When the 1968 regular season ended the Colts stood alone as the most successful team in either league. For the second year in a row they had lost only a single game. It was a triumph for Shula and a remarkable string of success not seen in pro football since George Halas’s prewar Monsters of the Midway. More spectacular still, Shula did it with two different quarterbacks. Previously, fans took it for granted that Unitas’s greatness was the reason for the Colts’ stunning success. He alone had been the common thread for so many victories. But in 1968 Shula had an even better record without him. In the new narrative Unitas was no longer the protagonist. His teammates spoke of how much better they played now that they no longer had him to bail them out. They spoke of an offensive line that was sharper with a quarterback who deployed the running game more frequently.
This was an all-new epic, and Shula was the man who wore the Superman cape now. The coach was the one who plugged in a backup journeyman for a Hall of Famer and actually improved the team. In the new story the quarterback was merely a part of a whole, vital, maybe, but replaceable, like any other. Now everyone could see it was a smart and prepared coach who delivered victory.
As the postseason arrived Unitas continued on as a spare part. He watched the Colts meet the hard-charging Minnesota Vikings in the divisional round. Morrall played superbly well against Minnesota’s improving defense, throwing for nearly 300 yards and connecting on two touchdown passes.
The big moment wouldn’t come until the following week when the Colts flew to Cleveland. Baltimore was a supremely confident ball club, but there was some apprehension, too. Nobody had forgotten the team’s terrible loss to the Browns in the championship game just four years earlier. Cleveland was also the only team to beat Baltimore during the 1968 regular season. But alas, there was no stopping the Colts. Tom Matte took matters into his own capable hands and scored three touchdowns in the game. For one of them he dove forward, his thick body parallel to the ground. That one landed him in the filthy end zone of Municipal Stadium and on the glossy cover of Sports Illustrated. Meanwhile, Baltimore’s defense shut out the Browns, and the Colts won an absurdly easy victory, 34–0.
For the first time in nine years Baltimore was the NFL champion. For many of the players on the squad it was a redemptive victory. They had been so close, so often—in ’64, ’65, ’66, and ’67. Yet all those years had ended in rank humiliation and frustration. All of that melted away in the exultation of the long-deferred achievement. Victory over Cleveland meant that they were NFL champions, and that had always been the goal.
In the visitors’ locker room it was all fat cigars, big grins, and national media. Former jock turned broadcaster Tom Brookshire, or “Brookie,” as Jimmy Orr called him, came to the lockers to interview Morrall, Matte, Boyd, and Orr. The relief of victory was palpable in the wide smiles and jovial responses of the interviewees. And then Brookshire called Carroll Rosenbloom to the microphone. The Colts’ owner was beaming, but ever vigilant not to offend the football gods. “You just have to be careful what you say, as you well know,” the superstitious Rosenbloom told Brookie. “You can’t jinx the ball club.”
And then he started to praise his coach.
“I told Shula when he came [here] I thought this would be my last coach, and that’s the way it looks like it’s gonna be,” Rosenbloom gushed. “He’s just a fine young man, a fine coach.”
Only about two weeks later he would be so enraged at that fine young man, he would never want to speak to him again.
While Don Shula dazzled the football world with his brilliant moves in 1968, up in New York his old mentor Weeb Ewbank was having a rough time of it. At the dawn of the 1960s Weeb was a rock-star coach. He had won two straight titles and assembled the entire team and coaching staff himself. But by the end of 1962 he was fired and looking for work. The Browns, the franchise he came up with, had an open position at head coach, but they weren’t even interested in interviewing him. When Weeb finally landed a new job it was in the “inferior” American Football League, with the hapless New York franchise, the worst organization in professional football. In 1967 the Jets under Ewbank experienced their first-ever winning season, a major accomplishment and milestone. But it was a long time coming, and it ended on a bitter note.
The Jets had jumped out to a 5-1-1 record in 1967 and enjoyed the look of a serious contender. But when they met the defending AFL champion Chiefs in Kansas City, New York’s fortunes took a cruel turn. The Chiefs delivered them a humiliating 42–18 defeat. Worse than that, their star running back, Emerson Boozer, tore cartilage and ligaments in his right knee and required immediate, season-ending surgery. The Jets went 3-3 the rest of the way. At 8-5-1 they finished 1967 in second place and narrowly missed the postseason.
Boozer’s injury and the team’s collapse had serious and long-lasting consequences for the franchise. After five years with just a single winning season, and that one a rank disappointment, there were bound to be repercussions.
To most fans the unassailable leader of the Jets was managing partner Sonny Werblin. When Sonny and a group of four other nondescript businessmen acquired the team back in 1963, the franchise was known as the Titans, a synonym for Giants. The similarity between the franchises ended there. New York’s football Giants were a premier professional sports organization in the ’50s and early ’60s; the Titans were a failure both on the field and off. The team’s venue of operations was the old Polo Grounds, located at Coogan’s Bluff, on the south shore of the Harlem River. The bathtub-shaped ballpark in Manhattan had a long and rich history in New York, mostly associated with the National League’s baseball Giants. The Giants’ tenure in the Polo Grounds stretched from the John McGraw era all the way to Willie Mays. Though its quirky confines had grown venerable in length of service, it was in fact a crumbling edifice and a prime catalyst for the baseball team’s bolt to San Francisco in the late 1950s. By the time the Titans became lessors in 1960, it was fallow and unworthy of a modern professional sports franchise. The team drew poorly from the start, but in 1962 it hit an unimaginable low when only about thirty-six thousand paying fans clicked the turnstiles all year. Even that pathetic number may have been gilded, however, as it was widely believed that the Titans lied about their attendance. As one New York sportswriter pointed out, many of the fans were coming to the stadium “disguised as empty seats.”
The man behind all of this dysfunction was Harry Wismer, the Titans’ first president and proprietor. Wismer, a former college player and well-known national broadcaster of football on the radio, had previously owned stakes in the NFL’s Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins. He was short, pudgy, and pugnacious in the extreme, and he failed to get along with just about everybody in his orbit. That included his partners; the other AFL owners; the AFL commissioner; his head coach, Sammy Baugh; and, of course, the press. To the surprise of no one, he also had a bad marriage. After being divorced by his first wife, he remarried a few years later, this time to Mary Zwillman, the widow of the notorious Jewish gangster Abner “Longie” Zwillman. Like Wismer, Longie had a short rope, just enough, apparently, to fashion a noose, as he allegedly committed suicide by hanging. There were, of course, other plausible theories about his demise.
As the team owner in the nation’s premier city and largest market, Wismer should have owned a highly lucrative franchise. Instead, he was soon forced to accept loans from the other AFL owners just to stay afloat. It wasn’t long before he was in full-fledged bankruptcy and selling his team for nothing more than its debts.
Wismer’s descent into ignominy was nevertheless the catalyst for the rapid rise of both the franchise and its league. The Titans were purchased by a group of wealthy businessmen whose common thread was ownership stakes in horse racing tracks, especially New Jersey’s Monmouth Park. The managing partner of this group was an extraordinarily clever businessman named David Werblin, a man known to all as “Sonny.” Werblin arose out of Brooklyn’s Jewish ghettos, where he attended the famed Erasmus Hall High School, one of the best public schools in the country. Erasmus Hall was the alma mater of scores of intellectuals and entertainers and also had an odd legacy as educator of professional football’s most prominent Jewish luminaries. In addition to Werblin, Erasmus alumni included Al Davis, the Machiavellian genius behind the sensational Oakland franchise, and Sid Luckman, the Bears legend who was considered the greatest quarterback in the game before Unitas.
Werblin gained his great wealth and success as an incredibly powerful entertainment agent with the Music Corporation of America, or MCA. He joined that company in the 1930s, starting as a messenger. From that humble position, however, he rose up to become an extremely rich and powerful agent and promoter. He negotiated lucrative contracts for huge stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Johnny Carson. His stunning success propelled him to the leadership of MCA’s television arm, and he produced both the Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason shows, programs that amassed huge audiences. His leadership brought MCA to a position of such industry dominance that it was ultimately targeted by antitrust investigators and broken into pieces.
When Werblin’s close friend Howard Cosell referred to him as “Sonny, as in money,” it was no joke.
Werblin was as formidable as Wismer had been ludicrous. No sooner had he taken over the team in 1963 than he had the entire league on the path to parity with the venerable NFL. Eschewing all tradition, Werblin renamed his franchise the Jets, a rhyme with the city’s new baseball team, the “Mets.” He changed team colors to green and white because they were a reflection of his own St. Patrick’s Day birthday, an odd point of pride for a Jew. Like Moses, Werblin parted the waters (the East River) and led his ball club on an exodus from Upper Manhattan to the promised borough of Queens. The Jets would play their home games in the sparkling new Shea Stadium. Entering an arena where he was the heaviest hitter, he took over the AFL’s television-rights negotiations. He quickly moved the contract from ABC to NBC and secured five times the annual television revenue for himself and his fellow franchise holders.
Perhaps Werblin’s biggest and most important move was bringing in Weeb Ewbank, the fat little man from Baltimore, to run his team. Ewbank had a zeal for franchise healing, which he expressed in the unique vernacular of a prairie veterinarian.
“I’ve seen sicker cows than this one get well,” he told reporters.
Under Weeb change came fast in Queens. Progress in the standings did not. After five years of the Werblin-Ewbank partnership, the Jets had lost more games than they had won. While the bottom-line results did not look good, Ewbank was in fact doing exactly what he did a generation earlier in Baltimore—he was putting together an incredibly balanced team, overflowing with coaching and playing talent. His offensive-line coach was a young man from western Pennsylvania named Chuck Knox who would go on to a long and successful head-coaching career with the Rams, Bills, and Seahawks. Knox led all three of those franchises to division titles.
