PLEASANTON — One of Thanksgiving’s greatest traditions was listening to John Madden talk football and, even though he retired from the broadcast booth in 2009, Madden can still bring it.

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49ers, Miami Dolphins meet after taking different paths from 1-4 starts Madden, 80, is “feeling great” after battling multiple health issues, starting with heart surgery exactly a year ago,

That was plainly evident Wednesday when the former Raiders coach and Hall of Famer sat down for a Bay Area News Group podcast at the Rose Hotel in his hometown of Pleasanton. Even better, Madden was looking and feeling good after a year of health problems. He was hospitalized multiple times and had surgeries on his heart, a hip, a knee and, just this week, his esophagus.

“I’m glad I think we’re all finished; I hope so,” Madden said. “I’ve been through all that and am coming out the other end now. It’s just good to get out and around and see people.”

Madden, 80, had avoided serious health problems much of his life. And then all of a sudden, all at once… well, let him tell you.

“There’s always stuff in you that’s going to get you. It just piled up on me and said, ‘OK we let you off the hook a long time. You were on the road, you were on the bus, you were traveling all the time. You couldn’t get sick then. Now we got you, man. You can get sick.’ So they got me.”

Here are some highlights of the hour-long interview:

On if he’ll watch the NFL’s Thanksgiving tripleheader:

“Yeah, yeah. I’m goofy. I watch them all. It’s not, ‘Boy, that Madden, he just loves football and he can’t live without it.’ I’m always afraid I’m going to miss something. ‘Oh shoot, I didn’t see that!’ So I want to watch it.”

On Raiders coach Jack Del Rio:

“The team just needed a man. They needed an adult running them. They had the young guys, the new guys, the inexperienced guys, and that didn’t work. When Jack Del Rio walks into a room, a man just walked in the room.

“That’s going to affect the players, and the Raiders needed that at that time. Like, ‘Whose team?’ It’s his team. He’s the head coach. You don’t ask the question, ‘Who’s running this thing? Who’s doing this, who’s doing that?’

“Whether he’s the best coach in football or one of the best, whatever he is, he’s a tough guy and he commands a room and the players know who’s the boss, and they don’t question that. That’s a big part of his success.”

On Del Rio first surfacing on Madden’s radar growing up in Hayward?

“I was hearing about Jack Del Rio when he was in grammar school. Then when he was in high school, I said, ‘Well we’ll see.’ Then he goes to USC and is playing linebacker and he’s playing catcher on the baseball team, and SC has a great baseball team. So that’s when I knew he was for real. Of course, I saw him over the years as a player and then a coach at Jacksonville. He’s a local guy. I’ve known about Jack Del Rio his whole life.”

On where the Raiders’ season is headed?

“How do they do against New England? That’s the thing. I watched Tom Brady play and, to me, he’s as good as there is and maybe as good as there’s ever been. He looks close to perfect.

“Remember you used to watch Joe Montana in his prime? Joe would just be perfect. The Patriots have that now in Tom Brady. I don’t know that the Raiders defense would be able to handle some of the stuff he would give them.

“It’s getting to there, and then getting the job done. But getting to there is going to be more of a problem, but not as big a problem as it looked like. Denver is not Denver anymore. Kansas City is not Kansas City anymore. So they’re going to be in there. I don’t know where you go to after New England and the Raiders. I don’t know who that next team is. Usually there’s a Pittsburgh out there or someone like that, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else.”

On the Raiders possible relocation to Las Vegas:

“I think they ought to not talk about it and just play football and not let that seep into the team. … To throw that into the mix is kind of like throwing slop into the stew. Just let the stew go. Just let the team play. We always talk about not wanting distractions, and that’s a distraction, because it’s really the unknown.

“Everyone says they want to keep the Raiders in Oakland, and there’s no one that wants to keep the Raiders in Oakland more than I do, unless it’s Mark Davis. Mark Davis wants to keep the Raiders in Oakland. He doesn’t want to move. But there’s no ‘here’ here.

