5 things to know about most violent game in Raiders history

Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series acquainting fans with the Raiders’ illustrious 60-year history as the team moves to Las Vegas for the 2020 season.

Every time David Humm spoke about his last pro football game, the longtime Raiders backup quarterback winced and grimaced.

It was against the Chicago Bears in November 1984.

Marc Wilson was the Raiders’ starting quarterback. He would get knocked out of the game twice. Before halftime. Humm replaced him, but only for a little while.

The left-handed veteran from Las Vegas’ Bishop Gorman High was sacked by Richard Dent and had two teeth knocked out. A little later, Otis Wilson planted Humm into the artificial turf at Soldier Field, tearing cartilage in both of the quarterback’s knees.

That would be the last play of Humm’s 10-year NFL career.

Here are five more things about what has been called the most violent NFL game ever played:

— The Bears’ vaunted 46 defense recorded nine sacks and forced three interceptions and two fumbles in a 17-6 victory. Chicago coach Mike Ditka called it “the most brutal football game I’ve ever watched.”

— After Wilson was knocked from the game twice — “That whiplash may have just numbed his senses a little bit,” NBC’s Merlin Olsen told TV viewers — and Humm once, the Raiders considered putting in punter Ray Guy at quarterback. Guy refused. When the second half started, NBC showed a graphic with several question marks where the name of the Raiders’ quarterback normally would be.

— The Bears also suffered a key injury when quarterback Jim McMahon suffered a lacerated kidney during the third quarter. “I went down to the locker room — this was in the middle of the game—and I found Jim there, standing at the toilet, in his pads, (urinating) blood,” Steve Zucker, the quarterback’s agent, said in a book about those Bears teams.

— Wilson completed 4 of 11 passing attempts after halftime — with a broken thumb. A team doctor revealed the injury to Wilson on the flight home but said the coaches weren’t going to tell him, because Jim Plunkett already was out with an injury, Humm’s career was over, and the Raiders needed Wilson to keep playing.

— Although in retrospect the game was considered vicious, Wilson would later say it seemed fairly normal when you were in it. “I know a lot of guys got carted off that game,” the former BYU star told the online sports blog Deadspin in 2013. “But playing in the game, I really didn’t have a sense that it was that bad. It was a different time, a different era.”

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.