Joe Namath and the Jet-Propelled Offense
It was the universal opinion of all that he was certainly born to be hanged.
--Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
HANG young Tom? There were those in Fielding's novel who smugly foresaw that amorous vagabond dangling from the highest scaffold at Tyburn gallows. Ah, but how soft women would have wept, and what praises bold men would have sung of his deeds.
No one has ever seriously suggested that a 20th century counterpart of Tom, Quarterback Joe Willie Namath, should suffer such a fate. But he has always been the same kind of rococo rascal that Jones was. As a child Joe Willie was, by his own cheerful confession, an occasional thief and vandal. In his youth he ignored his studies for the pursuit of pigskin and other cutaneous diversions. In setting a career for himself as a professional quarterback, Joe snubbed the St. Louis Cardinals of the older National Football League in favor of the New York Jets of the lowly American Football League--for a record bonus of $427,000.
Even then he did not play by the rules. His hair was too long. His clothes were too loud. His lip was too loose. There were wild tales of girls and booze, of riotous predawn odysseys through Manhattan saloons. There were even darker stories of gambling associations. Joe Namath, libertine and profligate. What good would come of such a rogue?
Merciless. What good indeed? At 29, after six turbulent, injurious seasons, Joe Namath has established himself as the pre-eminent quarterback in professional football today. Playing on a pair of frangible knees, Namath--after the 27-17 win by the Miami Dolphins over the Jets this week--had passed for a career total of 116 touchdowns and more than 18,000 yds.
Even more significant are the changes that Namath is signally responsible for working on the structure of pro football. It was the purse-draining price war for top draft choices like Namath that led to the merger of the A.F.L. and N.F.L. in 1966. It was also Namath who bluntly announced to a disbelieving sports world that the Jets would beat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, then led his team to a stunning 16-7 upset that gave the A.F.L. parity with the N.F.L.
Namath sat out most of the past two seasons with knee injuries. That did not stop him from winning an estimated two-year, $500,000 contract from the Jets management. At the beginning of the 1972 season he set about earning it.
In the season's opener against the underdog Buffalo Bills, a team that almost always plays its best against New York, Namath ran a carefully modulated game, passing only 14 times as he set up his running attack. Joe Willie did manage one touchdown strike to Halfback Emerson Boozer as the Jets won, 41-24. Then came the Baltimore Colts --now rivals of the Jets in the Eastern Division of the N.F.L.'s American Conference--who had beaten the Jets four times since the dramatic Super Bowl confrontation. Playing for the first time in Baltimore's cavernous Memorial Stadium, Namath put on the most spectacular aerial circus this side of the Lafayette Escadrille. Against the Colts' touted zone defense, which had yielded only nine touchdown passes in all of the 1971 regular season, Namath completed 15 out of 28 passes for six touchdowns and 496 yds. in the air, the third highest total in league history.* Final score: Jets 44, Colts 34.
The following weekend in Houston, Joe let down slightly, and his teammates sagged considerably as the overconfident Jets were defeated by the fired-up Oilers, 26-20. Even so, Namath completed 18 of 39 passes, two of them going for touchdowns, and picked up an impressive 301 yds. in the air. That brought the Jets face guard to face guard with their toughest divisional foe, the Miami Dolphins, who after three weeks of the season had survived as the N.F.L.'s only undefeated team.
Win or lose, Namath generates more high-voltage excitement than any other player in the game. Indeed he is the sort of thrill producer that the N.F.L. badly needs these days. On the surface (whether it is Mother Nature's or Sudo Turf) the game still appears to be prospering at the brisk pace it set in the 1960s. Baseball may be the national pastime, but pro football has become the national obsession. It is now, according to N.F.L. Commissioner Alvin ("Pete") Rozelle, a $130 million-a-year business. There are 26 teams in the league's two conferences, and Rozelle talks of expanding to such locales as Tampa, Fla., Phoenix, Honolulu and Mexico City. Last year the N.F.L.'s regular-season attendance surpassed ten million for the first time. Psychologists and sociologists by the score are peering into homes to determine the familial side effects on the 30 million-plus Americans who sit glazed before the tube on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.
During the past few years, a funny thing happened on the way to the goal line: the offensive units got stomped. In 1969, 908 touchdowns were scored in the N.F.L. The number dipped in 1970 to 797 and rose only slightly last year (806). The fundamental reason for the scoring decline lay in the growing savagery and sophistication of football's defensive units.