“There’s not a place to keep them, and that’s the thing that is not understood. They need a new stadium and there’s no new stadium for them to play. So they have to go play where they can get a stadium. The only shot, and I’m not sure how strong that is really right now, is Las Vegas.”

On late owner Al Davis prefering the Coliseum site for its transportation ease:

“Yeah, for BART, and he liked that sign there on the freeway. He loved that sign. Back in the day, he said his happiest time was when he could put, ‘Sunday, Raiders vs. Kansas City’ then down on the bottom of it, ‘Sold Out.’ He always wanted ‘Sold Out’ up there, then everyone would say, ‘Holy shoot, they’re playing Kansas City and I can’t even get in.’ That was a big thing to him. And that signage on the freeway, on the Nimitz there, was the biggest part of it.

On what Al Davis would think of today’s Raiders:

“Al would like it, because they have the quarterback and receivers. He would want to get the corners a little better. The offensive line is pretty good.

“Getting a quarterback, as you know, is hard. And when you get one, you have to be a little lucky. Like in Dallas, someone has to slip down there. Like (Derek) Carr has to slip to (the Raiders). Then you get that guy and, doggone it, you can keep him for 10 years. But if you don’t get that guy, it could take you 10 years to find him.”

On asking about 49ers coach Chip Kelly’s first impression back in the spring:

“When I asked about the coach Chip Kelly, I’m impressed with him. I really respect what he’s done, and that. I wanted to hear more about him. He’s a unique guy and has a unique approach to coaching and to offense and to all these things. He’s a good coach in a bad situation. As you say, though, it’s tough to lose nine straight. It has to be tough on him.

“Sometimes maybe you have to adjust your system to what you have. That’s easy to say but it’s hard to do if you don’t have much. You know what I mean? What do you have? ‘Well I don’t have anything.’ That’s where the 49ers are.

“First of all, they made a big mistake in getting rid of Jim Harbaugh. Secondly, they don’t have many good players. When you look at it and say, ‘Who are the good players on the 49ers?’ It’s not a long list of guys.”

On Colin Kaepernick’s career path:

“I don’t know. I don’t know he got as prepared to play as maybe he did in the past. Obviously he doesn’t have the weapons. He doesn’t have the coach who kind of brought him in and everything is an adjustment. He’s adjusting to them, they’re adjusting to him.

“There’s not much in the cupboards there. Where do you put the blame? They’ve lost nine in a row. Well, who lost nine in a row? Did the coaches lose nine in a row? Did the quarterback lose nine in a row? The defense? The general manager? The owner?”

On if Jim Harbaugh will return to the NFL:

“Yes I do. I’m guessing that, I don’t know that. I just think the type of guy he is, he’s going to move around anyway. That’s Jim Harbaugh. In moving around, he’ll move back into the NFL. But he has a pretty good gig right now at Michigan.”

On if Harbaugh will also be lured by the fact his brother has a Super Bowl ring:

“I’m sure he still talks about it. His brother is on my subcommittee, and the thing that bothered John Harbaugh about that Super Bowl is there was one time Jim came out and was in the 49ers huddle. I don’t remember it, but John always complains about it. ‘Holy shoot, my brother ran out and got in their doggone huddle in that game.’ ”

On the NFL’s slumping television ratings:

“What’s happens is there are not a lot of good teams, and they have too many windows to put these games in. When you think of an early Sunday window, a late Sunday window, a Sunday night window, a Monday night window, a Thursday night window. They all want good games, and there’s not enough good teams.

“Just look at the list of teams playing. It takes two. It’s not just one good team. You have to have two to have a great game, and there’s not a lot of great games. And we’re spreading it out more and more with fewer good teams, which makes it doggone impossible to have good games. If the games aren’t good, that’s part of it. Now there are other things: the Millennials, iPhone, and the stuff people do as they live differently.

