Bank the Tank, a Raider to Remember

The Las Vegas Raiders lineage of great tight ends is legendary and Warren Bankston is often overlooked because he played with the great Dave Casper.

He might have been a star if tight-end Warren Bankston did not play for the Oakland Raiders when they had Dave Casper.

Still, “Bank the Tank” was a standout for the Silver and Black as a special teams player and captain, in addition to giving quarterback Kenny Stabler another option when the Raiders went to their double tight end formation and being an outstanding blocker.

“Bank was a valuable member of our team, even though he wasn’t a starter,” Hall of Fame quarterback Stabler said. “When we went with two tight ends, he was a strong blocker, as you might tell because of his nickname, and he also could get open in the secondary and had a great set of hands.

“He was very popular with his teammates and the fans, and could have been a starter for many other teams in the NFL, but meant a lot to our team in his role.”

Bleacher Report named Bankston, who played his first four seasons in the NFL as a backup running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, as one of the 10 most underrated players in the history of the Las Vegas-Oakland-Los Angeles Raiders.

The 6-4, 235-pound Bankston was selected by the Steelers in the second round (No. 42 overall) of the 1969 National Football League Draft out of Tulane, and he rushed for 675 yards and three touchdowns in four seasons with Pittsburgh.

However, in 1973 the Steelers moved him to tight end, and after watching Bankston play on a game film from a preseason game, the Raiders traded for him.

“Once I arrived in Oakland, I was put on every crash course to learn the Raider playbook, which is like learning a foreign language in a week or two,” Bankston recalled. “I probably slept three-to-four hours for 10 days or so. Exhausted and lost on the West Coast, I needed help with how to find an apartment, and the practice field, learn players’ and coaches’ names, and still have enough energy and smarts to be retained by the Raiders. It was the most difficult time in my life.

“In my six years with the Raiders, I was elected special teams captain four of those years. Would I have rather been a starter as a tight end or running back? Of course, but to extend my career to 10 years without ever having been cut from either team, it was do the best I could at whatever my assignment was. That was my goal on every play. It worked. I was considered a player with a desire to play hard at whatever was assigned to me.”

As team captain, Bankston had a knack for calling the coin flip before games, and in 1976 when the Raiders went 16-1, he called the flip correctly for every game except one, even getting it right before the Silver and Black dominated the Minnesota Vikings, 32-14, in Super Bowl XI at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena.

However, Bankston’s best moments that season came in the game before, when the Raiders beat the Steelers—his former team—24-7 in the American Football Conference Championship Game at the Oakland Coliseum.

In the first quarter of that game, special teams standout Bankston partially blocked a punt by Bobby Walden of the Steelers, and it set up a 39-yard field goal by Errol Mann to give the Raiders a 3-0 lead.

Then, with time running out in the first half and the Raiders at Pittsburgh’s four-yard-line, Stabler play-faked before throwing a touchdown pass to Bankston in the corner of the end zone to give Oakland a 17-7 halftime lead, and the Steelers never got back into the game.

“That was one of the highlights of my career,” said Bankston, who delighted the fans by hurling the ball into the stands.

Bankston rushed only twice for nine yards and caught seven passes for 94 yards and two touchdowns in his six seasons with the Raiders.

But Bank the Tank’s value to the Silver and Black went much deeper than that.

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