Legend of Raiders Super Bowl Hero Kenny King

Kenny King doesn’t even make the top 10 on the all-time leading rushers list for the Oakland-Los Angeles-Las Vegas Raiders, but Raider Nation will never forget him.

The 5-11, 203-pound King played six seasons for the Raiders and started in two Super Bowls, making perhaps the biggest play when the Raiders defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-10, in Super Bowl XV to cap the 1980 season.

The wild card Raiders held a 7-0 lead over the Eagles late in the first quarter when quarterback Jim Plunkett was chased out of the pocket and appeared ready to run for whatever yardage he could get.

At the last second, Plunkett lofted a pass down the left sideline that King caught over the outstretched arms of defensive back Herm Edwards, and he ran untouched down the sideline with wide receiver Bob Chandler in convoy to complete an 80-yard touchdown pass that stood for a while as a Super Bowl record.

“I was running a simple six-yard pattern when I saw Plunkett scramble,” said King, who rushed for only 18 yards on six carries and caught two passes for 93 yards in the game. “I took off up the field. The linebacker dropped me when he saw Plunkett scrambling, and Jim got me the ball.”

King still has the football on the mantel of his office in Dallas.

And to this day, when people meet him they still ask about the play, and not only Raiders fans.

“That’s one of the first things people say,” King said a few years ago. “They remember the play where I caught a pass from Plunkett and went 80 yards down the sideline. It’s not just Raiders fans. It’s Eagles fans and football fans in general.”

King rushed for 761 yards and four touchdowns, including an 89-yard burst for a touchdown, in addition to catching 22 passes for 145 yards, and was selected to the Pro Bowl that season, before rushing for 828 yards and catching 27 passes for 216 yards the following year.

However, the Raiders drafted the great Marcus Allen in 1982, and King, although he remained a starter, was moved to fullback.

And while he did his best, King said he “felt out of place.”

“He wasn’t like Marcus, where he could make a cut on a dime,” Plunkett said of King. “But once Kenny got going straight ahead, you were not going to catch him. The guy had tremendous speed.

“Maybe he wasn’t the best receiver in the world, but he came up with big catches on a few occasions. We’d try to create a little crease for him, and he was gone.”

While Allen was the Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl XVIII, rushing for 191 yards and two touchdowns, including a brilliant 74-yard touchdown run, King was limited to three carries for 12 yards and caught two passes for eight yards.

“I personally wish I would have made a different choice,” King said. “I could have fought to stay at halfback and not play fullback. I wasn’t a dominant blocker, but I still wanted to be a starter, and I was doing whatever it took to stay in the lineup. I didn’t see it being a big change, but it was.”

Years later, Managing General Partner Al Davis admitted that moving King to fullback had a detrimental effect on this career, saying: “You were a halfback.”

King, who had been selected in the third round (No. 72 overall) out of Oklahoma by the Houston Oilers in the 1979 NFL Draft, finished his seven-year NFL career with 2,477 yards rushing and seven touchdowns in addition to making 89 receptions for 719 yards and a touchdown.

Had Allen not come along, it would have been much different for King, but he’s not bitter.

King lives in Dallas but said: “I am not a Cowboys fan, never have been and never will be. I still love my Raiders.”

And Raider Nation loves Super Bowl hero Kenny King.