Ewbank drafted and signed two sensational runners in Emerson Boozer and fullback Matt Snell, giving the Jets an inside-outside running game with both power and speed. He also developed two excellent receivers in Don Maynard and George Sauer Jr. Sauer, who was the son of the Jets’ director of player personnel, was an unusually sensitive and intellectual young man who was ambivalent about football and admitted he found it “dehumanizing.” Instead, he harbored hopes of having a literary career. Whatever his qualms about the game, he was nevertheless an outstanding player, an AFL All-Star multiple times who hauled in more than 1,000 receiving yards for three straight years. Maynard, meanwhile, was a seasoned veteran who went all the way back to the ’58 championship game in which he was a rookie kick returner for the Giants. Maynard was the Jets’ long-ball threat and Joe Namath’s favorite target.
On defense Ewbank featured two fine assistants. Walt Michaels, a man Weeb had coached many years ago in Cleveland, ran the unit. Buddy Ryan was his young defensive-line coach. Ryan was Oklahoma born and grew up, much like a Steinbeck character, as a Dust Bowl Okie during the Depression. His parents’ house lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. Football was his ticket up and out of that life. He went to college and played guard for the Cowboys of Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State). After that he coached high school football and then left the country to go fight in the Korean War.
Upon returning home Ryan was determined to move on from high schools and began a string of jobs at the collegiate level. Always a defensive-line specialist, he coached at universities in Buffalo, Stockton, and Nashville. Ryan’s defense in Buffalo posted twelve shutouts in three years and produced a player named Gerry Philbin. Philbin was, in fact, a prototype Weeb Ewbank player: athletic but also smart and dedicated to the hard work of success. The Jets made him their third-round pick in the 1964 draft, and Ryan soon followed him to New York. Philbin became a star, chasing and sacking quarterbacks, while Ryan proved to be one of the most influential theoreticians, teachers, and enduring presences in the professional game for the next thirty years.
Noticing the great pains Ewbank and Knox took to protect their quarterback, Ryan dedicated himself to disrupting the passer. He believed it was the key to winning defense. He was as devoted to the blitz as Vince Lombardi was once opposed to it. His goal was to throw off the passer’s timing and, if at all possible, do him great physical harm in the process.
One of the ways in which Weeb was like a modern coach was in his understanding of the importance of having a “shutdown” corner, a man who could take an opponent’s best receiver out of the game. He brought one to the Jets when he invited free agent Johnny Sample to join his team. Sample had a long history with Weeb, and much of it was not positive.
Ewbank had drafted Sample for the Colts back in ’58. Johnny was an African American player from rural Virginia who found few takers for his talents when he graduated high school. So he moved one state north and became part of the very fine program at Maryland State, a historically black institution located on the so-called Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Sample was ahead of his time in a number of ways and in fact might be considered a precursor for the modern cornerback. At six feet one and 203 pounds, he had size and strength, as well as fine speed. But even his legs couldn’t keep up with his zooming mouth.
In only his second season Sample started in the 1959 championship game, a rematch between Baltimore and the Giants. He sought out New York’s star running back Frank Gifford in the pregame warm-ups just so he could hector him. Gifford, who also wrote a football column for one of the New York dailies, heard Sample impudently call out, “Hey, Gifford, when are you going to write an article about me?”
Frank meanly dismissed him.
“Kid,” he said, “I don’t even know your name.”
All day long Sample and Gifford jawed and jousted. “Hey, Hollywood, you’re too pretty to be playing this game,” Sample laughed. “I’m gonna mess up your pretty face.” Gifford, unused to shows of such extreme disrespect, sputtered vanilla retorts, such as calling Sample “bush leaguer.” Those lame responses only convinced Sample that he was winning a psychological war with his famous opponent. Johnny might have been right about that.
Gifford not only lost the battle of words but was badly defeated on the field, too. Sample easily bested him with two crucial fourth-quarter interceptions. One he picked off right in front of Gifford and ran it back for a touchdown. Sample’s other theft came courtesy of Gifford’s arm, as the halfback misfired on a kind of abbreviated flea-flicker play. The Colts converted that one into a field goal. Baltimore had trailed 9–7 going into the fourth quarter, but thanks in large part to Sample’s sensational performance they routed New York 31–16.
The Giants weren’t the only ones who disliked Johnny. Despite Sample’s fine play, the Colts also grew to despise him. This stemmed from an incident in which he was allegedly caught stealing from the players’ lockers. The Colts gradually realized that small amounts of money were pilfered from them while they sat in team meetings. If a player left $50 in his wallet, he might come back to find $20.
“We couldn’t figure out what the hell was happening,” Tom Matte said. “So we put [team trainer] Eddie Block up in the rafters to watch the lockers and find out.”
Matte said that Block saw Sample lagging behind the others. Once he was alone the defensive back sat on a stool with wheels and rolled from locker to locker in order to riffle through other players’ personal belongings. Naturally, Sample’s teammates were incensed by the intrusion and apparent theft. “I thought Gino Marchetti was going to kill him,” Matte said.
After the season Johnny was traded to Pittsburgh, where he matured as a player. Utilizing his brilliant mind as much as his physical assets, he intercepted eight passes. He kept careful notes on every receiver he faced and was aware of each one’s tendencies, compensating and adjusting for them. For instance, Sample had some success where few others did, limiting a rugged hombre like Cleveland’s tall and tough flanker Gary Collins. This was primarily because Johnny was insightful enough to notice that Collins preferred to cut inside instead of to the sidelines. So Sample lined up a step or two inside of Collins and forced him to go in a direction where he was less comfortable. Collins was one of the best receivers in the game, but his effectiveness against Sample in one stretch was limited to three short receptions. Johnny had a book like that on everyone.
Unfortunately, the same acuity that made Sample formidable on the field worked against him with his employers. He noticed that as the passing game became pro football’s dominant attraction, talented receivers made more money than most other players. So he complained, loudly and publicly and prophetically (as it turned out), that if pass catching was a skill worth investing in, then the ability to prevent receptions was equally valuable. He also noticed and spoke out against the unfair treatment of black players. This was a topic he discussed at length with his Steelers coach, Buddy Parker. After leaving Pittsburgh, unhappily, and taking up with the Redskins, Sample intercepted a pass against Pittsburgh and then ran to the Steelers’ sideline and threw the ball at Parker’s face, narrowly missing his old coach.
In his last two seasons with the Redskins Sample allowed only one touchdown pass and picked off ten. Nevertheless, at age twenty-nine, he was dismissed from Washington with no new offers in the league. He reached out to a plethora of NFL teams, but no one even bothered to return his calls. Feeling blackballed in the NFL, he reluctantly dialed up Weeb, a man he did not necessarily trust or like from past experience. Sample asked Ewbank for a job and got a position that was far better than he might have imagined. The Jets paid him more than any other defensive back in the AFL, and by 1968 he was accompanying Namath to midfield for coin tosses as the defensive captain.
All of the talent that Werblin and Weeb attracted to the Jets was ultimately overshadowed by the play and personal antics of just one man, Joe Namath. The former Alabama quarterback didn’t end up in New York by accident. Before Ewbank drafted Joe in 1965, he had already scouted, vetted, and discussed him for years. Chuck Knox, Weeb’s offensive-line coach, had an eye on Namath since the kid was in junior high school. Knox was a high school coach at Elwood City in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, right next door to Joe’s hometown of Beaver Falls. By the time he became an assistant on Ewbank’s staff, he had extensive knowledge about Namath to pass on. In addition to that, Weeb, one of the most well-connected men in football, knew Namath’s coach at Alabama, Paul “Bear” Bryant, very well. Ewbank and Bryant spoke often about Namath by phone. In one of their conversations Weeb told Bryant that he might draft the University of Miami’s George Mira, a quarterback he had seen perform exceptionally well in two different bowl games. That was in 1964, the year before Namath was available. But Bryant quickly talked Weeb out of that, telling him to be patient and wait one more year for Namath. Bryant had personally schooled Joe in running a prostyle offense.
Ewbank was disciplined and took Bryant’s advice. He waited for 1965, traded with Houston for the first overall selection in the AFL draft, and then selected Namath. Scouts everywhere noted Joe’s quick feet, fast release, and booming arm. Like many top prospects, Namath was lavished with praise. But when Bryant called Joe “the greatest athlete I ever coached,” it wasn’t hype. It really meant something.
Even so, Namath was far from a sure thing. “I had an awful knee. I had a bad knee,” Joe remembered. “I was surprised to get drafted. I only played the first four games and just small parts of the rest. I needed surgery. We didn’t have the type of expertise we have today in dealing with joints and physiology. It was a gamble. And it turned out I was damn lucky.”
Weeb and Sonny confidently selected Joe, but they were taking no more chances. In the second round they grabbed John Huarte, another quarterback, the Heisman winner, from Notre Dame. Before the day was over the Jets took two more quarterbacks. They wanted options in case things didn’t work out.
Namath had his options, too. The dysfunctional St. Louis Cardinals selected him in the first round of their draft, number twelve overall. Namath would decide where he would play; he had the power to choose the deal that was most appealing to him. His peers, by and large, chose their teams based on a list of shortsighted criteria. They typically went with the team that offered them a few thousand dollars more or the city that had the more pleasing climate.
Namath was smarter than that, or at least he had better advice. Coach Bryant, continuing to council him, encouraged Joe toward the Jets just as surely as he had guided Weeb to select Namath.
“Coach Bryant told me prior to my being signed or even drafted . . . to get to know my coaches and owners . . . and to make my decisions on those lines, not necessarily based on where or the exact dollar,” Namath said.
