Antonio Brown the latest polarizing NFL player to end up with the Raiders
For decades, the team's made no secret about being willing to value talent above all else.
Going on eight years after his death, Al Davis’ famous refrain remains the enduring thesis of the Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders: “Just win, baby!”
The father of the Raiders famously dropped the iconic line in the Super Bowl celebration of 1984, asked on CBS about succeeding in the face of “all the distractions that you have off the field” — a reference to the team successfully suing the NFL for the right to move to Los Angeles. It also works as a variant on a more modern turn of phrase: “Flags fly forever,” as in winning championships removes all sorts of potentially dirty details from the historical record.
There has long been a willingness for the Raiders to take on players who, whether because of personality or scandal or other miscellany, other teams won’t touch. Cut to late Saturday night, when the Steelers finalized their trade with the Raiders for wide receiver Antonio Brown, who feuded loudly with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, disappeared from Pittsburgh practices in the final week of the season, then was benched and ultimately requested a trade.
The Raiders? Of course, it was the Raiders.
“He’s the hardest-working man, I think, in football. Hardest-working player I’ve ever seen practice,” coach Jon Gruden said prior to Oakland’s game with the Steelers this past season. “I’ve seen Jerry Rice, I’ve seen a lot of good ones, but I put Antonio Brown at the top.”
Here’s just a handful of some of the other iconoclasts, malcontents and misunderstood talents who’ve donned the Silver and Black through the years.
Randy Moss
The finest football player ever produced by Rand, West Virginia, rubbed some people the wrong way before he even entered the NFL, but Moss was a force of nature in his first seven seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, building the foundation of a career that rightfully landed him in the Hall of Fame.
By the end of the 2004 season, however, the distraction of Moss overshadowed too much for his original team. He’d capped that year by walking off the field before the end of Minnesota’s final regular-season game in Washington, then mock mooned the crowd at Lambeau Field in a misunderstood bit of rivalry theater.
Enter the Raiders, who gleefully shipped linebacker Napoleon Harris and the seventh overall pick in the draft for the 28-year-old star.
“This organization has always been tremendously aggressive, and Randy Moss rates with the great players of all time,” team spokesman Mike Taylor told the Associated Press. “Great players want to play for the Raiders.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be in the Silver and Black? I’m committed to excellence and just want to win, baby,” crowed Moss at his introductory press conference in 2005.
His Raiders did not do that, winning just six of the 29 games Moss played in. His 11 touchdowns in two years were fewer than or equal to what he had in eight single seasons. Quickly becoming a distraction as he grew desperate to win a championship, Oakland shopped Moss throughout the 2006-07 offseason and finally settled on shipping him to the Patriots for just a fourth-round pick.
Moss was not a perfect schoolboy in Patriots colors, but his exploits on the field here are rightfully the stuff of legend. Meanwhile, Michael Lombardi believes the trade got him fired by Davis.
Warren Sapp
The Hall of Fame defensive tackle made seven Pro Bowls in nine seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to start his career, but also courted his fair share on controversy. He had a verbal confrontation with Packers coach Mike Sherman running off the field following a brutal hit, often skipped through opposing teams during warm-ups, called the NFL his “slave master” and generally lived a life unedited.
In other words, he was the perfect Raider, and he ended up there in 2004 on a seven-year free-agent contract.
“The big bad Silver and Black and Warren Sapp coming together,” he said in his opening remarks after signing. “That’s got to be a match made in heaven.”
Unfortunately for Oakland, Sapp’s best days were behind him. He played just four more seasons, totaling 19.5 sacks on four sub-.500 teams, then retired.
Bill Romanowski, at his introduction by the Raiders on Feb. 27, 2002.
Bill Romanowski
One of the dirtiest players in NFL history finished his 16-year career with the Raiders. If that’s not perfect, well, you better tell Bill Romanowski.
“It’s like it was meant to be, me and the Raiders, eventually,” he said upon signing with them in 2002. “It’s really my kind of place. I can’t wait to hit somebody.”
A little more than a year later, that somebody was a teammate in training camp who was forced to retire after Romanowski broke his eye socket with a punch. That teammate, Marcus Williams, received $340,000 in a lawsuit stemming from the incident.
In 2004, the Raiders paid Romanowski $400,000 just to go away.
Aldon Smith
The seventh overall pick in the 2011 draft was a star for San Francisco, winning the Pro Football Writers of America’s Defensive Rookie of the Year, racking up 30 sacks in his first 27 games, breaking the NFL record for sacks in a player’s first two seasons, and starring on a defense that went to the Super Bowl in 2012.
Unfortunately, the defensive end openly battled substance abuse issues. During his first four season in the league, he was arrested for suspected DUI three times and missed time both due to voluntarily entering rehab and being suspended by the NFL.
The 49ers released Smith after a third suspicion of DUI arrest in August 2015, with then-coach Jim Tomsula remarking, “Although he won’t be playing football for the San Francisco 49ers, he won’t walk this path alone. There are things that need to be addressed with 100 percent of what he has.”
Five weeks later, the Raiders signed him, coach Jack Del Rio telling reporters, “We’re constantly looking for opportunities to improve our roster” and GM Reggie McKenzie adding “We are confident that the Raiders provide an environment where Aldon can thrive through the support, structure and leadership within the building.”
Smith would play just nine games for the team. The NFL suspended him for a year due to the 2015 arrest, then declined to reinstate him at the end of that year. Just before he was to become a free agent this past March, he was involved in a domestic violence incident — the second of those in roughly one year — and the Raiders released him.
Andre Rison
Nicknamed ‘Bad Moon’ by Chris Berman and well known to the ’90s kids among us as the person whose caustic relationship with TLC’s Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes led her to burn his house down, Rison was a 5-time Pro Bowler, an All-Pro and led the league in touchdowns in 1993. (He also won a Super Bowl ring with the 1996 Green Bay Packers, catching the touchdown pass that sparked Brett Favre’s helmet-aloft sprint down the field.)
By August 2000, however, Rison had passed through six organizations and had had multiple run-ins with the law, including an impending trial on felony theft. That and years of stories of locker-room issues didn’t stop the Raiders from signing him.
“Despite what the media might believe, [he] is very much a team football player,” said quarterback Rich Gannon, who’d previously played with Rison. “He can still be a very productive guy in this league. And if he’s going to do it somewhere, I’d like to see him doing it with us.”
“We’re going to judge him for ourselves,” Jon Gruden, in his first stint coaching the team, told reporters.
It worked. In his final NFL season, Rison ended up finishing second on the team in all major receiving categories and the high-powered Raiders made the AFC Championship Game.
Darren McFadden
Arguably the most talented player in the 2008 NFL Draft class, the Arkansas running back was dogged by the classic “character concerns” stemming from a handful of incidents, ranging from fights outside nightclubs to paternity suits. That didn’t deter the Raiders, who took him with the fourth pick and signed him to a contract with $26 million in guaranteed money.
Though he never had much in the way of off-field issues in his career, McFadden simply never lived up to his potential. He rushed for 1,000 yards just once in seven years with Oakland, then had one last great year with the 2015 Cowboys before retiring in the middle of the 2017 season.
LeVeon Bell
Just kidding. We’re not there yet, but you have to admit … he’d fit the mold.
