Al Davis and playoff foibles mark the best and worst of the Oakland Raiders

Back in May the NFL writers and editors at CBSSports.com gathered together to discuss the key figures and moments of every NFL franchise in the Super Bowl era. Before long we were discussing every team's best and worst moments, along with their most-hated players and coaches, as well as some of the more bizarre things each team has been involved in. That spirited discussion produced this series -- the Good, Bad, Ugly and, sometimes, Bizarre moments for every team. We continue with the Oakland Raiders.

The Good

Al Davis

There are some people that will only remember Al Davis for the latter part of his tenure as the owner of the Oakland Raiders, when he was obsessed with drafting wide receivers that ran the fastest 40-yard dash (hello, Darius Hayward-Bey!) and/or quarterbacks that had the best arm strength (what's up, JaMarcus Russell?). That view would miss a lot of what Davis contributed to the history of the team.

Davis joined the Raiders as the team's head coach in 1963 and remained with the team until his death in 2011. He never made the playoffs as a coach (1963-65), but once he took over as part-owner and general manager (1966-71, from which point forward he served as the majority owner until his death), the Raiders made going to the playoffs a regularity for awhile. They only sat out the postseason four times from 1967 through 1985.

Oakland won 16 division titles under Davis, including five straight from 1972 through 1976. The last of those division titles was followed up with a Super Bowl title, the first of three the Raiders captured between 1976 and 1983.

With a 435-364-11 record, the Raiders had the NFL's ninth-best winning percentage during Davis' tenure with the team (0.002 behind the Patriots and 49ers in a tie for seventh). That's the equivalent of winning about 8.7 games a year, just 0.6 per season behind the team with the best record from 1963 through 2011 (the Dallas Cowboys).

Al Davis ushered in an era of winning with the Raiders. Getty Images

Before Davis began cycling through coaches on a seemingly annual basis in the 1990s and 2000s, he found stability by hiring two excellent coaches, first in John Madden and then Tom Flores. Each of them won a Super Bowl with Oakland (Flores won two), and their partnerships first with Ken Stabler and then Jim Plunkett proved especially fruitful.

Under his stewardship, the Raiders also became one of the NFL's most popular teams, with their silver and black color scheme becoming especially popular during the years they played in Los Angeles and then surging even more when they moved back to Oakland. Davis' legal battles with the NFL were also notable, as he twice sued the league in relation to that Los Angeles move. Davis won the first time, which enabled him to move the team in the first place, then lost the second suit when he claimed the Raiders had rights to the LA market even though they had moved back to Oakland by that time.

The Raiders employed a ton of notable players during Davis' tenure, including multiple-time first-team All-Pros such as Jim Otto, Shane Lechler, Gene Upshaw, Willie Brown, Dave Casper, Ray Guy, Howie Long, Art Shell, Steve Wisniewski, Cliff Branch, Fred Biletnikoff, Dave Grayson, Marcus Allen, Todd Christensen, Ted Hendricks, Rich Gannon, Clem Daniels, Daryle Lamonica, Fred Williamson, Mike Hayes, Nnamdi Asomugha, and Kent McLoughan. And that list doesn't even include legends like Charles Woodson, Tim Brown, Lester Hayes, and more.

When he passed as a result of congestive heart failure in 2011, Davis was the longest-tenured person in a management position in NFL history.

The Bad

The Tuck Rule Game

It's the 2001 AFC divisional round. The Oakland Raiders are leading the New England Patriots 13-10 with 1:50 remaining in the fourth quarter. The Patriots have the ball on Oakland's 42-yard line. And it's snowing like crazy.

Brady drops back to pass. Charles Woodson comes screaming off the right side of New England's offensive line, completely unblocked. Brady pump-fakes a throw to his left and gets clocked by Woodson, who he didn't see at all. The ball squirts free and gets recovered by linebacker Greg Biekert.

Game over. Except, as we all learned very shortly, it wasn't.