That advice easily tipped the scales in favor of Ewbank and the Jets. Weeb’s Colts were Namath’s favorite team growing up. His first football hero was Jim Mutscheller, Baltimore’s magnificent tight end. About thirteen years older than Namath, Mutscheller was also from Beaver Falls. A local boy who had made good on the national scene, Jim was a two-way player and a captain for legendary coach Frank Leahy at Notre Dame. In the pros he was one of Johnny U’s primary targets and a star of the ’58 championship game. Mutscheller was one of the most underappreciated players in league history, overshadowed in Baltimore’s high-flying aerial attack by the theatrics of Lenny Moore and the odd fascination that was Raymond Berry. But Mutscheller was a devastating weapon in his own right. In the championship against the Giants he narrowly missed scoring the winning touchdown in overtime when he hauled in a bold and unexpected pass from Unitas, but slipped on a patch of ice and fell out of bounds at the Giants’ 1. That set up Alan Ameche’s game-winning plunge, the photo of which appeared in every major newspaper in the country.
After football Mutscheller was a buttoned-up insurance agent, and his football accomplishments faded into history. But the fact was he came into professional ball about a decade before John Mackey and Mike Ditka, the two men credited with revolutionizing the tight-end position and changing its focus from blocking to pass catching. Mackey and Ditka were the first two tight ends to enter the Hall of Fame. Mutscheller was never accorded that honor, but statistically he was just as good as either one. Mutscheller scored forty career touchdowns, more than Mackey (thirty-eight) and barely less than Ditka (forty-three). Mutscheller hauled in 16.7 yards per reception, better than both of those stars.
Namath idolized Mutscheller for the rest of his life, and he admired the greatness of the Colts’ passing attack. As an aspiring quarterback himself, he felt a special kinship with Unitas. When Namath was a senior in high school his team purchased new uniforms, and along with the excitement of those clean, gleaming jerseys the coach allowed his players to choose their own numbers for the first time. Joe took 19 and accepted the nickname that went with it, “Joey U.”
All things considered, he was thrilled by the possibility of working for Ewbank, the man who had developed his heroes. Even all the things that Ewbank represented paled in comparison to what Sonny Werblin could give him. While the NFL’s Cardinals offered Namath a contract for about $50,000 per year, Werblin wheeled in the big guns. Sonny delivered a multiyear deal for more than $400,000. There was more. The Jets’ groundbreaking offer also included a luxury automobile for Joe and scouting jobs for his two brothers. Namath ran to the table to sign.
Much was made of the outlandish figure, the most money ever paid to a player up to that time. Primarily, it was a source of outrage that it was given to a young man who had a bum knee and who had yet to play a single down of pro ball.
Werblin was no fool, and he didn’t get rich throwing money away. As a show-business kingmaker he knew that the size of the contract itself would attract enormous attention to Namath and his Jets. In a world in which teams still relied on the gate to make a significant portion of their revenues, marketing was essential. Paying Namath big money not only ensured his services but also guaranteed that hordes of New York and national media members would focus their attention on the Jets. They would fill their newspapers and airwaves with news about the young, wealthy, and compelling quarterback and lavish publicity and credibility on his team and its league. With that one bold pen stroke, the Jets overshadowed Allie Sherman’s dismal and depressing football Giants in New York, and the AFL gained on its bitter opponent, the NFL. With Namath’s contract, the Jets were even bigger news than the fading Yankees in baseball.
Namath fed the media beast by playing the part of a sex symbol. Despite appearances, it wasn’t something that necessarily came naturally to him. There was a marked contrast between Joe’s father and the father of his persona. He grew up in Beaver Falls, an unpretentious town located in the heart of the Rust Belt, between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. His father, a Hungarian immigrant, started working in the steel mills while he was still just a teenager. He worked at the furnace for more than forty years. Later on he supplemented his income by selling shoes. Joe remembered a childhood with a lot of parental affection, but he had no false illusions about where he was in the family pecking order.
“I had three older brothers and an older sister,” he recalled. “Until I was fifteen I thought my name was ‘Shut Up.’”
Sonny Werblin made sure that Beaver Falls Joe was a far cry from Broadway Joe. The man who made a fortune representing entertainers facilitated Namath’s transition from modest young man to media superstar.
“If Sonny Werblin wasn’t the president of the New York Jets, Joe Namath would have probably been a different package publicly,” Joe said. “Sonny Werblin believed in the star system. He promoted the star system better than any of the owners prior to his coming to the AFL. He knew that stars sold tickets.”
To sell those tickets Werblin exploited Namath’s natural charm and good looks and led him to a lifestyle usually condemned by football coaches and owners. With Sonny’s approval Joe led the league in nocturnal adventures. “I’d go out with Mr. and Mrs. Werblin three to four nights a week,” Namath said. “[Werblin] wanted me to learn New York. He wanted me to get around New York. He wanted to get us on the sports pages. He wanted the Jets to get up there and get our fan base up.”
Namath was certainly making fans. He was photographed at the hottest nightspots and parties, escorting models and actresses with lustrous teeth and hypnotic cleavage. Joe’s reputation as a “player” far overshadowed his skills as one of the world’s best football players. It got to the point that other quarterbacks envied him more for what he did between the sheets than between the lines.
Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach even went so far as to complain about Namath’s good fortune with the ladies on national TV.
“I enjoy sex as much as Joe Namath,” Roger said. “I just do it with one woman.”
He had to be kidding. No one in America thought anyone enjoyed sex as much as Joe Namath did.
Namath’s hedonistic lifestyle was reflected in his appearance. “He was a very singular character in dress and manner,” Gay Talese, a New York sportswriter in the 1960s, said. “His manner was nonchalant, very much a man of the night. Contrary to what sports preaches in terms of keeping your health and don’t do this and don’t do that, don’t drink too much, don’t take drugs, don’t fuck around too much. All of this sort of Puritan ethic that’s supposed to be but never really is the code of conduct of the professional successful athlete, Namath violated.”
Unlike the rising tide of black players with serious issues on their minds, Talese noted that Namath was “not a political force in this country. He was a social force, a contrarian.”
Joe was a shiny object. He captivated the nation and redefined the definition of a football fan. His movie-star presence in the stadium expanded the base of interested parties from paunchy middle-aged men marveling at the grace and violence of younger men to a vast new market of women who were finding a popular-culture icon in Namath. Joe’s allure went well beyond the football field. He was as noted for his polish as any male in the country, leading him to author a book called A Matter of Style.
“There was a fusion between the fashion of Namath and the guy who Namath was,” Talese said. “Namath dressed like Clyde Frazier,” a basketball star on the New York Knicks. “Frazier was a rather colorless player, but off the field, the way he dressed and composed himself, he was cool.”
Namath and Frazier both sported full-length fur coats. Clyde supplemented his ensemble with outrageously wide-brimmed fedoras. All of this personality and style had only one landing spot, and for Joe that was Madison Avenue. He starred in a variety of commercials that took advantage of his devilish persona. In one spot, featuring a naughty double entendre, Namath is “creamed” by the famous beauty Farrah Fawcett; she covers his face in Noxzema shaving foam. He tells her she has a great pair . . . of hands.
After that activity he let everyone know that he wore Brut aftershave. Why? Because “you’ve got to be ready to go all the way,” he said.
In another commercial the steelworker’s son dons a pair of Beauty Mist pantyhose to prove that the product “could make any legs look like a million dollars.”
While Sonny Werblin’s Jets were interesting and theatrical, delighting sports fans in New York and across the United States, they were nevertheless irritating four old men. These men—Don Lillis, Phil Iselin, Townsend Martin, and Leon Hess—happened to be Sonny’s business partners and equal owners of the team. They weren’t showmen like Werblin. They were businessmen, more attached to bottom-line results than the fun that could be had along the way. As managing partner Werblin had stolen the spotlight from them. It is more likely, however, that the source of their dissatisfaction was Sonny’s performance. By the spring of 1968, five full years into the Werblin and Weeb regime, the Jets were a loser by almost every standard.
The team had not yet won so much as a single division title. Ewbank’s overall regular-season record in New York was below .500. As for Namath, he played exactly like a man who drank and screwed too much. He threw fifty-five interceptions in the last two seasons alone.
For the Jets’ owners the most aggravating statistics of all were on the ledger books. Despite leading the AFL in attendance every season since 1963, the Jets were still showing a net financial loss. The ownership group blamed Werblin and his extravagances.
Sonny’s partners were done running a profligate operation, and they moved to assert themselves. The other owners demanded that Werblin either buy them out or sell his stake to them. Sonny, citing the pleasure of professional football ownership but not the return, divested. His partners paid him $2–$3 million for his one-fifth share of the club. But before departing Sonny gave the fans one last gift and signed Namath to a contract extension, consulting with no one before pulling the trigger and inking the deal.
Ewbank’s continued employment was another matter. Weeb had been Werblin’s handpicked choice for coach and general manager. But with Sonny gone Ewbank was at the mercy of Don Lillis, the new managing partner. Lillis’s mission was for change, and he made no secret of the fact that Weeb’s status was under review. Lillis brazenly met with Vince Lombardi at an Italian restaurant on Third Avenue in the Bronx and discussed the possibility of the former Packer coach taking over the Jets in 1968 as coach, general manager, or both. Lombardi, an NFL loyalist and close friend of Giants owner Wellington Mara, turned Lillis down.
Even with Lombardi’s rejection still fresh, Lillis didn’t bother mincing words. “We would have loved to have Lombardi,” he said. “Everybody wants Lombardi, why shouldn’t they?” Lillis also made it clear that Ewbank’s Jets weren’t performing up to expectations. “We want to have a winning team,” Lillis said. “We haven’t got that yet.”
So maybe for the only time in history, a disappointing string of seasons led to the owner being fired and the head coach being retained. Weeb wasn’t appreciated, but he was back at the helm of the magnificent team and coaching staff he had worked so tirelessly and intelligently to assemble.
