Pete Banaszak, the Raiders running back his teammates called “Rooster,” has died at 82. The team announced his death on Saturday, October 24, a day before the Las Vegas Raiders host the Los Angeles Rams.
In a statement, the Raiders said Banaszak’s “toughness, competitive spirit, and dedication embodied a legendary era of Raiders football and made him a cherished member of the Silver and Black.” The team sent its condolences to his wife Sue, his daughters Rebecca and Amy, and his grandsons Luke, Austin and Connor.
Banaszak spent all 13 of his seasons with the Raiders, from 1966 to 1978, after Oakland took him in the fifth round of the 1966 AFL Draft out of the University of Miami. He played 173 regular-season games but was rarely the listed starter. He was the back Oakland trusted near the goal line and on third and short, and he finished with 3,772 rushing yards, 47 rushing touchdowns and 52 touchdowns in all.
Two touchdowns in Super Bowl XI
His best season came in 1975, when he ran for 672 yards and 16 touchdowns without starting a game. The 16 rushing touchdowns tied for the most in the NFL that year and are still the Raiders’ single-season record. A year later he scored twice on short runs in Super Bowl XI, as the Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 on January 9, 1977, for the franchise’s first Super Bowl title.
“I never felt so good about anything in my life as I do about this victory,” Banaszak said after that game. “I wanted those two touchdowns.”
He had also played in Super Bowl II, a 33-14 loss to the Green Bay Packers in January 1968, in his second season. Talking about that game in a 2016 radio interview, he called those Packers “the best team I ever played against” and said the young Raiders were “outmanned” and “outplayed.” He said he thought Oakland would be back in the Super Bowl “two, three, four more times.” It took nine more seasons.
The Holy Roller
Banaszak is also part of one of the strangest plays in league history. On September 10, 1978, in San Diego, the Raiders trailed the Chargers 20-14 on the last play when Ken Stabler, about to be sacked, pushed the ball forward. Banaszak got to it near the 12-yard line and batted it toward the goal line instead of falling on it, and tight end Dave Casper kicked and pushed it into the end zone and fell on it for the winning touchdown. The officials let it stand, and the league changed its fumble rules for 1979 so that, on fourth down or in the final two minutes, only the player who fumbles can advance the ball.
“Closer than close” with Ken Stabler
Banaszak and Stabler roomed together at training camp for years. In August 2016, before Stabler was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame after his death, Banaszak spoke about his friend in a 20-minute radio interview from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
“Closer than close, we roomed together for 12 years in training camp, year in and year out, and we hoisted a few beers together, and then we got our heads knocked together,” Banaszak said. He called Stabler “the greatest clutch player I’ve ever been around.”
He said Stabler had more confidence in him than his own hands sometimes deserved. Banaszak said he had trouble catching Stabler’s passes “because he was a lefty” and the ball would dive away from him. But in the huddle, he said, the quarterback would look down the line and ask: “Rooster, can you get this first down?” On fourth and one, Banaszak said, Stabler would hand him the ball with one more instruction: “Rooster, don’t fumble.”
Banaszak remembered the Friday practice before Super Bowl XI, when he said Stabler completed nearly everything he threw and John Madden told the team that if it played like that the next day, it would “blow them off the field.” “And we did,” Banaszak said. Asked how much freedom Stabler had with the game plan, he repeated the old Raiders line: “Kenny always read his game plan by the light of the jukebox. You probably heard that many times, but it was true.”
He explained the nickname, too. His hair stood straight up at the back, he said, and the name Rooster stuck. Of those Raiders teams, he said: “We took care of each other because we cared for each other. It was a family.” He said he was going to Canton “to celebrate with the ones that are still living and the ones that are up in heaven, looking down at us.”
After football
Banaszak grew up in Crivitz, Wisconsin, and was proud of his Polish roots. He was inducted into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 1990 and the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 1983. After his playing days he worked in shipping and later settled in northeast Florida, where he co-hosted a Jacksonville Jaguars postgame radio show in the early 2000s.
The 3-3 Raiders play the Rams at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET, which is 11:25 p.m. in Cairo.
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