as they had been.
Speaker B:s over, the season's over for:Speaker B:Basically they had to get a draft pick.
Speaker B:Is that my right?
Speaker A:Yep, I believe you're correct.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Gruden is now a Raider.
Speaker B:He's well versed with the Raiders and lo and behold, the Raiders win the AFC championship over the Titans and they're playing the Buccaneers in the super bowl and they get clobbered by John Gruden.
Speaker B:48, 21 I believe was the score of that game.
Speaker B:So but now as, as you're watching this as a Bronco fan, I mean me growing up, everything was the Raiders and then the Broncos.
Speaker B:We had nothing to say to Raider fans.
Speaker B:But the result of this:Speaker B:That's 24 two dozen seasons ago.
Speaker B:The Raiders have had two winning seasons.
Speaker B:Now in my book we talked, if you watched my first segment for the Bills, they're able to win 13 games.
Speaker B:They will become a winning organization in my book.
Speaker B:But the Raiders lost their last game of the 25 season and in my book they are one game under.500.
Speaker B:So if you can imagine how Davis commitment to excellence.
Speaker B:y were the number two team in:Speaker B:to:Speaker B:If they don't win, they don't go 2, 0, get back over 500 and they kind of falter.
Speaker B:They're gonna, they're gonna head over to the losing side in my book.
Speaker B:My book divides up every organization by the winning side, losing side.
Speaker B:And it's pretty common for the bottom 16, 15 and 16 to be under.500.
Speaker B:It's very rare for 17 and 18 on top of the losing side to be over.500.
Speaker B:But we're gonna switch the Bills over to the winning and the Raiders to the top of the losing if that happens.
Speaker A:So anyway, change it to leaderboard, huh?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean you can believe it.
Speaker B:I mean it's just I look at the history of organizations and I put the, the Cardinals, the Buccaneers, the Bengals as just multi decade double digigit losers.
Speaker B:And to think that the Raiders are now added to that list is just now.
Speaker B:And it's, it's funny.
Speaker B:When I became a football fan watching Inside the NFL, something struck me like I am going to be a fan of all the really weak teams that have not done anything up to that point.
Speaker B:I'm really going to dislike the great team.
Speaker B:So I will always.
Speaker B:I'm not going to change from being anti Pittsburgh, anti Dallas because of that and then not that big of a. I mean the other Two teams, the Vikings and Dolphins, who were dominant, they have done nothing pretty much.
Speaker B:So I've taken my foot off their throat and I'm okay with their success.
Speaker B:Now that said, the Raiders are the other dominant team.
Speaker B:I like Kirk Cousins and I had a sports column in high school.
Speaker B:I got to spend the day with Gary Kubiak and he's got my Broncos a championship and now his son is their, their head coach.
Speaker B:So if I can wave a magic wand, I guess I, I pick a year and I mean maybe they have to do this year to get Cousins a championship, get Kubiak a championship, get the Raiders a championship, but then put them back into their slumber esque coma for another two and a half decades.
Speaker B:So that's just, I'm a fantasy football guy.
Speaker B:That's my kind of fantasy.
Speaker B:I don't root against players by picking them on my own fantasy football team.
Speaker B:So that's where the Raiders stand right now.
Speaker B:had two winning seasons since:Speaker B:Now with the first pick in the draft we know what happened to the first one.
Speaker B:So let's, let's hope it doesn't have the same fate because he sounds like a good guy.
Speaker B:So you have any question about the Raiders, Darren?
Speaker A:No, but do have, you know, some comments about your book?
Speaker A:r book NFL in the Night since:Speaker A:And you know we have a image of a right now and there's links to get connected to Scott's book through our Amazon associates links in the podcast version and on the YouTube version in the show notes so you can get all caught up with your favorite team if you're not talking about the Raiders tonight or the Broncos and you'll find out how they're doing so far in Scott's book.
Speaker A:So Scott, maybe you could tell us just a little bit about as we wrap up here on the book.
Speaker B:Yeah, the book is a result of and we'll go to the the Sable family with their awesome filmography created this monster of a football fan and I just a God given gift of committing everything to memory that I've learned of pro football and picking the Broncos over the Bills.
Speaker B:ning Percentage since kickoff:Speaker B:back in:Speaker B:And every year I update it.
Speaker B:And it's my goal is to get as many fans to have one on the coffee table and and learn their team history and give that book to a younger fan and then get the new version when I might have their team as the new addition with the championship page added to it.
Speaker A:All right, well, Scott, we really appreciate you coming on and joining us once again, and we love to talk to you again real soon.
Speaker B:All right, thanks so much, Darren.
Speaker C:We're taking a peek over at the chains in the down marker.
Speaker C:It's fourth and long.
Speaker C:We're going to have to punt the ball and get on out of here, but we'll have another series tomor for your football history headlines, so be sure to tune in.
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