In 1968 all of the turmoil and intrigue surrounding the Jets somehow led to the greatest season in their history. How far they had come was evident by how well they performed against the AFL’s elite. In the first game of the year they beat the Kansas City Chiefs, only a year removed from Super Bowl I. A single point decided the game, as Namath cracked the 300-yard passing barrier and threw for two touchdowns—both to Maynard. In fact, New York would lose only three times in 1968. One of those stumbles came against the Oakland Raiders in a thrilling November game.
The Raiders had to score two touchdowns in the last minute to pull out the victory. It was a dramatic and telling contest. It also entered the public lore, not because of the great action on the field, but rather due to a decision at the television network. As the game stretched beyond the three-hour barrier, NBC switched from the game to Heidi, the Sunday family movie. Thousands of irate fans flooded NBC with seething calls. So many came in at one time, the network’s switchboard crashed. While it was a momentary PR disaster, it provided tangible if cranky proof of how engrossing professional football was and just how passionate and numerous its fans were. The Jets lost the “Heidi Bowl,” as it came to be known, squandering a heroic effort by Namath. The Raiders abused him, and on one particularly vicious hit they knocked his helmet off and fractured his jaw. But the man who would slip into pantyhose on national television for money proved that he was also one of the toughest men in football. He shrugged off the terrific pain and remained in the game to throw for 370 yards and three touchdowns against his tormentors.
From the first day of his career Namath was one of the most famous professional football players in America. Now he was also one of the most respected, even in the hallowed quarters of the game. Paul Brown, his long exile from football over, had resurfaced as both the coach and the owner of the AFL’s new Cincinnati Bengals franchise. He had coached Otto Graham, brought in Frank Ryan, and lived to regret having lost his shot at Unitas. He knew that masterful quarterbacking was the key in professional football, regardless of the league.
“Because of their passer, the Jets have at least an equal chance against any team in football,” the shaman of coaches said. Brown drew a short line from Namath to a possible Jets victory in the Super Bowl, still weeks away. New York could potentially beat “Baltimore, Dallas or anybody in the National [Football League],” he said. In fact, Brown saw a key difference between the Jets and all the other teams hoping to win the world championship: “They don’t have Joe Namath.”
On a cold and blustery day at Shea Stadium the Jets played the Raiders again, this time for the AFL Championship. In a showcase of great quarterbacks, Namath squared off against “the Mad Bomber,” Oakland’s dangerous Darryl Lamonica. Both teams tempted fate and threw into the squalls. Lamonica, already a Super Bowl veteran and the AFL’s reigning MVP, lit up the skies. He threw for more than 400 yards and a touchdown, with most of that production going to his favorite target, Fred Biletnikoff. Johnny Sample drew the short straw of defending the future Hall of Famer and chose to make the job an exercise in cheap shots.
All day long Sample assaulted Biletnikoff with late hits, forearming the receiver in the back of the head again and again even when the ball was nowhere in sight. In the end Fred had the last word. He torched the Jets’ defensive captain for 190 yards and burned him for a touchdown when the cornerback missed an easy tackle. For Sample it was an embarrassing performance on many levels.
The Jets one-upped Lamonica’s brilliant performance with a balanced attack. Snell and Boozer rushed for a combined 122 yards against the Raiders, and Namath threw for three touchdowns. The Jets were able to overcome Lamonica’s sensational day, Johnny Sample’s ineptitude, and a late and nearly devastating interception by Namath to pull out a thrilling 27–23 victory.
In the afterglow of such a victory, fans all over the country focused on Namath. But Ewbank, the consummate professional, knew that it took more than one man to win big football games. “There are about 50 strong hearts out here,” he said. “That’s where the key was.”
When Ewbank looked at his Jets he saw all heart, but when the sporting press and public turned their eyes to the Colts they saw a mauler. Many referred to Baltimore as the greatest team ever assembled. The numbers would back up that assessment. Statistically, they were the equals of the 1962 Packers. Both teams went 13-1 in the regular season. With three Hall of Famers in their backfield, the Packers scored more points, 415 to the Colts’ 402, but Baltimore’s defense was even more formidable than the Packers’ had been and gave up 4 fewer points. Although the two teams were only six years apart, professional football and the NFL in particular seemed to be light-years ahead of where it was even a short time earlier. The players seemed bigger and faster and the game more competitive than it ever had been. The 1965 draft alone was tangible proof that the caliber of athlete was improving by great strides. The Bears chose two players for the ages in consecutive picks when they snatched Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers with the third and fourth overall picks. One would develop into the most dynamic and disruptive defensive player in the history of the game and the other the most fluid, graceful, and, yes, beautiful runner. The first round of the draft was as notable for the fine players who did not make the Hall of Fame as for the ones who did. The depth of talent included Craig Morton, who eventually quarterbacked two different teams to Super Bowls; Donny Anderson, soon to be Paul Hornung’s successor in Green Bay; Jack Snow, a receiver with great speed and hands to match; and Tom Nowatzke, a crunching fullback. The Colts took “Mad Dog” Mike Curtis, a fullback from Duke whom Shula developed into one of the game’s fiercest linebackers. As the draft progressed beyond the first round, more Hall of Famers and superstars would come off the board. The fans saw all of this to the advantage of the NFL, but in fact the AFL was keeping pace or more likely gaining ground on its older rival. While Butkus and Sayers both went to Chicago, they came at a rare moment of decline for the famous franchise. Neither one would ever play in a single postseason game. George Halas was still in charge then, but he was fading fast. Papa Bear was born in the nineteenth century and began his own playing career in 1920 when he was an opponent of Jim Thorpe. By 1965 the world was entering the Space Age, and Halas was seventy years old and in steep decline. “By then Halas’s assistants were doing most of the coaching,” Shula remembered.
The stars who went to the AFL from that draft went to franchises that were rapidly on the rise. Namath, of course, landed with the Jets to play for Ewbank, a coach who was still at the top of his game and who had his greatest moments of glory still ahead of him. In the draft’s second round the Oakland Raiders selected Fred Biletnikoff, a receiver from Florida State. Two years later the Oakland organization would go to Super Bowl II, and they would still be going to Super Bowls in the 1970s and ’80s. In fact, the AFL had great coaches, progressive ideas, and dynamic young passers. Like baseball’s National League in the 1950s, the AFL was making great strides against its more conservative and racist rival by embracing the great wealth of suppressed talent in the black communities. The new league was drafting and signing African American players with greater frequency, urgency, and enthusiasm than the NFL ever had.
That the public and press still saw the older league as by and large superior to the start-up was largely a consequence of branding and public relations, two skills that were as ascendant in the 1960s as football was. Both leagues were essentially choosing from the same pool of players, but fans still believed that the jersey or helmet decal made one player superior to another. That was the branding.
The PR was provided in a couple of ways. After the first Super Bowl Vince Lombardi told the assembled press that “Kansas City is a good football team, but their team doesn’t compare with the top National Football League teams.” If Saint Vince said it, it was taken as the gospel. The same kind of a message was also delivered by Sports Illustrated, then the nation’s premier sports-information venue. In the days before ESPN and the Internet, Sports Illustrated provided insight and shaped opinions. The leading pro football writer at SI was a man named Tex Maule. Maule had worked with future NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in the 1950s when both were with the Rams organization. Maule left the league to cover pro football for SI, and he had many of the makings of a successful reporter. He was enterprising and intelligent, with a prose style that was in the tradition of the old-fashioned hard-boiled writer. It was spare and masculine writing that stressed facts over frivolous style. That’s not to say that he was dull. Tex’s stories often raised intriguing questions and answered them with open access to the players and coaches and exhaustive interviewing from multiple sources. His typewriter transported readers into the locker rooms and the homes of the players as he unlocked the secrets of the game for his readers. Tex lacked only one key ingredient of a great reporter, but it was a big one. He wasn’t objective. He clearly had a bias for the National Football League that was based on something other than the empirical evidence. He showed this partisanship in both aggressive and passive ways. He might choose to ignore the newer league and its stars in pieces about the best players in the game, or he could be overtly insulting. After the AFL and NFL Championship Games, he wrote, “The pro football championship of the world was rather definitely decided on a mushy field in Cleveland on Dec. 29 when the Baltimore Colts crushed the Browns 34–0 for the NFL title.” In a faux display of balanced reporting he allowed that the Colts would have to “ratify” their claim to the title in the Super Bowl, but then he ticked off a list of reasons they would easily do it.
Every time Maule praised the Jets he followed it up by damning them, too. He called Namath “phenomenal,” but then discounted the compliment by predicting that the Colts’ “bristling pass rush” wouldn’t give him enough time to throw. He said New York had three “very good receivers” but then condescendingly called them “the key to the Jets’ minimal chances.”
The crooked noses in Las Vegas also bought into the hype. Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, an infamous Las Vegas handicapper, put the Colts on a pedestal and made them seventeen-point favorites. It was a gigantic margin, hardly befitting a climactic game between two battle-proven champions. It was just another slap in the face to the Jets and their league.
It wasn’t fair, maybe, but it all added up to delicious theater.
At some point, however, the game is wrestled away from the commentators and writers and prognosticators, and it is put back into the hands of the coaches and the players themselves. Usually, this happens long before the opening kickoff, as everybody experiences anew the pressure and glare of the biggest stage.
Namath took to it as though he were congenitally disposed to having two hundred million pairs of eyes watching his every move. His ability to thrive under the pressure was summed up by a press photo of him lounging around a Miami pool, his hairy chest exposed while he wore nothing but swim trunks, sunglasses, and a wide white smile.