“Something has to be done about Thursday night football. It just doesn’t work. It’s not only a fan thing, it’s a team thing. It’s a safety thing. It’s a competitive thing. It doesn’t work. I know about money, and I know about business. Maybe you have to tweak stuff a little more. To help teams, maybe you get a bye the week before.

“On Thanksgiving, Washington has to travel to Dallas to play in Dallas, and they played Sunday night. That’s wrong. That’s an oops. You play a team on Sunday night and make them travel and play on Thursday. I remember in my coaching days, as players get older, it takes them longer to heal up from a Sunday game, and guys weren’t ready to play until Thursday or Friday.”

On Thanksgiving during his 30 years as a TV analyst:

“Starting with Pat Summerall and I at CBS in 1981, I did a Thanksgiving Day game every year. That was my family. When I did it, that was the Thanksgiving that I knew — with the crew and the guys and the officials. It was the same for us year after year after year. Then it became a tradition and something we looked forward to.

“What I had a problem was when I got out of broadcasting and got away from doing Thanksgiving Day games, and I had to do a normal Thanksgiving. I had no experience doing that. It’s like when I had to watch games on Sunday, and I had no experience doing that. Here I am, whatever age I am, and I’m learning to watch all the NFL games on Sunday, and I’m learning where to sit on Thanksgiving.”

On discovering turducken in New Orleans:

“A guy brought me one in the booth. I was just going to eat it later or put it on the bus, and it started to smell so good I had to taste it. I grabbed it and started to eat it before the game.

“It was funny, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, somewhere in the paper it said he was going to hire a new coach and he’s going to talk to some people about it, and one of the people he’s going to talk to is John Madden. I didn’t know that, so in comes him and I’m sitting there with the turducken in my hand, and I couldn’t shake hands. Because you can’t have a hunk of turducken and shake a guy’s hand. So I’m dropping the turducken, and I know there’s no way he’s going to ask me who to hire as a head coach.”

On six-legged turkeys awarded after his Thanksgiving broadcasts:

“Six-legged turkey, yeah. You didn’t know how many valuable players you’d have in a game or how many turkey legs you wanted to give away for the top players, so you had to put a lot of legs on there. Sometimes you’d get in a bind with just having two and you wanted to give the legs to the offensive line.”

Stuffing crawfish inside a chicken for a recent Thanksgiving?

“I was just cooking that. They sent it to me. The same guy, Butcher Block, and he’ll stuff anything. He sent it to me this year, too. Just stuffed chickens with crawfish. We had that lsat Sunday for the games at the sound stage. We’re done with that so we’re going to go with the turkey.”

On the NFL’s winning formula:

“It’s a quarterback’s league. If you don’t have a quarterback in this league, it’s an uphill battle all the time. (The 49ers) got away from the run a little, which I didn’t like. You can say maybe, ‘Well, you’re a relic and get off my lawn and all that stuff.’ But I believe you have to be able to run the ball. And being able to run the ball, you have to have a lead blocker.

“… Somewhere during a game, you have to take it over and say, ‘I’m taking this game over.’ That place has always been with the offensive line and the running game. But if you just have one back and you have them all spread out, you don’t have anywhere to take the game over, and no way to take the game over.

“I see that a lot in football, but then again, you go back to, ‘You better have the players.’ One team did that and they have the best record in football, and that’s the Dallas Cowboys. They went out and got an offensive line, they got a running back, and they have a young quarterback that’s playing like heck and will be playing for 10 years.”

On how many GMs can say they picked two great QBs, after find one to ride:

“You have to. That’s the way football is today and the way it has to be. You want to project how this guy is going to be as a pro. But they make a lot of mistakes, both ways — picking the guy they think is the best, and he’s not; then letting a guy slip through that can be the best. Being able to get a guy that’s done it, the Raiders did it at the end when we got Jim Plunkett, that was my last couple years. Then when they lost their quarterback, Pastorini didn’t work out and Plunkett goes and plays and takes them to two Super Bowls. We got Daryle Lamonica from Buffalo. Al was good at that. That was an Al Davis move. Then we got Kenny Stabler because he had an injury, he slipped through and we took him in the draft.”

