Priesthood was on the mind of a talented Wisconsin teenager with an uncle and a cousin already serving the church, but a football scholarship pointed him down a different path, one that led to a Super Bowl ring and 13 seasons in silver and black. Pete Banaszak, the tough, dependable Raiders running back nicknamed “Rooster,” who scored two touchdowns in Super Bowl XI and played a key role in the famous “Holy Roller,” died in October 2026. He was 82.

Peter Andrew Banaszak was born on May 21, 1944, in Crivitz, Wisconsin, where his father, a devoted Green Bay Packers season ticket holder, took him to games as a boy. At Crivitz High School, he was an honour roll student and all-conference halfback and linebacker, and he won the WIAA Class C state discus championship in 1961 and 1962, setting a Class C record as a senior.

Recruited by fellow Wisconsin native Walt Kichefski, Banaszak earned a football scholarship to the University of Miami, where he made the dean’s list. As a sophomore fullback in 1963, he led the Hurricanes in rushing, breaking out with 90 yards in a windy 20 to 14 win over Kentucky when quarterback George Mira could not throw. Despite leg injuries, he led Miami in rushing again as a senior in 1965 and was named the team’s most valuable player.

The Oakland Raiders chose him in the fifth round of the 1966 AFL Draft, and after a quiet rookie season he stepped into the starting lineup late in 1967 when Clem Daniels broke his ankle. Banaszak rushed for 116 yards in the Raiders’ 40 to 7 AFL Championship Game win over the Houston Oilers and started Super Bowl II against the Packers. Coach John Rauch later said, “Give me 40 Pete Banaszaks and I’ll win you the Super Bowl.”

Banaszak played his entire career with the Raiders, starting all 14 games alongside Marv Hubbard in 1971 and becoming one of the game’s most trusted short-yardage backs. His finest season came in 1975, when he led the team with 672 rushing yards and tied for the NFL lead with 16 rushing touchdowns without starting a single game, earning the Gorman Award as the team’s most valuable player from his teammates. In 1976, he caught a touchdown pass from Ken Stabler in the AFC Championship Game win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, and in Super Bowl XI on January 9, 1977, he scored twice in the Raiders’ 32 to 14 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. “I never felt so good about anything in my life as I do about this victory. I wanted those two touchdowns. Damnit, I owed it to myself after 11 years in this league,” he said afterward.

In September 1978, Banaszak played a central role in the “Holy Roller” against the San Diego Chargers, batting Stabler’s forward fumble toward the goal line, where Dave Casper fell on it for the winning touchdown. “The officials didn’t know what to do. I think we talked them into calling it a touchdown,” Banaszak recalled, and the play led the NFL to change its fumble rules in 1979.

He retired after the 1978 season with 3,772 rushing yards, 47 rushing touchdowns and 52 total touchdowns across 173 games, and the Raiders never had a losing season during his tenure. He ranked second only to Marcus Allen in franchise rushing touchdowns. Stabler called him “the best short-yardage runner I ever saw,” Art Shell said he “was the toughest guy I’ve seen on short-yardage situations,” and Tom Flores remembered him as “always the total team player, a very unselfish person who was willing to contribute any way possible.”

Banaszak was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 1983 and the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 1990, an honour he counted among his career highlights. After football, he worked for Crowley Maritime, which brought him and his wife to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and in the early 2000s he co-hosted the Jacksonville Jaguars’ postgame radio show The Fifth Quarter with Cole Pepper. He later lived in St. Augustine, and in 2023 he sank a hole in one at Kennsington Golf Club in Canfield, Ohio.

Pete Banaszak leaves behind a legacy of grit, loyalty and selflessness that defined some of the greatest teams in Raiders history. The young man from Crivitz who once weighed a life in the priesthood found his calling on the football field, and his touchdowns on Super Bowl Sunday will forever be part of the Raiders’ proudest moments.