Colts quarterback Earl Morrall was having a far different experience. Soon after the NFL Championship Game, he lived through “one of the most hectic periods” he had ever endured. The lease on the tiny Towson apartment he and Jane had shoehorned his family into was set to expire just three days after the NFL Championship Game. So immediately upon flying home from Cleveland, exhausted and aching, he had to pack his family’s belongings in a U-Haul. He also had to deal with the fact that three of his four kids were suffering from a virus. The couple planned to drive back to Michigan with their possessions in tow, but Jane was worn down and couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in the backseat with three vomity kids and two dachshunds for a nine-hour drive. So Morrall drove her and the children to the airport, put them on a plane, and then lit out for Michigan by himself. But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal. Jane’s flight landed with a swift jolt, and the Morralls’ one-year-old son was jerked forward by the impact. He cut his little chin so badly, blood spurted everywhere. Jane had to quickly borrow a car from a friend and rush her son to the family pediatrician’s home.
When the exhausted quarterback arrived after his long drive, he had to check on his ill children, his hurt child, and his overwrought wife; he had to unload his family’s belongings; and then he had to head right back and rejoin his team. After that it was off to Miami. It was an incredible set of responsibilities and an ambitious travel schedule for any man, let alone one about to go to work in front of tens of millions of people. Earl, a loving father and committed husband, never complained.
While Morrall was mostly out of sight, Joe Namath made himself conspicuous and entertained the press by stoking controversy. For instance, when a reporter asked him what he thought of Earl Morrall’s game, Namath gave a withering response. “Lamonica is a better passer than Morrall,” he said, referring to the “Mad Bomber” from Oakland, whom he’d just vanquished.
And then he really got insulting.
“You put Babe Parilli with Baltimore and Baltimore might have been better. Babe throws better than Morrall,” Namath said, ranking his own backup quarterback above the reigning NFL MVP. And he didn’t stop there. Namath bragged that the AFL quarterbacks were generally better than those in the NFL, and he ticked off a few names to prove it: “John Hadle, Lamonica, myself, and Bob Griese.”
He was, in a sense, both right and impudent. The AFL certainly did have fine quarterback talent. Namath might have also mentioned future Hall of Famers George Blanda and Len Dawson. But there was no question that the attack on Morrall was also mean-spirited. Namath had heaped humiliation on a man with an exemplary character who outlasted a great deal of professional misfortune to enjoy his brief moment in the sun. What’s more, Namath’s remarks were highly unusual in an era when the players were restrained about insulting each other, at least publicly; ballers were competitive, crude, and analytical in private, but they rarely deprecated each other’s skills in the press. The players, then, looked upon each other with a respect born out of a mutual understanding for how hard it was to succeed in their violent league.
But Namath wasn’t a part of their league, and he didn’t care about their traditions.
“When I got asked the question about what I thought of Earl’s skill set,” Namath remembered, “the National Football League was still frowned upon [by AFL players]. The [NFL] still looked down on us. There was still some dislike there. And not knowing one another, I defended our league and our players.”
Shula showed reporters a quick flash of his famous temper and addressed Joe’s attack on his quarterback. “I don’t know how Namath can rap Morrall,” the Colts’ coach said. “He can say whatever he wants to say, but I don’t see how he can rap a guy who led the league in passing.”
Morrall felt deeply affronted by the insult. Although it wasn’t in his nature to take shots at other players, he offered a rejoinder. He didn’t question Namath’s efficacy or downgrade the AFL players or teams in general. He attacked Joe’s character.
“I wouldn’t want any of my kids to grow up and be another Joe Namath,” Earl said.
Morrall’s words had very little sting in a society where the values were changing rapidly and beyond his comprehension. Namath, of course, was neither shamed by Earl nor cowed by the Colts. On the week of the game he ran into Lou Michaels, Baltimore’s defensive end and placekicker, in a cocktail lounge, of all places. Michaels and Namath were strangely connected. They were both western Pennsylvanians. Michaels knew Namath’s brother; they played football together at the University of Kentucky. And Namath knew Michaels’s brother Walt, the Jets’ well-regarded defensive coach.
With a scotch in his hands Namath ambled over to Michaels and said, “We’re going to beat the hell out of you. And I’m going to do it.”
Michaels was known as “a tough son of a bitch.” As a defensive end at Kentucky he was said to have injured eight players in one spring. Michaels injured so many offensive tackles and guards, running backs, and fullbacks—all his teammates—the coaches decided to hold him out of spring practice for the health of their players and the success of their program. One year, when the Wildcats had an offensive tackle they no longer wanted, they told Michaels to “beat the shit out of him” every day in practice until he quit. This was the man that Namath was blithely baiting in a barroom. Of course, Broadway Joe had no intention of fighting Michaels. Before the two could square off Namath turned on the charm, paid everyone’s check, and even gave Michaels a ride back to his hotel room.
Miraculously, no one had gotten punched. But Michaels didn’t care for Namath’s abrasive style. The end-of-evening pleasantries didn’t mollify him. The two would meet again just a few nights later at a Miami awards dinner, where Joe was honored as the “Professional Football Player of the Year.” When Namath stepped to the podium to speak, a voice from the back of the room shouted, “Hey, Namath, we’re gonna kick your ass.”
“Who is that,” Namath asked squinting into the crowd, “Lou Michaels?”
And then, again, Joe’s lips got a little loose, and he uttered the words that would immortalize him and transform professional football.
“I got news for you, buddy,” Joe boldly said. “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it.”
No one in the room saw anything extraordinary in the exchange, and only one media member on the scene, Luther Evans of the Miami Herald, even bothered to report it. But that was all it took. With interest in the game so intense, Namath’s swagger and braggadocio were international news.
It was, in the conventional wisdom of football, a terribly stupid thing to say—but only for about three days.
While much of the country obsessed about the personal histrionics between Namath and the Colts, one of the most extraordinary stories of the matchup went underreported. It had been six years since Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank. It was just enough time for Weeb to have assembled virtually the entire New York roster, but not so much time that the core of excellent coaches and players he left behind in Baltimore had eroded. Don Shula himself had been scouted, acquired, and coached by Ewbank.
One man assembling much or most of both Super Bowl participants was an unprecedented situation. It’s likely that no coach in history ever had a better understanding of his Super Bowl opponent than Ewbank enjoyed that day.
Was it a major strategic advantage?
Almost fifty years later Joe Namath said that it was not. “His knowledge and our knowledge of those Colts were very good because we did a lot of studying,” Joe said. “You have new faces on teams every year. You don’t go back and say, ‘Well, three years ago they were doing this, or this was that two years ago.’ You study that team you’re playing and the personnel that’s on that team now. We were studying that year’s edition of the Baltimore Colts, not what they did yesteryear.”
But Namath did allow that understanding a team’s historical tendencies could provide valuable information. “Sure, there are some things about coaches studying the history of other coaches and how they approach a game, or approach a team, that does a certain thing,” he said.
In fact, the Colts rarely lost in the years after Ewbank relinquished them to Shula. Despite the presence of Unitas, the Colts’ backbone had always been their intimidating upper-echelon defense. There were, however, two offensive teams that had notable success against Baltimore’s defenders. One, of course, was Lombardi’s Packers; by 1968 Green Bay had beaten the Colts seven out of ten times in the Shula-Lombardi era. The other team was Cleveland. In 1964 they engineered the biggest upset in championship-game history against the Colts, and in 1968 the Browns were the only team to beat Baltimore. The Browns and Packers had a few things in common. Number one, they had wily and experienced coaches who knew how to find even the best team’s weaknesses. More important, both the Packers and the Browns ran the ball extremely well.
Lombardi consistently took advantage of Baltimore’s defense over the years. The Packers knew how to tighten the Colts with the threat of the run and then snap them with precise passing. They did it with the most well-schooled offensive line in the game blocking for Hall of Fame runners like Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung.
Blanton Collier’s Browns also had the right formula for taking down Baltimore. They did it in the ’64 championship game with Jim Brown grinding the yards and opening the passing lanes for Frank Ryan and Gary Collins. And the Browns bested the Colts again in 1968 when Leroy Kelly rushed for 130 yards. That allowed Bill Nelson to throw three short, fluttering touchdown passes.
Passing success against Baltimore came from grinding yards on the ground. That was the only thing that could move the disciplined Colts defenders ever so slightly out of position. As Chuck Noll knew and preached, players who were cheating a step or two in the wrong direction were vulnerable to being burned by a smart quarterback like Bart Starr or Frank Ryan or even mediocre quarterbacks like Zeke Bratkowski or Bill Nelsen. And, of course, running the ball had one other major benefit: it burned the clock and kept the ball out of Unitas’s dangerous hands, lessening his opportunities.
If Johnny U couldn’t touch the ball, he couldn’t kill you.
The hard part of the equation was actually running against the Colts’ stout defense. In 1968 it was better than any Baltimore unit Lombardi had ever faced.
“That version of the Baltimore Colts was touted as the best defensive unit that ever played,” Namath said. “All you had to do was look at the films and watch them and see how good they were.”
Namath appreciated the Colts’ defense, but he wasn’t intimidated by it. “It wasn’t the kind of defense that we didn’t think we could take advantage of,” he said.
From the very first play of the game it was clear that the Jets followed the same template as Green Bay and the Browns. After breaking the huddle the Jets lined up conventionally. But in a flash the two guards stood up and shifted two slots to the right. They created an unbalanced line, a show of force, right in front of Baltimore’s left side, where young, aggressive defenders Bubba Smith and Mike Curtis roamed a ferocious patrol. Instead of running behind this advantage, Namath handed the ball to Matt Snell, who went charging in the opposite direction. He smashed into the line’s weak side, away from the shift, and knifed his way for 3 yards. His massive body was brought to the ground by defensive end Ordell Braase and outside linebacker Don Shinnick. It was a simple short-yardage play, yet a highly significant and telling moment. Namath wasted no time going right back to Snell. He again attacked Baltimore’s right side. This time Snell bolted past Shinnick and Braase for 9 yards. He was brought down only by the Colts’ safety Rick Volk. Volk was fast and tough and a very fine football player, but at 195 pounds he was on the losing end of a physical mismatch with the massive Snell, who weighed 220. The two met in a violent helmet-to-helmet collision that put Volk to sleep. The Colts’ safety was taken from the field, unconscious.
