Post by TheShadow on Mar 12, 2007 19:41:44 GMT -5
www.raiders.com/
Have you ever wondered "Whatever Happened to..." some of your favorite all-time Raiders? The Raiders.com "Whatever Happened to..." series is back and we continue with a look at legendary Raiders punter Ray Guy.
Ray Guy became the first punter ever selected in the first round of a National Football League draft when The Oakland Raiders tapped him as the 23rd player chosen in 1973. The 6'3", 195-pounder from Southern Mississippi spent his entire 14-season, 207-game career with the Raiders. His career punting average was an excellent 42.5 yards and he averaged more than 40 yards 13 of his 14 seasons. The only time he fell below the 40-yard average mark came during the strike shortened (nine games) 1982 season, when he averaged 39.1 yards. Only three of his 1,049 punts were blocked and he ranked second all-time at the time of his retirement by punting 619 straight times without a block in a period from the 1979 season until the end of his career in 1986.
Raiders.com: When did you first start playing football?
Ray Guy: I started when I was youngster, about six or seven years old just messing around in the yard. I started playing organized football around the sixth or seventh grade. We called it midgets around here; it was little boys playing on a team. My two older brothers were playing high school ball and I asked my dad about it and he sad well, I'll tell you like I told the other two, it's fine and good, but once you go out, you don't quit. You go ahead and finish the season out.' So I went out, and believe it or not I was playing right guard. That's where they put me and it didn't matter to me, as long as I was playing and having fun.
Raiders.com: How did you become a Raider?
Ray Guy: I guess it was by luck, if you really want to know the truth about it. In the area where I lived in Georgia, I was kind of limited TV-wise; we only had two channels, to the number of pro teams you get on a channel. So I was limited to the Bears, Packers, Vikings, Redskins, Dallas and then the Falcons came into existence a few years later, so as far as the AFC, I wasn't really up on them until basically when the Super Bowl started and then I would happen to catch a glimpse of them on TV. When I was drafted in '73 and I got the word about it they said 'you got drafted by The Oakland Raiders' to be honest with I said 'who's the Raiders?' I never grew up with them. I never got to see them that much, it was very rare. Anyways, they explained where they were and all this stuff and of course they gave me a little history on them, but you know when I got there it was like I had been there all my life. That's just the way the whole organization was. It was really like what I grew up with, just a hometown team with a bunch of athletes living around the area, playing together, and having a great time. I couldn't ask for a better situation.
Raiders.com: What did it mean for you to play with the Raiders?
Ray Guy: It meant a great deal to me, because I was with an organization that had a winning tradition. Growing up in a little town out here we still have a winning tradition, and it will continue because that was the way it was years and years ago. You start from real little and come all the way up through the ranks learning the system until you get to the high school level. You're pretty well educated as far as the basic technique, fundamentals of the game, and the type of plays that they ran and what to expect once you got there, and with the Raiders, it took me one day. Of course now I know when I got with the Raiders that I went limited to what I was accustomed to doing, but that was okay. They still had that winning tradition and treated their players as one big unit, like a family you might want to say, and I guess the way I perceived it when I got there was that hey, you do your job and do it well, you're going to be okay, that's the way it was. John [Madden], the staff, Al [Davis] and all the way down through the administrative people, to the trainers, the equipment managers, [Dick] Romanski and all them, that's the way the whole family was and it was easy to jump right in and start contributing from day one.
Raiders.com: Is there any one moment or play that stands out in your career?
Ray Guy: Well, no, not really. There's probably quite a few of them as far as sitting down and trying to pinpoint them, that question comes at me a lot and I remember all of them. Just overall plays, when you had to make them, you made them and you really weren't thinking about what you were doing, you were just reacting and that's the way football is supposed to be, sports in general, but from a standpoint of me being an athlete and everybody I was around and associated with, you were an athlete, you knew what to do, and you knew how to handle situations. To give you an idea, in Super Bowl XVIII when that high snap almost got over my head, I was fortunate enough to jump, grab the ball, come down, and hit the ball 42 yards or whatever it was, but that was just a reaction to an athlete. You realize you don't know what you did until basically when the fact is over. Like the game we played in San Diego in 1981 when we went to the AFC Championship against San Diego as a Wild Card. We were on top going into the last two minutes, maybe it was less then two minutes to go in the game, and it was a game where whoever scored last was going to win, because that's just the way it went, and there was a very critical situation at the end of the game when they stopped us close to our goal line, where I went onto the field with the special teams and we knew what we had to do. I told them exactly where I was going to hit it, that way we could limit the return, because we pretty much knew if we could hold them down there it was going to be okay. The ball was snapped, the line did a great job on protection, and I hit the ball down the right side. I wasn't trying to go out of bounds, I wanted the clock to run, and the next thing I knew the thing went 73 yards and it almost went out of bounds on the one. That changed field position real quick. That's just a couple of many; it's really hard to pinpoint a lot more of them.
Raiders.com: Do you keep in contact with any of your former teammates?
Ray Guy: I would like to. Occasionally I run across some of the old guys like Phil Villapiano, Otis [Sistrunk], Ted Hendricks, Howie [Long], George Blanda, and all those guys. Back in the beginning of last year we were up in New Jersey doing something and there were about 10 of us up there, and it was good to sit down with those guys. I would like to see more of them, but I just don't have the opportunity to be out in the Bay Area a lot, which I think a majority of them still live in that area, so when I do have the opportunity I would love to do it, but the majority of the time I can't.
Raiders.com: Which team did you enjoy playing against the most?
Ray Guy: Well during the 1970s you would have to say the Steelers, because that was always a big rival. I also really enjoyed playing against the AFC West teams, because that was always the strongest division with Denver, Kansas City, and San Diego. Then Seattle came in and they became a, I guess you could say 'thorn in our backs,' but we always played them twice a year and it was always a big rival because usually one of us wound up going into the AFC Championship or on to the Super Bowl. I always got a kick out of putting them in bad field position and then seeing the frustration on their faces when we exchanged fields and things like that. I always got an enjoyment out of that, but I guess number one basically was the Steelers, because we always wound up in the playoffs together.
Raiders.com: Do you attend any Raider games now?
Ray Guy: No, because again, I'm 3,000 miles away from you all and I know over the years when they started bringing players back during the home games and they'd have that big pre-game deal where you would meet and greet the fans and the post-game thing afterwards, they would send you a list of the home games and you had three options of which ones you would like to attend and could attend, but I never could. I have sometimes been out in that area when games came up on Sunday, but I would always have to leave on Sunday, because I had to be somewhere else on Monday.
Raiders.com: What are you doing now?
Ray Guy: I run kicking academies. They're national kicking academies that we've been putting on for about 15 years now. We go from the West Coast to the East Coast, North, South and everything in-between. We do about 35-40 over the summer, I just finished up with six over this winter. I also work with a wood treating company, where they pressurize lumber. We also do a fire retardant chemical that was developed by some of the technical employees here. I travel all over doing seminars and training sessions for retail builders and wholesale distributors.
Raiders.com: Are there any messages you want to send to Raider fans?
Ray Guy: Hang in there. Sometimes you go through the good times and you go through the bad times, but that's pretty much normal. I know you hate to see it, but things like that happen. Especially when you go through a time in your life where things change and it's a little bit different than it was in the past, but I can always tell them what my grandfather and my dad always told us, 'what goes around does come back around, you just got to be patient.' I know it's tough to live through those times, and that you get frustrated, but things do have a way of happening for a reason and when it does work out, you'll see the light at the end of the tunnel again. Just hang in there.