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.

It has been half a century since the Raiders captured their first Super Bowl title, but Warren Bankston's contributions to that success remain fresh in the hearts and minds of his Silver and Black brothers.

Bankston helped the Raiders reach football's biggest stage when he caught a 4-yard touchdown pass from Ken Stabler in Oakland's 24-7 victory over Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship game. After the score, he heaved the football into the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum stands.

"He threw it about 50 yards up in the stands," Dave Rowe recalled of Bankston during a recent roundtable discussion celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl XI triumph, a 32-14 rout of the Minnesota Vikings. "That was a heck of a throw when Bankston scored that touchdown. 'Bank the Tank.' Today, it would probably cost you $500 to throw that ball in the stands. But he whipped it up there."

Bankston viewed throwing the football into the Coliseum crowd as a way to connect with Raider Nation. "It's just one of those things where you just say, you know, y'all paid money, and if it wouldn't be for you, we wouldn't be out here. I threw the ball, and they just went crazy, and someone caught it."

Fred Biletnikoff, the MVP of Super Bowl XI, recalled that Bankston captained a Silver and Black special teams unit every bit as imposing as the offense and defense during the Raiders' run to their first world championship.

Bankston played six of his 10 NFL seasons with the Raiders from 1973-78, and his work on coverage units helped Oakland consistently win the field-position battle. "The great thing about our special teams is those guys that were special teams were special teams guys," Biletnikoff said. "Yeah, they were into it. They just weren't, 'OK, you got to play special teams,' all that. I mean, they knew that was their job."

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana, native followed in his father's footsteps to Tulane, where he played quarterback and running back. "My dad went to Tulane, and that's why I went to Tulane," he recalled.

He entered the NFL as a second-round pick by Pittsburgh in 1969 and spent four seasons with the Steelers before being traded to the Raiders. Bankston was an unsung hero during his stint with the Silver and Black — a reserve tight end and respected locker-room presence whose impact far exceeded his statistics.

Bankston also became part of Raiders lore as the team's coin-toss representative during the 1976 championship season, calling all but one correctly. The lone non-win came against Denver, and his streak continued through both postseason victories and Super Bowl XI.

Bankston said he called tails every time but once, though he had no particular reason for doing so. Unlike his teammates, who still remember the streak, he did not put much stock in the flip. Whether that lone "heads" call in 1976 resulted in his lone lost coin flip will remain a forever mystery that Bankston is not interested in reliving.

"Just one of those things that it had to be one or the other. ... It didn't have a whole lot to do with the way the game played, except for who gets the ball first."

His value went beyond the pregame coin toss. Bankston helped the Raiders get off to a stirring start in their magical 1976 run, when Oakland went 13-1 in the regular season under coach John Madden — still tied for the most victories in team history with the 1967 AFL champion squad.

He helped spark a dramatic fourth-quarter comeback in the 1976 regular-season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Oakland Coliseum. Bankston blocked a punt that Charles Phillips recovered, helping set up the tying touchdown as the Raiders erased a 28-14 deficit in the final minutes and won 31-28 on Fred Steinfort's field goal with 18 seconds remaining.

Bankston, who appeared in 75 games for the Raiders, delivered another major contribution in the postseason. His 4-yard touchdown catch from Stabler extended Oakland's lead to 17-7 in a 24-7 AFC Championship game victory over the Steelers that sent the Silver and Black to the Super Bowl.

The 6-foot-4, 235-pounder played 114 games during his 10-year NFL career as a running back and fullback for the Steelers and as a tight end for the Raiders, rushing for 684 yards and catching 38 passes for 283 yards. He scored five touchdowns.

He also saw action on offense when he was paired with Dave Casper in two-tight end formations. Bankston believed he could have done more but embraced the niche he carved out. "In my six years with the Raiders, I was elected special teams captain four of those years," he told veteran reporter Tom LaMarre.

"Would I have rather been a starter as a tight end or running back? Of course. To extend my career to 10 years without ever having been cut from either team, I did the best I could at whatever my assignment was. That was my goal on every play. It worked."

His Raiders teammates always held Bankston in the highest regard.

"Bank was a valuable member of our team, even though he wasn't a starter," Stabler told reporters. "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."

Bankston looks back with immense pride on Jan. 9, 1977, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, when the Silver and Black ascended to the top of the pro football universe with a dominant victory in Super Bowl XI — the first of the Raiders' three World Championships.

"To go out and play as hard as you can ... and to win something ... is the greatest thing that you can do as a human being with all your abilities," said Bankston, who became a Super Bowl champion on the same field where his father played in the 1932 Rose Bowl. "To be the best of the best just gives me chills thinking about it at times."

For Bankston, No. 46 in your program, that championship remains the defining reward of a career built on doing whatever the Raiders needed.

For more on the season-long celebration of Super Bowl XI, visit raiders.com/super-bowl-xi.