If those two plays didn’t set the tone for the game, per se, they did telegraph how the Jets would approach the superb Baltimore defense. They had the choice of attacking Bubba Smith and Mike Curtis on the right or Ordell Braase and Don Shinnick on the left. Smith and Curtis represented the coming of modern football players, men who were bigger and faster than ever before. Braase and Shinnick were wily veterans, both drafted by Weeb. They went all the way back to the Colts’ glory seasons of 1958 and ’59. Braase had an excellent career but was overshadowed by Gino Marchetti. Shinnick was a rare and valuable commodity, a linebacker with thirty-seven career interceptions, the most in league history for the position. Both had solid careers behind them. But by kickoff of Super Bowl III, Shinnick was thirty-three and Braase almost thirty-seven.
“We never ran to their strength,” Namath said.
Bubba Smith “was one guy we wanted to stay away from as much as possible,” Namath confessed, “because of how good he was and because of the size mismatch.”
Namath was alluding to the fact that Bubba was not facing the Jets’ usual starting tackle Sam Walton. Walton, at six feet five and 270 pounds, was a massive player for that era. But he was a rookie, and not a very adept one at that. So Ewbank made contingency plans and replaced Walton at tackle with Jets guard Dave Herman, even though he was smaller.
“Ewbank, first of all, didn’t think [Walton] could handle a guy from the Raiders named Ike Lassiter,” Namath said, referring to Oakland’s defensive end from the AFL Championship Game the week before. “And he sure didn’t want to trust the rookie tackle to handle Bubba Smith. That’s how Dave Herman moved out to tackle.”
Meanwhile, the Jets’ best run blocker was their right tackle Winston Hill. Winston was lined up right across from Braase. If the Jets looked at the Colts and saw the greatest defense of all time, at least they also saw a path.
The Colts’ first possession of the game also told the story of their day. The first time Morrall touched the ball he threw a screen to his favorite target, John Mackey. The great tight end rumbled downfield, showing off his balance and power as he swatted away the Jets, who looked puny in his presence. The play went for 19 easy yards. Then Earl went to the ground and pitched to Tom Matte running a classic sweep. In an instant, on two plays designed for short yardage, the Colts had gone just shy of 30 yards. After that Jerry Hill and Tom Matte took turns rushing the ball. And then Morrall went to the air. He missed Jimmy Orr. In a third-and-13 jam, Earl calmly faded back and flipped the ball to his reserve tight end Tom Mitchell for 15 yards and another first down. The Colts were on the Jets’ 19 with a fresh set of downs and incredible momentum.
But then Baltimore abandoned the running game for the remainder of the drive. Morrall barely missed on two straight passes, one to Richardson and one to Mitchell, both at about the Jets’ 5-yard line. The Jets’ line encouraged Earl’s inaccuracies, by pressuring him and forcing him to rush his attempts. Earl faded back once more, hoping to salvage the drive, but the Jets blitzed. They nearly sacked him 7 yards deep, but Earl was strong and fast and made it back to the line of scrimmage before finally submitting.
Shula sent in Joe Namath’s buddy Lou Michaels to attempt a field goal from the 26. Michaels was a left-footed straight-ahead kicker in the classic style. Booting from the left hash mark, he stepped into the ball at a severe angle. It twirled through the air but never came close to the uprights. It sailed wide right. Very wide right.
The Colts’ adventure in Jets territory was a lot like Lou Michaels’s barroom encounter with Namath. Baltimore menaced the Jets but failed to deliver a punch. After dominating the line of scrimmage and holding the ball for eleven plays, the Colts walked away, meekly, without a single point.
Now, with the ball back in hand, Namath decided to uncork. He faded back for three straight unambitious passes. He made a first down, but his attempts were relatively conservative. Then he faded way back for his fourth pass in a row and unleashed a long, arcing precise pass to Don Maynard. The ball traveled 50 yards through the Miami sky. It was so beautifully thrown, with a rotation so tight, it resembled nothing so much as a comet, zooming through heaven with a tail of fire. Maynard, who had beaten the Colts’ safety Jerry Logan by several steps, somehow could not catch the perfectly thrown ball. If the sight of Namath, the flamethrower, napalming their defense did not strike fear on the Colts’ bench, it must have elicited gasps in the row houses back in Baltimore.
In the end, it was only an incomplete pass. But it was also a calling card.
Near the conclusion of the first quarter came the game’s first major break. Namath hit George Sauer with a short pass at New York’s own 13. Sauer had no sooner caught the ball than the great veteran defensive back Leonard Lyles came rushing in. Lyles applied a textbook tackle, utilizing the crown of his helmet to unglue the ball from Sauer’s sure hands. When the cargo spilled to the ground, Ron Porter, an alert Colts linebacker, pounced on it. With the turnover Baltimore’s potent offense was only 13 yards from the game’s first touchdown.
Morrall softened up the defense with Hill, who dove for a yard. And then he pitched it to Matte, who galloped all the way to the Jets’ 6. Morrall decided it was time to strike. He sent reliable Tom Mitchell into the end zone on a short curl-in. It was a perfect call. Mitchell was between defenders, but open, and Morrall didn’t hesitate; he fired directly at him. The ball was slightly tipped by a Jets linebacker, changing its trajectory from Mitchell’s sure hands to his shoulder, where it clipped his protective armor. The ball ricocheted high into the air before descending like an easy pop-up to the Jets’ Randy Beverly, who cradled it in the corner of the end zone. Instead of the touchdown the Colts deserved, it was a turnover.
While the stunned crowd and TV cameras focused on that game-changing play, far from the action Johnny Sample sneaked up behind Tom Matte and clubbed him in the back of the head with his forearm. Matte, furious, wheeled around with the intention of thumping Sample. Instead, Matte’s face mask found the referee and rearranged the official’s grillwork. Matte knocked out four of the man’s teeth, and Sample skated away without so much as a flag.
The interception itself was a freak play that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Blame for it could not be rationally applied to any player or coach. Earl had made a sound play call. Tom Mitchell executed a perfect pattern. And Morrall’s throw literally hit him. Nevertheless, Baltimore’s opportunity had been squandered, irretrievably lost.
So the ball went from Morrall’s hands back to Joe Namath’s. For New York, something was about to happen, and at the most opportune time and unlikely place. Years of Weeb’s planning, scouting, drafting, and teaching were all about to coalesce in a single drive. His protégé Namath, a man he had personally schooled and tutored in the art of reading defenses, was in command. Joe called his plays in the huddle and at the line of scrimmage and engineered a masterful drive of 80 yards and twelve plays. In a series that lasted four and a half minutes Namath continued to assert Snell where Braase, Shinnick, and Lyles struggled to contain him. When Joe read blitz from Baltimore’s aggressive and speedy left, he called for a screen pass that rendered the speed, aggressiveness, and sheer greatness of Bubba Smith and Mike Curtis useless. Meanwhile, the Jets moved even deeper into Baltimore territory. With a fresh first down and the Colts chastened by the Jets’ churning ground game and screen passes, Namath peered downfield and found Sauer twice in a row for a combined 25 yards. Both passes were also aimed at the Colts’ vulnerable right side. Defensive back Leonard Lyles was accumulating downfield tackles on runs and completed passes, both a sign of doom.
Joe went back to the ground for a play, and then, with the blitzers once again charging into his face, he flipped another perfectly sold screen to Snell. The Colts emerged from the pile to find their backs against the wall. The Jets were first and goal to go with the ball on the Colts’ 9. When another quick run by Snell picked up 5 yards, the Jets were just 4 yards from the game’s first touchdown. Shula sent in Lou Michaels for Braase and substituted for Shinnick as well. It didn’t matter. Namath handed the ball right back to Snell. The substitute defenders were no more effective containing him than the starters had been. Snell ran right past them and then trampled Lyles on his way into the end zone.
The drive was a tour de force, a triumph of Matt Snell’s speed and brutal power, George Sauer’s precise route running, and, of course, Broadway Joe’s well-prepared and disciplined mind. Namath used all of his assets to overpower, deceive, and sucker the Colts. He had a battering ram fullback, but aimed him at the Colts’ soft spots. He had a cannon, but fired it at open targets. If there were Colts who could do him harm, he merely avoided them. He slowed everyone down with traps and screens.
Brilliant as that drive was, it could lead to only seven points. It was a slim margin, and it was only the second quarter. Plenty of time was left for Baltimore, yet the Colts had so much expected of them, they were already, in a sense, in the loser’s column. The hype that had been so excessively in their favor was exposed as a lie. They knew it, and so did millions of others. Anyone could see it. The Colts’ battalion had stumbled into a jungle where the old rules didn’t apply. The Colts faced men who were better trained and had greater incentives to victory than they had been led to believe. Baltimore was caught in the ravine, the enemy was in the hills all around them, and the artillery was raining down on them.
There was no quit or panic in the dutiful Morrall or, for that matter, in the emergent Matte. In a drive that featured Earl connecting with Tom on a 30-yard pass, the Colts went all the way to the Jets’ 28 before the drive once again stalled and Michaels, again, missed his attempt at a field goal.
Next time the Colts had the ball Matte did his best to leave nothing to chance. He took a simple pitch for an abbreviated sweep, broke a tackle, and then sprinted his wide body for 58 yards. He took the Colts from their own 26 all the way down to the Jets’ 16 all by himself. He was barely touched along the path. After Matte was tackled and lying prone on the ground, Johnny Sample came in late and kneed him in the chest and stomach. The two, again, exchanged harsh words.
