Post by TheShadow on Jun 2, 2009 4:52:46 GMT -5
www.sfexaminer.com/
By: Glenn Dickey
SAN FRANCISCO — Appearing with Ken Stabler on a Comcast SportsNet program last week reminded me of a question Raiders fans often ask: Why isn’t he in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
The short answer is that he didn’t have a long time at the top of his game. Stabler was the starter in Oakland for seven seasons before he was traded to Houston, and he went downhill quickly in Houston and New Orleans.
I’d accept that argument more easily if Bob Griese had not been elected to the HOF. Griese and Stabler were contemporaries, and, though Griese had a longer career, he was never as effective a quarterback as Stabler.
Griese, for instance, only twice threw more than 20 touchdown passes, and his high was 22. Stabler had two seasons in which he threw 26 touchdown passes and another in which he threw 27.
But it was more than just statistics. I saw them both often (Stabler more often, of course) during their careers, and it was obvious Stabler was the key player in the Raiders offense and Griese was not for the Dolphins, who were a run-oriented team, with Larry Csonka as the key player.
Griese apparently is in because the Dolphins were perfect in 1972 and won two Super Bowls, but Griese wasn’t even the quarterback for the last nine games of the ’72 season, because he’d broken his leg in the fifth game. Earl Morrall took over, and the Dolphins never missed a beat. I’ll guarantee you that wouldn’t have been true of the Raiders if Stabler had been injured.
And those two Super Bowls? Griese threw a combined 18 passes. Hardly the pivotal player — and it wasn’t unusual for the Dolphins to win with Griese hardly throwing the ball. In the AFC Championship game in 1974, when the Dolphins beat the Raiders, Griese threw only six passes , completing three for 34 yards. Didn’t matter. Csonka ran for 117 yards and three touchdowns, and Mercury Morris ran for 86 yards.
Stabler never waited for somebody else to do the job. There were some especially memorable moments in his Raiders career. My favorite is the 1974 “Sea of Hands” playoff game against Miami when he threw the winning touchdown pass to a well-covered Clarence Davis.
“It probably should have been intercepted,” he admitted later, but he was confident he could complete it.
That was Stabler. He always had that confidence, even when things went wrong. One time he threw seven interceptions against Denver but never stopped throwing, thinking he could find a way to win. After the game, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Win some, lose some.”
Mostly, he won. When a game-opening drive in the ’77 Super Bowl stalled, coach John Madden was worried, but Stabler told him “Relax, John, there’s plenty more points were that came from.” He was right. The Raiders won 32-14.
In a 1977 playoff game in Baltimore which was in the second overtime, Stabler came off the field during a timeout, looking up in the stands. “Those people are seeing a helluva game,” he told Madden.
When he went back on the field, he threw the winning touchdown pass to Dave Casper.
So, though Stabler might not be in the HOF, Raiders fans have great memories like those. Dolphin fans have memories of Griese handing off to Csonka.