The final scene in the first installment of the HBO series “Hard Knocks” focused on an unlikely subject: The seven-man blocking sled.
A snoozer of a segment, right?
Not so fast.
Listening to Raiders coach Jon Gruden and former Raiders coach John Madden (through the magic of archived video), makes you think that if the distinct black shield had never come along, the Raiders logo would have been a seven-man sled.
“That’s the first thing we used to do,” Madden said in 2000. “We’d start off every practice in the morning with hitting the seven-man sled.