Years back, coaches began to realize that the way to beat the Johnny Unitases and Y.A. Tittles was not to try and outscore them, but to devise bold new means to stop them. Thus football tacticians developed the zone defense (see diagram next page), a formation of varying intricacy designed basically to provide blanket coverage deep in the defensive secondary and thus rob the offense of its most lethal weapon: the long bomb.
Rending Limbs. To help the evolution along, more and more top athletes who traditionally would have wound up on the striking force suddenly found themselves channeled into the defensive crews. Examples abound. Many observers feel that Dick Butkus, 29, the ferocious middle linebacker of the Chicago Bears, has year in and year out been the finest football player in the N.F.L. Bruce Taylor, the No. 1 draft choice of the San Francisco 49ers in 1970, had been Boston University's leading scorer--as a defensive back. Most impressive of all are the incredible giants who toil in the trenches, the 260-and 270-lb. defensive linemen who are often as fast as their teams' running backs. The key player on last year's Super Bowl Champion Dallas Cowboys is eleven-year Veteran Defensive Lineman Bob Lilly. "Mean Joe" Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Claude Humphrey of the Atlanta Falcons are the class of their respective teams. Nothing underscored the defense's mushrooming superiority as much as the selection last year of Minnesota Viking Tackle Alan Page as the N.F.L.'s Player of the Year. It marked the first time that a defensive player had won the award.
Meanwhile, back on the college gridirons, the hottest game around was being played by such teams as Oklahoma and Alabama, with their flashy "wishbone" offenses. Football fans cheered the college pyrotechnics even as they were becoming restive at the sight of the pro defense methodically stifling the pro offense week after week. Clearly something had to be done. Commissioner Rozelle called a huddle of a hand-picked "Competition Committee," which included one of the most respected coaches in the game: Paul Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals. Brown's proposal for improving the game had the simplicity of genius: moving the hash marks 3 yds. 1 ft. 9 in. closer to the center of the field (leaving them the same lateral distance apart as the goal posts).
Such a move means a lot more to the tone and texture of a game than it would seem. The hash marks are used to position the ball on the playing field after it has been downed either out of bounds or too close to the boundaries to permit reasonable play. Moving the hash marks closer to the center of the field has given offensive players--particularly wide receivers and running backs--more room to maneuver, while the defenses have more ground to cover. Also, field-goal kickers now enjoy a better angle.
After three weeks of play, statistics indicated that there has been a shift in favor of the offense. Last season the total number of points scored on a weekend averaged out to 503; the figure thus far is 542. At this time last year, running backs had gained more than 100 yds. in one game only nine times; the same feat has already been accomplished 17 times this season.
Reading Weaknesses. A more important factor than the hashmark change is the slow but discernible evolution of offensive strategy in an increasingly complex defensive environment. As Namath puts it: "Because of the development of the defenses, we've had to compensate and develop even more. When a guy runs out for a pass, he's not just running out for a pass; he reads what the coverage is, and I read what the coverage is, and we try to connect. When I go back to the huddle, I don't know what the pass is going to be. You have to read the weaknesses and the strengths of the defense and take it from there."
That is precisely what Namath did against Baltimore, a game that prospective quarterbacks should have watched with the same solemn intensity that surgical residents devote to watching a kidney transplant. With deadly skill, Namath dissected one of the two or three best defensive units in pro football. At one point in the game, for instance, Running Back John Riggins told Namath in the huddle that the Colts' towering (6 ft. 7 in.) left-side linebacker, Ted Hendricks, was slacking off a bit on his pass coverage. Joe said nothing, threw one incomplete pass, then connected for short yardage. But on the next play, he called for Riggins to shoot out of the backfield and blow past Hendricks. Riggins ran his pattern precisely, caught a Namath pass on the run and streaked 67 yds. for a touchdown.
