The Las Vegas Raiders have been a laughingstock for the previous 20 years, and it’s due to this fact simple to overlook that they have been as soon as one of many NFL’s extra iconic franchises.
Again within the Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties, the workforce, which was then based mostly in Oakland, Calif., received a few Tremendous Bowl championships, and it did so with the assistance of a powerful offensive line that included deal with John Vella.
Vella has reportedly handed away, and the Raiders group issued an announcement.
pic.twitter.com/Uxiq3foKOl
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) April 2, 2025
Vella was drafted by the Raiders within the second spherical of the 1972 NFL Draft out of the College of Southern California, the place he performed each soccer and baseball and was even a member of the 1970 Trojans workforce that received the Faculty World Sequence.
When he got here to Oakland, that they had already been a reasonably aggressive workforce below head coach John Madden, and they might proceed to be aggressive, as they reached the AFC Championship Sport in 1973, 1974 and 1975.
They misplaced there on every of these three events earlier than they lastly went all the way in which in 1976 after posting a 13-1 common season file.
However afterward, accidents slowed him down, and he left to play for the Minnesota Vikings within the 1980 season, the identical season the Raiders received their second Vince Lombardi Trophy.
After retiring following the 1980 marketing campaign, Vella began a Raiders merch retailer in Alameda County in 1987, at a time when the franchise had entrenched itself in Los Angeles following its transfer there in 1982.
It took some time, however the enterprise began to take off as soon as the Raiders returned to Oakland within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
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