The momentum provided by Matte’s broad shoulders and fast legs wouldn’t last long. Two plays later Morrall was back in the air. He locked onto Willie Richardson in the end zone, but there were four Jets in the vicinity. Morrall inexplicably fired into that phalanx anyway. None other than Johnny Sample picked him off. The ex-Colt covered the big and swift Richardson superbly well. Sample fell to the ground on the 2-yard line. Then he popped up and shoved the ball into Richardson’s face mask.
“This is what you’re looking for,” Sample said to Richardson, grinding in the humiliation. With that Johnny ran off the field, exulting in his clutch play and his mean mouth.
The Jets could do nothing with the possession, however, and soon punted it back to Baltimore. The Colts had good field position—they were on the Jets’ 42—and they had plenty of time to strike. There were forty-three seconds left on the clock. But the Jets were playing deep, and they were determined to deny the Colts the end zone. Hoping to pick up significant yardage underneath, Morrall dumped an outlet pass to Jerry Hill. The fullback could gain only a single yard, however, and Morrall called time-out.
With twenty-five seconds left before the half the quarterback attended a grim conference with Shula and McCafferty on the sidelines. Trying to avoid the ignominy of being shut out by the supposedly weak Jets at halftime, the Colts decided they would make it to the end zone with a deception that would beat the Jets’ deep zone. Out of the sideline conference came the call for the “Flea-Flicker,” a play the Colts had used earlier in the year in a surprisingly close game with Atlanta. It called for Morrall to hand to Matte, who would sweep to the right and then stop and pass the ball back to Morrall. Earl would then throw a bomb to Jimmy Orr, who ran a fake post pattern to encourage the defensive backs to flow in the direction of the “run.” But then Jimmy would quickly cut back to the outside and zoom for the flag, where, if all went right, he would be all alone. That’s the way it worked against the Falcons, anyway, and Jimmy walked into the end zone.
The Jets’ defense ran things slightly differently than Atlanta had. They double-covered Jimmy. Cornerback Randy Beverly had the “short responsibility,” while safety Bill Baird had the “deepest-widest” responsibility. But the brilliance of the play call was rooted in Matte’s explosive success. At this point in the game Tom was the leading ground gainer and a threat to go all the way on every carry. Like everyone else on the defense, Baird was cheating toward Matte instead of following his assignment. So when Tom looked like he was taking off on another sweep to the right, Orr was abandoned on the left and totally in the clear. No sooner was the ball snapped than “I was 37 yards wide open,” Jimmy remembered. By the time Matte passed the ball back to Morrall, Jimmy was on the goal line without a single white shirt in sight. Earl peered in Orr’s general direction, and Jimmy frantically waved his hands, as if signaling a helicopter for a rescue. But Morrall never found him. Instead, Earl turned his attention to the crowded center of the field and fired an intermediate pass to Jerry Hill, a secondary choice. Jim Hudson easily stepped in front of Hill and picked off the pass.
Orr was at a loss to know what went wrong. He theorized that Matte’s pass back to Earl may have been a little low, affecting the quarterback’s timing and concentration. Morrall and Matte both later posited the idea that Jimmy was standing in front of the blue-and-white-clad Colts marching band in the end zone and that the smallish receiver in a blue-and-white jersey blended right in with them.
“The Colts’ band was not even in Miami,” John Ziemann, a percussion musician and the band’s PR director, remembered. “We were back in Baltimore watching the game on TV like everybody else. Later on I saw a band in blue and white behind Orr on NFL Films footage of the game, but it wasn’t us.”
The first half was over, and it wasn’t pretty. The Colts had been beaten in virtually every phase of the game. On special teams Michaels had missed two field goal attempts. On defense Namath’s play calling befuddled the Colts. Matt Snell’s bullish rushing had already produced 71 yards and a touchdown. And worst of all, on offense Earl, the MVP, looked lost. It was only halftime, but he had already thrown three interceptions.
The Colts’ locker room wasn’t chaotic, exactly, but it wasn’t displaying the signs of a winner, either. Shula’s players were pushing back on him. Middle linebacker Dennis Gaubatz lobbied to have outside linebacker Don Shinnick removed from the game. Gaubatz argued that Shinnick simply could not set the edge and stop the rush.
But the big question, of course, was whether to bring in Unitas.
Johnny U loomed over the game like a great unsolvable mystery. So far the only time he spent on the field was at the coin toss, where he was trotted out as a Colts captain, as though the sight of his crew cut and number 19 alone would terrify the Jets. In a way it did. Namath admitted that when he saw Johnny U, “That’s when things got real.”
When events turned sour for the Colts late in the first half, the cameras found Unitas warming his arm on the sidelines. The NBC announcers noted his every movement. Of course, he was a hot topic in the Colts’ locker room at halftime, too, where the coaches debated whether they should bench Morrall and insert him. The Don rejected the idea.
“Earl didn’t have the ball that much because we turned it over so much,” Shula told his assistant Dick Bielsky. “He deserves another chance in the second half.”
So the Colts took the field for the third quarter with Shinnick at outside linebacker and Morrall at quarterback. Unitas remained on the bench.
Shula’s battlefield decisions could be seen in two opposing points of view. In one the coach is calm and in control. He is choosing not to overcompensate in a tight game. Less charitably, Shula could be seen as a man arrogantly clinging to things that were clearly not working.
Neither view was exactly right. In fact, Shula’s situation and choices were excruciating. With three interceptions in the first half, it appeared as though Morrall’s Cinderella story had, indeed, hit its midnight. Yet how could a coach replace the MVP at halftime of a seven-point game? Anyway, would a badly injured Unitas have been an improvement?
Unitas believed he could play and be effective. In the days leading up to the game Johnny U had come to Shula and demanded to start.
“As we approached Super Bowl time,” Shula told writer Mike Towle, “John felt that he was now ready to go and that he deserved the chance to start because of his contributions to the Colts in previous years and previous championship games. He was disappointed when I told him that I was staying with Morrall. There was no reason to relegate Morrall to a reserve roll.”
Right or wrong, Shula made his decisions, and when the Colts received the kickoff to start the second half Earl trotted out with his teammates to take another shot at the Jets. But the poor guy never had a chance. On the first play from scrimmage Earl gave it to the most dependable man on the team and handed it to Matte. The big halfback bulled his way for another solid gain of 8 yards but then fumbled the ball away.
Given another opportunity, Namath didn’t waste it. He put immediate pressure on the Colts. He moved the ball and exhausted the clock with a four-minute drive. And he put points on the board, as the Jets kicked a field goal to take a two-score lead. Namath gave the Colts a great demonstration of how he was going to make them pay for their mistakes. It was early in the second half and the lead was still narrow, but the pressure was really starting to mount.
Still, Shula stuck with Morrall. And again the quarterback could do nothing. The Colts went three and out. Getting the ball back, Joe hogged it, holding it for ten long plays and almost four more minutes. Everything was going New York’s way until the next-to-last play of the drive. Namath briefly exited the game with a sore hand and wrist, but the Jets kicked another field goal.
Finally, Shula turned to Unitas. The Colts were down thirteen to nothing, and the third quarter was just about exhausted. When Johnny U entered the arena the fans stood on their feet and gave him a lavish ovation. But it was quickly clear that he wasn’t the old Unitas. After a short pass to Matte, number 19 attempted a midrange lob to Jimmy Orr, but it didn’t look good. Curt Gowdy, the NBC announcer, said the throw “wobbled out there.”
The intended receiver agreed.
“[Unitas’s] arm wasn’t good,” Jimmy Orr remembered. “He had no arm at all, hardly.”
That’s the way Namath saw it, too. “Johnny’s arm was not 100 percent,” he said. “Johnny did not have the speed on the ball that he normally had.”
Namath feared Unitas, injury or not. On the sideline he watched Johnny U take the field, and his first impulse was to look up at the clock and beseech the Almighty to bend time.
“There was six minutes and some change left, and I do remember speaking to my spiritual leader, and I said, ‘Please, God, let that clock run,’” Namath remembered.
Namath was a realist. He knew the Jets had an almost insurmountable lead. But every football fan in America viewed Unitas as a miracle worker. Week after week they saw him pull out victories that were implausible, if not impossible.
Namath was no different from the fans in the stands. “Having seen Johnny over the years, we knew that it wasn’t in the bag,” Namath said. “We were on edge. Johnny U coming into the game added a lot of concern.”
Just as the sight of Unitas worried Namath, it inspired the Colts. “There was an uplift when he came in,” right guard Dan Sullivan remembered. “We thought, ‘Now that we have John, we’re going to be okay.’”
Unitas understood the calming effect he had on others. He walked into the huddle and told his team, “We can still win this thing.”
Everybody’s expectations notwithstanding, Unitas’s first drive looked a lot like Morrall’s craftsmanship. The Colts went three and out.
Namath returned to the field good as new and enjoyed one more big moment. He targeted Sauer three straight times. On the first pass George dropped what should have been an easy reception. On the second Namath hit him with a quick slant that went for 9 yards. That one almost ended in tragedy for the Jets when Lenny Lyles held Sauer and Colts safety Jerry Logan came running in and smashed the receiver in the breadbasket. The ball was jarred loose, and Logan recovered it and began to run. But the referees frantically blew their whistles and said the play was dead before the fumble. The Jets retained possession.
Namath stubbornly went back to George, who put a burst of speed on Lyles. Sauer was in the clear, deep downfield, and Namath delivered a 39-yard pass of such perfection, he may as well have handed Sauer the ball. That put the Jets on the Colts’ 10. The Colts’ defense stiffened, and Joe refused to gamble further. And as the fourth quarter began, the Jets gladly settled for another field goal.