The Colts nonetheless managed to stay within range of the Jets--largely through a stellar passing performance (26 completions for 376 yds. and two touchdowns) by their canny old craftsman Johnny Unitas--until the final quarter. It was then that Namath displayed his instinct for the jugular. First he wound up and heaved a 79-yd. touchdown pass to Tight End Richard Caster. A few minutes later, the Colts scored, narrowing the Jets' margin to three points. When New York got the ball again, Namath called a pass play that could have gone to one of three receivers. Meanwhile the Colts had inserted a fresh cornerback, Rex Kern, No. 44, into the secondary; his primary responsibility was covering Caster. As Namath dropped back, Kern, fresh from an injury, tried to pick up the speedy Jet tight end. Namath recalls with a grin: "As I was getting ready to throw, I just saw a big, clean No. 44 on the guy's jersey and I knew that's where I was going to go." Caster, with three steps on Kern, snagged Namath's pass and raced into the end zone for his second touchdown in 'two consecutive offensive plays.
Those two plays sum up Namath's vital assets on the field: a bazooka arm, a trigger-quick release and an almost supernatural ability to read complex defenses in a matter of microseconds. As Namath explained to TIME Correspondent Marsh Clark last week: "Unless I have some sort of mental lapse, I know what they're doing on the defense every time." In the instruction booklet he is now writing on the art of passing, he gives his older brothers much of the credit for his proficiency: "They taught me a single motion--simply throwing from your ear. I may not always do that now, but I don't have any waste motion." And how did he develop the fast release? "Strictly out of fear," he says. "When you see those sonsabitches coming at you, you get rid of it."
Namath assays his talents with cool detachment; his teammates look on him with almost religious awe. He is their meal ticket, the No. 1 breadwinner in one of the tightest families in the game. There is never any doubt who is in charge when the Jets get the ball. Coach Weeb Ewbank, perhaps football's best tutor of quarterbacks (he was also Unitas' coach at Baltimore during Johnny U.'s heyday), will occasionally send in a play, but Namath always has the option to change it. Appraising the situation on the field, Namath is usually the last man to step into the huddle. Then he may say something like "Slot right, flex, Jerome clear out that seam, Rich blow on through there at the post." Translation: he wants Wide Receiver Jerome Barkum to dash into the gap between two defenders while Tight End Caster sprints straight upfield toward the goal post. About 40% of the time, though, Namath will simply say "Play at the line," and call the signal after he has sized up the defense.
Namath is no academic wizard. But Jet Receiver Coach Ken Meyer says wonderingly: "Joe's football intelligence must be in the genius range." Nearly every football expert agrees that Namath has no peer in analyzing the situation during the crucial 2.5 to 3.5 seconds between the time he takes the snap from Center John Schmitt, drops back into the defensive pocket and cocks to fire. Says diminutive Wide Receiver Eddie Bell, who had seven catches for 197 yds. against Baltimore: "Namath must have peripheral vision. Most quarterbacks wait until their receiver makes his break and then they throw. Namath throws before you break and the ball comes right down into your arms. Somehow he anticipates what guy is going to be open. And when he throws a bad pass, he admits it." Joe does not often have to make that admission, as rival defenders will testify. Says Washington Redskin Cornerback Mike Bass: "If he has the slightest amount of time, there is no real defense against him. He'll get off a perfect pass."
Glowering. One curious aspect of Namath's eminence is that he is totally out of step with the latest trend in pro football quarterbacks: powerful, mobile passers who can run nearly as well as they throw. He is not the perfect quarterback to begin with; his ball handling is merely ordinary, and as Minnesota Viking Fran Tarkenton points out, Namath tends to overestimate his arm and throw into a crowd. Further, every step that Namath takes away from his pass protection is an invitation to disaster. Who knows when those Achilles' knees, girded every Sunday in steel and rubber like radial tires, will absorb the blow that ends his career? Whether Joe could have been the kind of running quarterback in the pros that he was at Alabama is moot. Namath has been forced by injuries into the obsolescent mold of such pocket passers as San Francisco's John Brodie, Sonny Jurgensen of Washington and Joe's own high school idol, the incomparable John Unitas.
Great as the veteran pocket passers are, their futures are uncertain. Brodie, 37, whom many pros rate directly behind Namath in passing ability, ranks third in alltime yardage statistics, has had 207 career touchdown passes and was 1970's Player of the Year. He threw a lot of interceptions (24) in 1971, though, and was taken out of the 49ers game with Buffalo this year with an injured wrist. With two touchdown tosses last week against New Orleans, he is still in better shape than Jurgensen, 38, who glowers on the bench (at $125,000 a year) while that determined disciplinarian, George Allen, sticks with disciplined Billy Kilmer at the Redskin helm. Unitas joined Namath on that stratospheric day in Baltimore to set an N.F.L. record for most passing yardage gained by two teams in one game (872). But he is now 39, and his arm has never fully regained its snap after a 1968 shoulder injury.
