Why Bradley Chubb Is A Raider Hater — And His Reasons Are Simple

This story was originally published by Senior Broncos Writer Andrew Mason of the 104.3 The Fan in Denver, a Bonneville station.

It’s time for Broncos Country to hate the Raiders again. And if this movement needs a leader, Bradley Chubb can be it.

“I hate ’em, to be honest with you,” he said, adding for emphasis, “I hate ’em.”

Now, that doesn’t have anything to do with the history between the teams. It’s a legacy that runs in cycles.

The first was overwhelming Raiders dominance. Denver actually won four of the first six games in the series from 1960-62. Then the Raiders hired the man who became their North Star, Al Davis, as head coach in 1963. Denver went 2-24-2 over the next 14 years while the Raiders stacked up winning seasons and finally, in 1976, their first Super Bowl win.

Then, the Broncos broke through. But they only established parity, and nothing more. For the next 13 seasons, they split 26 games played, including the 1977 AFC Championship.

After that came five years of Raiders dominance. Based in Los Angeles at the time, they notched 10 wins in 11 games, including back-to-back contests at the end of the 1993 regular season and a wild-card game seven days later.

The cost of the Raiders’ early-1990s control was two Broncos coaches. Mike Shanahan — still rankled by a contract dispute with Davis, who fired him four games into the 1989 season — changed all that. “Raiders Week,” always an emotional apex of the season, turned into a cause in the Shanahan era. Denver went 20-4 against the then-Oakland Raiders over the next dozen seasons. Ten of the 20 wins came by double digits. The Raiders were in retreat, and Shanahan delighted in pushing them further back.

But aside from the seven games started by Peyton Manning from 2012-15, the Raiders have had the upper hand since then. Manning’s games are the reason the Broncos have merely an even split over the last 15 seasons. In the five years before Manning arrived, Oakland won 6 of 10 games in the series.

And since Manning’s final start in the series, the Raiders are 9-4.

Chubb knows all about that recent run. Since he arrived, the Broncos are 2-6 against the silver and black. And on the road, they’ve lost all four games played since the Broncos drafted Chubb in 2018 — the last two-thirds of an ongoing 6-game road skid.

At Oakland, at Las Vegas, with fans and without, it hasn’t mattered.

“It’s only a few teams in the league that I hate, and they’re one of them,” Chubb said. “Because every time we go there, I feel like it hasn’t gone in our favor.”

And that’s where Chubb’s enmity resides. It’s not that the Raiders play beyond the normal scope of the game. Chubb made a point of noting that the Raiders chirp — but the Broncos do, too.

“More the results. It’s nothing too crazy on the field,” Chubb said. “But just coming up short these last couple of times in Vegas or Oakland, you just kind of want to get that bad taste out of your mouth.”

And it gets more bitter with every passing year. The last time the Broncos had a losing streak away from home this long, they fired Wade Phillips, the man on the sideline for the last three games of an eight-game Broncos skein in Los Angeles from 1988-94.

Shanahan, the aforementioned former Raiders head coach changed that quickly. Now an ex-Broncos head coach stalks the Las Vegas sideline: Josh McDaniels.

And perhaps that will represent the next plot turn in this decades-long novel … but this one back to the Broncos.

Read more from Andrew Mason on 104.3 The Fan. Follow him on Twitter @MaseDenver.

Newsletter