Fans of the Oakland Raiders old enough to remember the greatness of the 70's Raiders teams were no doubt extremely saddened by the news of quarterback Ken Stabler's unfortunate death Thursday due to complications resulting from Stage 4 colon cancer.
Stabler, 69, was one of the most interesting and decorated quarterbacks of his era and yet, does not have a bust in the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton alongside the other heroes of the game that has, in the last decade, eclipsed baseball as "America's pastime."
Stabler, an Alabama native, threw for 27,938 yards and amassed a 96-49-1 record as a starting signal-caller during a 15-year NFL career. He played for the Raiders from 1970 to 1979, helming the franchise to a victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI, winning the NFL MVP award and garnering Pro Bowl honors four times.
Despite his accomplishments and honors, Stabler has only been a finalist for the Hall of Fame three times and never came close to being voted in. Why?
Per Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk, some have suggested anti-Raider bias. Others have suggested that his years on top didn't last long enough or that his overall stats simply weren't great enough.
"Stabler's passing numbers look pedestrian today, but they need to be considered within the historical context," writes Smith. "In 1976, Stabler completed 66.7 percent of his passes, which at the time was stunning: Stabler was the only quarterback in the pre-1980s NFL to complete 65 percent of his passes in a season in which he attempted at least 250 passes. In 1976, when Stabler led the league with a passer rating of 103.4, the league average passer rating was 63.6. By way of comparison, last year, Tony Romo's league average passer rating was 113.2, less than 10 points higher than Stabler's in 1976. But the league-average passer rating last year was 88.9, more than 25 points higher than in 1976."
As Smith notes, Stabler only won the NFL's Most Valuable Player award once, in 1974, but very well could have won it in 1976 after a season in which he led the league in passer rating, touchdown passes, yards per pass and completion percentage. He also orchestrated four fourth-quarter comebacks and five game-winning drives that season.
Every year from 1973 to 1979 he finished in the top-10 in the league in yards and touchdowns passing.
"Those accomplishments don't even begin to tell the story of Stabler's career, however. He was the most colorful character on perhaps the most colorful team ever, the Raiders of the 1970s."
As the man at the head of the column for those Raiders teams, Stabler was a part of a number of major historical NFL events - "Sea of Hands," "Ghost to the Post" and "Holy Roller."
In short, Stabler's contributions to the NFL go well beyond his impressive career statistics, meaning a Hall of Fame bid for The Snake, the game's original gunslinger, may be well-deserved.
