Rich Gannon came to the Oakland Raiders from the Kansas City Chiefs, looking for redemption. He was given the opportunity by then head coach Jon Gruden, who went to town with it. Years after hanging up his cleats, Gannon and Gruden looked back at the game where the former quarterback exacted revenge.
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“I was just so excited to be, you know, be in that little s***** locker room on the other side,” Gannon told Gruden on an episode of Gruden Family Football Show. “Getting a chance to go against a team that kicked me to the curb. You know, Carl Peterson, Marty Schottenheimer, they never really believed in me, Jon.”
Gannon was a backup quarterback for the Chiefs for Steve Bono and Elvis Grbac for two full years. But in 1997, he gave fans something to talk about with a five-game winning streak that helped the Chiefs finish 13-3. But in the playoffs, Marty Schottenheimer chose Grbac as the starting quarterback.
“We were looking at the possibility of getting a younger guy,” Schottenheimer later admitted. Gannon was 31 at the time, being four years older than Grbac. The former quarterback also admitted that Schottenheimer had made a commitment to Grbac.
In 1999, Gannon was signed as a free agent by the Oakland Raiders, where Jon Gruden had just wrapped up his first year as a head coach. Gannon and Gruden helped the team finish 8-8 in 1999, but not without a sensational win against the very team that let the QB walk.
Gannon rallied the Raiders from a 17-point deficit to beat the Chiefs in an overtime thriller. Oakland was already out of playoff contention, but with this loss, the quarterback also took down the playoff hopes for the Chiefs, who needed this one victory to advance into the playoffs. Gannon went 25-for-47 for 324 yards and scored three touchdowns.
At the beginning of the game, though, things looked disastrous for the Raiders. The Chiefs returned a Raiders punt for a score, intercepted Gannon and returned it for another score, and posted a field goal, all in the first quarter. It was only after Marquis Walker blocked a Chiefs punt and WR Kenny Shedd scooped up the free ball for a touchdown that some momentum came through for the Raiders.
“It really jumpstarted us and got us believing that we were still in the football game,” Gannon told the Raiders’ official website. The Raiders had a 28-24 lead at halftime.
Even though the Chiefs swung back in the second half, kicker Joe Nedney broke the tie with a 33-yard field goal in overtime.
Gruden went on to praise Gannon after the game, saying that this was the “best game that he has played since I have been with him.”
That trust and mutual respect between the two stands true even today.
“You believed in me,” Gannon told Gruden on the podcast. “And I never forget that in that office of yours over at Alamo, you said, ‘Look, hey, we’re going to do this together. We’re either going to succeed together, or we’re going to fail
together.'”
The 1999 season marked the dawn of Gannon’s successful career, earning him the first of his four Pro Bowl nods. He also earned two first-team All-Pro honors and became the 2002 MVP. That was the same season the Raiders marked their last appearance in the Super Bowl.
However, by that time, Gannon and Gruden had turned into each other’s opponents, with the coach having been traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002. The Buccaneers got the better of the Raiders this time, defeating Gannon and Co.