While Miami Coach Don Shula readily concedes that Namath is "without equal as a passer," he feels that his team has the best all-round quarterback in Bob Griese (6 ft. 1 in., 190 Ibs.), who led the Dolphins to the Super Bowl last January. "He's become the team leader in a quiet, intelligent way," says Shula. "When he sticks his head in the huddle, everything he says is gospel." Griese demonstrated his poise in the final quarter against the rugged Minnesota zone defense last week, carefully picking it apart until he found Tight End Jim Mandich all alone in the end zone for the winning touchdown.
The explosive Detroit Lion offense revolves around an equally rugged quarterback, Greg Landry (6 ft. 4 in., 205 Ibs.), who passed for more than 2,200 yds. last year and broke Tobin Rote's 20-year-old rushing record for quarterbacks of 530 yds. The New England Patriots are off to a sparkling start behind Jim Plunkett (6 ft. 3 in., 210 Ibs.), the former Heisman Trophy winner and 1971 American Conference Rookie of the Year. And in Pittsburgh, long-suffering Owner Art Rooney hopes that his Steelers can ride to the first league title in their 40-year history on the strong arm--and legs--of Terry Bradshaw (6 ft. 3 in., 214 Ibs.), who passed and ran for 634 yds. in the first three games of the season.
For all their power and potential, most of the youngsters shooting for their first Super Bowl are mercurial performers who lack what Joe Namath has finally attained: maturity. It has not come easily. Says Teammate Larry Grantham: "It takes everybody a while to get his feet on the ground. I don't see how he handled it as well as he did."
Some think Joe's reputation as an eternal swinger has been exaggerated, and his devotion to football underrated. Says Veteran Receiver Don Maynard, Namath's favorite target over the years: "Everything you hear about Namath's personal life, divide it. Everything you hear about his professional life, multiply it." Not that Joe is an incipient St. Christopher, whose image in metal he wears round his neck. True, he turned down the drinks pressed upon him by coaches and friends two weeks ago in Houston with a nonchalant, "Haven't you heard? Tomorrow is game day." But the grin and the drawl were the purest Namath insouciance.
Oh yes, the drawl. Namath's lazy inflections still suggest that his forebears fought under the tattered banners of Beauregard and Breckinridge. But as every true fan knows, Namath was born and raised in the Pennsylvania steel town of Beaver Falls (pop. 14,404), the youngest of four sons of a Hungarian-born steel puddler. Joe is sincere about his deep family ties. In his autobiography, / Can't Wait Until Tomorrow...'Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day (written in collaboration with Writer-Sportscaster Dick Schaap), Namath proudly observes: "When I was growing up, my mother was a maid in Patterson Heights, the fancy section of Beaver Falls. At night, she'd stay up late, cutting down my brothers' old baseball and football uniforms to fit me. Now my mother lives in Patterson Heights."
In Beaver Falls, Joe starred in baseball (and was eventually offered a major-league contract), was the fanciest dribbler and best shooter on his high school basketball team, and became one of the town's leading pool sharks. He stayed in football only at the head coach's insistence and ultimately led Beaver Falls to a western Pennsylvania championship. His college boards kept him out of Maryland and Notre Dame, so he headed south to Alabama and the ineluctable embrace of Coach Paul ("Bear") Bryant. No one has ever dominated the Bear, but Namath at least baited him to a draw. Bryant did suspend his errant pupil once for breaking training. On the other hand, Bryant's own mother would likely quail at the thought of slinging an affectionate arm over his shoulder and calling him "Bear"--a gesture Joe regularly indulged in. Namath won Bryant's sufferance by throwing for 3,055 yds. and 29 touchdowns in three years, and winning a national championship for Alabama in 1964. He was then drafted in the first round of both leagues by the Jets and St. Louis Cardinals, despite the downbeat reports of his glass knees.