On visiting his bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame:

“I went back every year except last year. I kind of made a promise to myself I’d go back every year. I’m a big history guy. I want to know where we came from and what it was like. We don’t do a good job with our history. We really don’t. We don’t do a great job with our ex-players the way baseball does.

“I remember one watching a baseball All-Star Game and they brought Ted Williams out in a car, they brought him out to the mound, and every player on both teams came out. I thought, and this is 20 or 30 years after he played, and I’m like, ‘We don’t have anyone like that in football. I’m like, who would be the closest guy?’ I couldn’t even think of a guy who would be close. Who would today’s players honor as a great player?

“I don’t know that players today really are interested in it. I don’t know they really care about it, and I wish they care more. Then you say, ‘Well did they care 10 or 20 years ago?’ I don’t know they did.”

On the Miami Dolphins, who have won five in a row:

“A lot better than I thought. I’ll tell you, when you watch a Miami team play, they’re well coached. You can see that, and that comes out. What’s different about this team is they’re well coached.”

On one of your first games in Miami was against Lombardi, right — in 1967, known now as Super Bowl II?

“That was in the Super Bowl. They didn’t call it the Super Bowl. We didn’t know what the heck to call the game. It was the AFC-NFC Championship. I was an assistant at that time and John Rauch was the head coach. I was a linebacker coach and I was thinking, ‘Man.’ I looked across the other side of the field and I saw Vince Lombardi. ‘I said this is the biggest day in my life. I’m coaching against Vince Lombardi.’ I was the linebacker coach and we called the defenses then through the middle linebacker, and Vince Lombardi is calling offensive plays. Vince Lombardi was always my hero and I tried to pattern my coaching style with his — not my personality style — the way he believed, ‘We’re going to run the ball, and we’re going to run the ball better than you can stop it, so we’re going to keep running until you do.’ ”

On Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s reign:

“It took him a while to get there. He went to Cleveland and got fired. He had been with the Giants, and he was with the Jets, and they named him head coach and he switched off in the middle of that and went to New England. It took him a while to get started, but once he got started, he’s on a great run. Bill Belichick is not only one of the best coaches in football but, in my mind, one of the best coaches that ever coached.”

On the Cowboys and coach Jason Garrett:

“He’s doing it with the offense. The offense can really help the defense by being able to run the ball, which they can do with that offensive line and running back. Keep the defense off the field. Keep them fresh. Get the lead and make the other team play from behind.”

On padded practices with the Raiders:

“If I ever had a non-padded practice, they thought it was recess. They didn’t think it was practice. They’d be jumping on each other, ‘Coach, can I play quarterback?’ … That doesn’t mean we hit all the time or scrimmaged all the time. But I wanted them to protect themselves — shoulders, thighs, knees. And you’ve got to learn to play in your pads. You’ve got to play in the biggest game every week, and do it in pads, so you may as well practice in pads.”

On playing in Thanksgiving games as a young center and defensive tackle in Daly City:

“I went to Jefferson High School in Daly City and we played on Thanksgiving Day against South City. My Thanksgiving tradition goes back all the way to high school. Heck, I wasn’t home much or in the mood for Thanksgiving much on Thanksgiving Day. We were always muddy. You wonder where it went — I know, artificial turf and that stuff.

“I’ve got an old highlight reel, 1958 Baltimore Colts. I watch that just to see how football used to be. Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry. They were always playing in weather, always in mud and snow, and they didn’t do anything. They just played. They didn’t have anybody wiping anything off. They just play through it.

“It’s a different time, and I can’t say it’s not as good. I think the players today and the athletes are better than they’ve ever been. Some of these guys blocking extra-points and field goals, jumping over and blocking a kick, that’s amazing. I never thought it could be done.”

On if he ever thought he’d be on a podcast:

“I never would have thought, and I’m still not sure what a podcast is. Anyone who listens to this and says: ‘That guy sounds like he doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing.’ You’re right.”