Throughout the 2026 season, Raiders.com is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the team's Super Bowl XI Championship by highlighting unsung heroes from the 1976 team along with thrilling moments and untold stories of a campaign that will go down in history as among the greatest in the annals of professional football.
When David Humm reported for duty with the Raiders as a fifth-round draft pick in 1975, the southpaw quarterback was gobsmacked by his surroundings.
"I mean, here I am, this kid from Las Vegas who went to play college football at Nebraska, the most conservative place in the world," the late Humm told me in 2014 for my book '100 Things Raiders Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.’
"Then I get picked up by the Raiders and as I get off the bus, there's Otis Sistrunk and Gerald Irons and Jack Tatum and I'm just thinking, 'Where am I? What have I gotten myself into?' And, 'I can't play this game.' But this experience, it was just so surreal. I feel like the most blessed guy on the planet."
Humm's infectious personality did more than permeate the Raiders roster; his mere presence in his second year made him an unsung hero for the Super Bowl XI champs.
He also became a folk hero in the streets of Silver and Blackdom.
Because as Raiders owner Mark Davis is fond of saying, "David Humm is the original Las Vegas Raider."
And why not? Humm was an All-American at Bishop Gorman High School and, in 1999, the Las Vegas Review-Journal selected him as the No. 9 local athlete of the 20th century.
With the Raiders, he was a fan favorite backup QB to the likes of fellow lefty Ken Stabler and Jim Plunkett, and was lauded as an "outstanding holder for placekicks" in the Raiders' 1977 media guide. Humm was active for all 14 regular-season games of the Raiders' 1976 season and also appeared in all three of the Raiders' playoff games, against the Patriots, Steelers and Vikings.
"I loved him to death, my dad loved him to death," Davis told me when he joined Humm in the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame this past spring.
"The fact that my dad was down here to induct him [in 1997] is really special. His family is just dear to my heart and, so, it's exciting to be going into this Hall of Fame and be a teammate of David's again."
Hummer, as he was affectionately known, spent 10 years in the NFL, with two tours of duty with the Raiders. Besides being on the 1976 champs, Humm won a second ring with the Raiders for Super Bowl XVIII.
He never started a game with the Raiders — he completed 3 of 5 passes for 41 yards in 1976 — but appeared in 76 games over seven seasons (1975-79 and 1983-84). He also spent two years with the Colts and one with the Bills.
His career ended in a brutal game against the Bears in 1984.
With Plunkett out with an abdominal injury suffered earlier in the season, and with Marc Wilson getting knocked around and about by the Bears, Humm suffered four teeth cracked to the gums on a hit from Chicago defensive end Richard Dent. Then, linebacker Otis Wilson blew out both of Humm's knees.
Yeah, it was time.
"I'd been cut five times, three times by the Raiders," Humm said. "I was 33 years old, I had played 10 years and had two rings. I just thought, 'I'm done.'"
That whole thing about Humm being an unsung hero?
The Raiders brought him back a decade-plus later as a radio analyst before he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
With travel limited, and later becoming wheelchair bound, Humm told Al Davis he would have to give up the radio gig. The Raiders responded by helping him set up a radio studio in his Southern Nevada home, from where he was able to join the pregame and postgame shows from 1997 through 2016.
"You talk about dreams coming true," Humm said in 2014, "the fact that I'm still a part of the organization on the broadcast side, that's over the top. This MS has been a bump in the road that I never could have anticipated. It's a tough road to hoe and tough for my daughter and family to watch. But I wouldn't trade a single thing. I am more than blessed."
A teammate on the 1976 champs called Humm an "inspiration" for the way he fought.
"A guy that was a quarterback in the NFL, but then was struck down by multiple sclerosis, that would send most people into a tailspin," the late George Atkinson told me in 2014. "He looks at it like…just another fight. I admire the guy for his courage."
Humm passed away in 2018.
The Raiders named the home radio broadcast booth after Humm in 2022.
That's the stuff of unsung heroes.
For more on the season-long celebration of Super Bowl XI, visit raiders.com/super-bowl-xi.