Because of an obscure rule called the "tuck rule," Brady's fumble was ruled an incomplete pass. The rule required "incontrovertible video evidence" that Brady "tucked the ball back into his body and then lost possession," which Walt Coleman ruled he did not.

So the Pats retained the ball, moved it forward to the Oakland 29, and Adam Vinatieri nailed a game-tying kick. New England won the coin toss, took the ball on the first possession of overtime, and marched down the field for another Vinatieri field goal. The rest is history.

The Patriots won the Super Bowl that season, defeating the mighty St. Louis Rams, and have since embarked on one of the most dominant eras in the history of the league. The Raiders traded head coach Jon Gruden to the Buccaneers that offseason. They reached and lost the Super Bowl the following season, but since the Tuck Rule Game, they have the league's worst record and point differential ... and they haven't been back to the playoffs since.

The Tuck Rule Game stands as one of the most controversial the NFL has ever seen. Walt Coleman has reffed 215 NFL games since 2002, but not a single one has involved the Raiders.

The Ugly

Barret Robbins goes AWOL

Barret Robbins was a 1995 second-round pick of the Oakland Raiders. He had a solid but mostly uneventful career for Oakland from 1995 through 2001. In 2002, the first year of the Bill Callahan era, Robbins had his best season yet. He was named as both a Pro Bowler and first-team All-Pro, and he led all NFL centers in Pro-Football-Reference's Approximate Value. It's entirely arguable that he was the league's best center that season.

The Raiders made their way through the playoffs by defeating the New York Jets in the divisional round and the Tennessee Titans in the AFC title game. They were all set to square off with Jon Gruden's Tampa Bay Buccaneers when Robbins suddenly went missing the day before the game.

Barret Robbins was an integral part of the Raiders offensive line -- until he wasn't. Getty Images

Robbins forgot to take his anti-depression medication and, it was later revealed, spent most of the day partying in Tijuana after experiencing a manic bipolar episode. He mistakenly believed that the Raiders had already won the game and that he was celebrating a Super Bowl victory. When he finally returned to the team later that night, he was in such bad shape that Callahan had no choice but to leave him off the active game-day roster.

The Raiders lost the Super Bowl and Robbins checked into the Betty Ford Center. It was discovered while he was there that Robbins actually suffered from bipolar disorder, not depression (which he'd been diagnosed with in college), though the two are commonly confused. He returned to the team the next season, but after he was connected to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) and tested positive for steroids, the Raiders released him in 2004.

His NFL career over, Robbins ran into repeated troubles with the law. In late 2004, he was arrested for punching a security guard. In early 2005, he was shot three times and charged with attempted murder for his role in an altercation with policemen. He was sentenced to five years probation under a plea agreement. In 2010, Robbins was arrested and found to possess crack cocaine. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but released just over a year and a half later.

In a 2009 interview, Robbins admitted that he self-medicated his bipolar disorder with marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which was the source of many of his troubles.

The Bizarre

Al Davis' overhead projector

Al Davis never did anything halfheartedly, and that includes firing coaches. In a 2008 press conference, Davis announced the firing of head coach Lane Kiffin, a man Davis said "disgraced" the organization.

During the press conference, Davis detailed a series of infractions he felt Kiffin committed, including but not limited to insubordination, lying to the media, continually complaining about personnel decisions, fracturing the coaching staff, and falsely leaking to the press that he had sent Davis an unsigned resignation letter after the 2007 season. Kiffin, of course, later disputed this account.

Al Davis and his infamous projector. Getty Images

The high point (or low point, depending on your perspective) of the presser was when Davis used an overhead projector to showcase a letter he supposedly sent to Kiffin during the season detailing mistakes Davis felt Kiffin had made on and off the field. Kiffin, of course, disputed the fact that the letter had been sent as well.

"I think he conned me like he conned all you people," Davis said at the time.

Kiffin was the fourth of six coaches Davis cycled through during the final 10 years of his life (Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell, Kiffin, Tom Cable, Hugh Jackson). Of the six, only Cable -- who took over for Kiffin when the latter was fired -- lasted longer than two seasons.

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