by rdrJoe » Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:05 pm
Stabler was known for studying his playbook by the light of a nightclub jukebox and for his affinity for female fans. As Hall of Fame guard Gene Upshaw said, "When we were behind in the fourth quarter, with our backs to our end zone, no matter how he had played up to that point, we could look in his eyes and you knew, you knew, he was going to win it for us. That was an amazing feeling."
Nothing like a great QB to lead you to the W. I remember one MNF game when Snake was terrible in the first half, throwing like 3 ints. being down by like 24 points, woman with a mic says to him on his way into the tunnel "Kenny, after throwing three ints. being down like this, what do you do?" Kenny looks at her like she dropped in from Mars, says "well then that just means I to throw a bunch of touchdown passes!" just exactly what he did. Raiders completed the biggest comeback in MNF history (at the time, maybe not now?)
Then there is this hahaha-
The next week, Stabler led a 17-10 defeat of the Cardinals, and Gene Upshaw gave Stabler the game ball: the first of five straight Raider victories, including a game against the Colts in which Stabler completed 25 of 29 passes for more than 300 yards, including, at one point, 14 completions in a row. Snake was not only talking the talk, he was walking the walk.
Stabler started the rest of the season -- and the next seven years: bombing, scrapping, dinking, dunking and scrambling on the field, blond hair flapping from beneath the helmet, and, off the field, studying the playbook by the light of a jukebox, at Gene Upshaw's bar, at Al's Cactus Room, at all of the dimly lit dives where the Raiders loved to unwind. He became the master of the fourth-quarter comeback. His unrestrained love of life off the field knew few bounds, but on the Coliseum turf, he developed into a Zen master in the huddle, always at his coolest when the situation was at its most desperate. "This is our time," he'd say, to the ten men surrounding him. And none of them doubted it. Starting with that 1973 season, he engineered five straight conference championships -- and, in 1976, the franchise's first Super Bowl.
Through al those years, the Badasses intimidated, clotheslined, pounded opponents until the blood spurted from behind the facemasks. They won with talent, and they won with intimidation. But there was only one king of the Badasses.
"We were lovable renegades," Ken Stabler says now. But he's really talking about himself.