Actual Pats Fan
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- May 26, 2016
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There were some damn good players on the 70's Raiders-but the same can be said of countless other talented teams who never even appeared in a Super Bowl.The 70's Raiders were the team I hated the most: image, the Holy Roller play, and the hit on Darryl Stingley.
Having said all that, I think there has been an anti-Raider bias in the HoF. It was only a year or two ago the greatest punter of all time, Ray Guy was inducted. I get the arguments special teams are not on the field as much as the other guys, etc, etc, but Ray Guy was overdue. I think being a Raider factored into that delay.
One of the least surprising things to possibly be revealed at some point in history would be the discovery that the assignment of Dreith's crew to the 12/18/76 fiasco in Oakland was not a coincidence. Subsequent games over the next decade revealed the guy himself to be a train wreck; and all the little corporate pieces were in place for the Raiders' crowning glory: injury-riddled Steelers, NBC with Curt Gowdy and John Brodie, practically a home game in Pasadena, etc.
The Patriots were not supposed to screw all that up by being better, the best in the league.