Sonny Werblin, the Jets' high-rolling owner, got Joe with what was until then the biggest salary-cum-bonus offer ever given to a football rookie. Namath quickly won the starting assignment from Regular Mike Taliaferro and the man who had beaten him for the Heisman Trophy, Notre Dame's John Huarte. Before Joe, the Jets might as well have been the Pottstown Firebirds for all anyone cared about them; their only fans were grumpy football buffs who could not afford to pay scalpers' prices for scarce New York Giant tickets. Werblin knew what he was about; in fact, he was positively prescient. "I don't know how to define star quality," he said, "but Joe Namath has it. Few do. If we knew what makes it, we would have had 100 Marilyn Monroes. But it's something Joe will always have. When he walks into a room, it changes." Werblin added in extravagant understatement: "Joe likes excitement. He's single and young and doesn't have to be at work until noon. You can't ask a man like that to sit at home and read a book."
Debaucheries. No, you can't, and Joe most decidedly did not. Even as his tactical wizardry turned the stiles at Shea Stadium, his caterwauling got more and more notice from the New York fans and press, who had not had a bona fide rakehell hero since Babe Ruth. Namath helped embroider his image with statements like, "My weaknesses are clothes and blondes; I like any place in New York where there are girls and pleasant company." He also set himself up in the shooting gallery by snapping at reporters who quizzed him about a bad game: "Booze and broads, what else? We were out all night getting drunk."
Unsurprisingly, Joe had become something of a living legend by the time he was 25. When sportswriters got tired of extolling his exploits on the field, they zeroed in on his between-games lifestyle. There were photos and stories about his bachelor pad on Manhattan's East Side, which featured a white llama rug-and, purportedly, some of the unholiest debaucheries since Petronius' last house party. No American beauty could regard her career as complete without a date with "Broadway Joe" (a bad geographical misnomer, because Namath's favorite haunts--Dudes 'n' Dolls, Mister Laffs, P.J. Clarke's--were many blocks and light years away from Broadway). He made guest appearances on television talk shows, where writers provided him with merry bedfuls of double-entendres. He starred in a Grade Y potboiler called The Last Rebel (in which he actually said out loud, "All right, men. Guns on the table!") and a Grade Z film, C.C. Rider, with Ann-Margret.
In 1969 he also co-starred with N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle in a less amusing real-life gambling drama set in the commissioner's office and a Manhattan pub, Bachelors III, of which Namath was part owner. Rozelle's office had determined that hoods and gamblers were hanging out in the bar, and the commissioner ordered Namath to sell his interest. Namath replied by tearfully--and very publicly--retiring from football. If he meant to bluff, it did not work. Within two months he huddled with Rozelle and emerged after a lengthy session to announce that he would give up his interest in the bar and return to football.
After a couple of years of frustrating injuries, Namath's return to the game now seems complete. His Jets will not likely go on to the Super Bowl this year--their defense simply does not measure up--but under Namath's creative guidance they should continue to be the most daring and resourceful riders on the pro football plains. As for Namath himself--well, no one changes overnight, and things would not be as much fun if Joe Namath did. He has mellowed somewhat. He takes care of his family and invests his money in restaurants off suspiciously beaten paths. As he reflects: "Football has been great for me. You learn discipline and dedication, and there's a lot of competitive spirit. You can't cheat anybody out there. Football is a humbling game and even humiliating at times." Namath continues: "I'd like to play as long as I can, but then I might like to go into something else, perhaps get into the movies more than I have." For a wonder, Joe Willie, lion of the singles bars, can even see marriage away off on the horizon. "Sure, some day I'd like to settle down," he admits. "I'd like to have a lady put up with me, raise a family, set up a house, have a home. But I know I'm just not ready for it. I like to move around a lot."
He still moves around with the same wolfish swagger that drugstore idolaters everywhere have tried to imitate. Yet there is a discernible difference in the Namath style. He now says things like "I pray every night when I go to bed --when I can." Like wayward Tom, Joe Willie has cheated the various nooses that could have slipped round his neck--by the simple expedient of growing up.
* The Los Angeles Rams' Norman Van Brocklin piled up 554 yds. against the feeble New York Yankees in 1951, while Y.A. Tittle of the Giants gained 504 yds. against the equally hapless Washington Redskin team in 1962. -Namath has since moved to another East Side apartment near more sedate Park Avenue; the llama rug is gone.
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