The score was now 16–0, New York. The Colts hadn’t gotten a single first down in the third quarter or crossed the 50 even once. The situation was getting dicey for Baltimore. The Colts now had less than a quarter left, and they needed three scores.
Everyone knew that Unitas was the only hope for victory. The problem was his game was really built upon two factors: Number one, he used play calls over the course of a game to “set up” defensive players so that they would make a mistake at a crucial moment. Number two, Unitas also prospered by the threat of the big play, the bomb that he could launch at any moment with perfect accuracy. Defenses were forced to dread the possibility, though they never exactly knew the moment when he might heave it.
Because of the situation on the ground, however, those factors were limited. It was so late in the game, setting up the defenders for three scores was highly unlikely. And the big play didn’t seem too plausible either, thanks to Unitas’s aching arm. In contrast to Namath’s guided missiles, Unitas’s passes looked like overinflated dirigibles with drunk pilots. His throws were full of helium, soft, light, and off-target.
Even so, Unitas moved the ball well. Mackey caught a short toss for 5 yards. Matte dashed into the line for 7. When Unitas got more comfortable he became more ambitious and attempted to hit Willie Richardson on an out pattern, but the ball fluttered hopelessly away. So he let Matte and Hill take turns toting it, and together they gained 31 yards. Courtesy of those two fine runners, Unitas had the ball on the Jets’ 25 with a first and 10. After another blown pass to Richardson, Johnny U took matters back into his own hands. He decided it was time to go for the end zone. He looked for his reliable old battery mate Jimmy Orr near the goal line and then released what could only be described as a nauseous goose. The ball barely seemed airworthy as it slowly hovered in the ether. Randy Beverly easily stepped in front of Jimmy and plucked the pass out of the air like it was ripe and hanging on a vine. If that wasn’t humiliating enough, Johnny Sample ran up to Johnny U and expelled one of his toxic messages.
“Not today, John. It’s not your day,” Sample said.
“Where’s my watch?” Johnny U responded, reminding Sample that he’d been a locker-room thief back in Baltimore.
Skirmishes and fights were starting to break out all over the field as the Colts’ frustration mounted. Curiously, Curt Gowdy, NBC’s play-by-play announcer, noted the bellicose Sample’s role in the fracases and referred to the African American as “the boy who stirred the pot.”
In 1968 that was an uncontroversial use of language, as it never would be again.
Namath, the height of cool, continued to grind the clock with conservative calls. He utilized big Matt Snell and the superb line and never risked a thing. He didn’t throw a single pass in the fourth quarter.
Unitas had no such luxuries. When he got the ball he went to the air three straight times and missed three straight times. On fourth and 10 with just under six minutes remaining, he faded back again and hit Orr with a 17-yard shot for the first down. But that was only the opening salvo in a 15-play drive that sucked about three minutes of life out of the dying game.
When the long, exhausting drive finally resulted in a Colts touchdown, a Jerry Hill dash across the goal line, everyone enthused about that old Unitas magic. It also put a scandalous spotlight on Shula’s decision to leave Johnny U on the bench so long. But Joe Namath, who idolized and feared Unitas, was a realist about what really happened on the field.
“Your defense might be playing a little different ball with a 16–0 lead and it’s six minutes left in the game,” Joe said. “Our defense wasn’t giving up any big gamers. No one got behind anybody for long plays at that time.”
In other words, the Jets were content to let Unitas move in small bursts so long as the clock continued to tick. That was a somewhat risky strategy, and things got a little tense for the Jets. After the Colts scored their touchdown they attempted an onside kick. The kick was recovered by Colts safety Rick Volk at the New York 44 with more than three minutes left. Volk had only lately returned to action after being knocked out cold by Matt Snell in the opening minutes of the game. Volk had recovered his senses and almost the kick, but in doing so was knocked out again and suffered his second concussion of the afternoon, a highly dangerous development. Volk looked morgue-worthy, as it took four of his massive teammates to drag his inert body from the field.
When play resumed Unitas quickly fired off three straight completions for 20 yards and briefly created the illusion that he had a hot hand, but his last-ditch drive was useless and ended moments later, after three straight incompletions. The only good throw of the bunch was spectacularly batted away by Johnny Sample. With the last misconnection, a clueless fourth-down pass that landed nowhere near Jimmy Orr, everyone in the stadium could hear the piper beckoning the Colts.
A few moments later the game was over. Jubilant Joe Namath, in the camera’s eye as always, exited the field shaking his right index finger as he went. It was a sign of number one but also a “shame on you” for everyone who had doubted his legitimacy and his league. Matt Snell had played as complete a game as anyone in championship history. He rushed for 121 yards, hauled in four receptions for 40 yards, and even made a thumping tackle on special teams. Yet regardless of statistics, everyone knew the most valuable player just had to be Namath. His refusal to be intimidated all week had unnerved the Colts and electrified the Jets.
The Jets seemed like the height of glamour and modernity, but their victory was almost identical to stodgy Cleveland’s championship win against the Colts in ’64. Like Cleveland, the Jets ran effectively and passed sparingly. In fact, the Jets’ and Browns’ championship-game statistics against Baltimore were amazingly similar. Cleveland’s quarterback, Frank Ryan, threw for 206 yards against the Colts; Namath threw for 208 yards. Jim Brown rushed for 114 yards against Baltimore in ’64; Matt Snell went for 131 yards in the Super Bowl.
New York’s game plan was especially compelling because it was such a complete departure from who the Jets really were. Namath threw the ball twenty fewer times against Baltimore than he did the Raiders just two weeks before. Snell ran it eleven more times against the Colts than he did Oakland. The Jets avoided their own strengths and instead focused on Baltimore’s weaknesses, wisely, as it turned out.
Of course, the Jets could not have really planned for the five turnovers they got from the Colts. That was simply a gift. Few football teams could recover from that many turnovers, especially with championship-game pressure mounting against them. The Colts, with all of their gaudy statistics and press clippings, were no exception.
The man who received the least attention but deserved the most credit for the Jets’ stunning victory was Weeb Ewbank. In defeating his former Baltimore employers, he settled the score with them. He was also utterly vindicated in New York, where he started the season on the chopping block. He had now conquered two leagues to win three world championships. He never lost a championship game, something even Lombardi couldn’t say. He won the two most important games in football history, the ’58 championship game and, now, Super Bowl III. He built both franchises from the ground up, including finding and developing two Hall of Fame quarterbacks. He coached both players so that they were self-sufficient and brilliant play callers. What was even more impressive was the fact that Ewbank’s achievements came by and large at the expense of the most successful coaches in the history of the game. To win his titles Ewbank had to defeat coaching staffs that included Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Don McCafferty, Jim Lee Howell, Bill Arnsparger, and Allie Sherman. This collection of talent won a combined fifteen world championships as head coaches. But they all lost to Weeb.
So why did the Colts really lose?
Joe Namath still believes they did themselves in.
“The Colts in Super Bowl III, they had kind of a catch-22 situation,” he said. “Why would they change anything for us? They lost only one game that year, and they turned around and beat that team in the championship game thirty-four to nothing. Why would they change anything for the New York Jets? They were totally overconfident. Their team was overconfident. The Colts weren’t ready. The players, I’ve got to believe, were so overconfident, they weren’t ready to play that day.”
“That’s absolutely true,” Jimmy Orr said.
Namath said that the Colts’ conceit harmed their chances in practical terms by making them predictable on the field. With the kind of success Baltimore had, “you keep doing what got you there,” he said. “They didn’t change anything for us.”
Some of the Colts’ defenders lavished praise on Namath and accepted the blame. “We let down our teammates and the entire National Football League,” Billy Ray Smith said after the game. “My pride is bent.”
Though the Colts were too experienced and professional to descend into public sniping, they had their theories about what happened.
“Weeb Ewbank outcoached Shula,” Tom Matte said. “I don’t think there was any question about it. [Ewbank] knew where our weaknesses were, and the Jets attacked them.”
Dan Sullivan agreed. “Weeb Ewbank never got the credit he deserved for beating us in Super Bowl III. He [had been] our coach. He knew most of the players on the team. He knew [our] tendencies. He knew what was good and what was bad. I would say Ewbank outcoached Shula; he probably did.”
Shula might’ve been blamed for a lot of things, but the one decision that stuck to him like a bad smell for many decades was the one to leave Unitas on the bench to start the second half.
“Shula made a mistake,” Matte said. “Earl Morrall played the worst fucking game in the world. He was a space cadet. He was nervous as shit. He wasn’t himself.”
Morrall wasn’t much better in the locker room after the game. The man who had waited so long for professional success agonized about his poor performance and relived his disastrous decisions and missed opportunities for reporters.
Johnny U didn’t show any emotion at all. “I’ve been in football a long time,” he told reporters. “You always hate to lose. But a football player can’t feel sorry for himself.”
Bill Curry sat nearby and listened as the reporters pressed Unitas for a more genuine response to the day’s unthinkable events. They wanted to know how painful it was to lose to the Jets.
“I don’t feel any pain,” Johnny U said. “I’ve been through too many of these games. It’s not a big deal. We lost a game. It’s a game!”
“Does anything upset you?” one disbelieving writer asked.
“Yeah,” Johnny U said. “It’d upset me if somebody’d steal my beer. Then I’d cry.”
If only Morrall could be so carefree. In a sense no one personified the topsy-turvy year like he did. Earl went from the depths of being unwanted to the pinnacle of the MVP, only to plummet again, humiliatingly, in the Super Bowl. Despite his inherent dignity, he wore the stain of ignominy hard. After the game he dutifully spoke to reporters. But then he went home, and he never breathed a single word to his wife, to his children, or to any other living soul for an entire week.