George Blanda

George Blanda, a quarterback and place-kicker who played professional football longer than anyone else and who retired having scored more points than anyone else, died Monday. He was 83.

The Oakland Raiders announced his death but provided no details. Blanda finished his career with the Raiders, playing for them from 1967 until his retirement, at 48, just before the 1976 season.

Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981, Blanda played for 26 seasons and was one of only two men to have played in four separate decades. (Jeff Feagles, a recently retired punter, is the other.) Blanda played in the National Football League, the American Football League and, after the leagues merged in 1970, the hybrid that was unified under the N.F.L. rubric.

He began his career in 1949 with the Chicago Bears, playing for George Halas, the legendary coach and team owner who helped shape pro football in its early years. He finished playing for Al Davis, the Raiders’ legendary owner (and one-time coach) who helped shape the contemporary professional game.

“Blanda had a God-given killer instinct to make it happen when everything was on the line,” Davis said to The Sporting News in 1989. “I really believe that George Blanda is the greatest clutch player I have ever seen in the history of pro football.”

Davis had a firsthand look at Blanda’s most famous stretch of games. On Sunday, Oct. 25, 1970, Blanda stepped in for the Raiders’ injured starting quarterback, Daryle Lamonica, and threw for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to beat Pittsburgh.

The next Sunday, against the Kansas City Chiefs, he kicked a 48-yard field goal, salvaging a tie with eight seconds left in the game.

The week after that, against the Cleveland Browns, Blanda entered the game with a little more than four minutes to play and the Raiders down by a touchdown. He threw a touchdown pass, kicked the extra point, drove the team into position for the winning field goal and kicked it — that 52-yarder — with three seconds on the clock.

The next Sunday, he beat Denver with a late touchdown pass; the Sunday after that, he beat San Diego with a last-minute field goal.

Five straight weeks he saved the game; he was 43 at the time.