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The National Football League’s two New York franchises will do battle this weekend on the league’s schedule, and we’ll highlight the first ever meeting between the 2 teams for this week’s Throwback Thursday feature. It was an innocuous game played at Shea Stadium on November 1st, 1970. There was nothing extraordinary about the game, except for one large detail – it was the first ever game played between the two New York franchises in history. 1970 was the first year of the merger of the NFL and AFL, and the climate between the 2 leagues, which now were together as one, wasn’t exactly a climate of togetherness. The old guard NFL still felt that they were superior, but evidence pointed to the contrary. The AFL had won the 2 previous Super Bowls by upsetting heavily favored NFL teams. The Jets, behind a brash guarantee from Joe Namath, had stunned the football world by upsetting the Baltimore Colts following the 1968 season, and to prove that game was no fluke the Kansas City Chiefs, who had been soundly defeated in the first Super Bowl by Green Bay, followed up with a surprisingly easy win over the Minnesota Vikings in ’69. So this was much more than just any old regular season game. Pride was on the line for the NFL and AFL people, who still harbored some bitterness toward each other. The Jets, only 2 years removed from their shocking title, were at a big disadvantage on this day. Their star quarterback and undisputed leader, Namath, was sidelined for the season with a broken wrist and the signal calling duties went to journeyman backup Al Woodall. The Giants, on the other hand, had future Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton at the helm.

The Jets, who had won only one game going into this matchup, were still a proud club. They battled through a scoreless first quarter and broke the ice in the second stanza when Woodall hit running back George Nock for an 8 yard touchdown to give his club a 7-0 lead. Pete Gogolak added a field goal to cut the lead to 7-3 at halftime but the Giants took control in the third quarter. The Jets added a Jim Turner field goal to up their lead to 10-3 but the G-men would do all the scoring from that point on. The Big Blue defense entered the fray when they tackled a former teammate, fullback Chuck Mercein, for a safety to cut the lead to 10-5. Then Tarkenton took over, finding Bob Tucker and Clifton McNeil on short scoring throws to open a 19-10 lead. Gogolak put the finishing touches on with another field goal, the only scoring in the fourth quarter, and the Giants won by a final count of 22-10 to restore a small slice of old guard pride to the NFL and claim Big Apple bragging rights for the time being over the team that had embarrassed the league just a couple of seasons earlier.

Giants’ Fran Tarkenton surveys the Jet defense

When he entered pro football as a much ballyhooed rookie from the University of Alabama, he was simply Joe Willie Namath from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. But when he signed what was then an outrageous 3 year/$400,000 contract with the New York Jets of the American Football League, the subject of this NFL 100 post turned the pro football world on it’s ear. The AFL, attempting to compete with the older, established NFL, manipulated the draft to ensure Namath would wind up in the country’s largest television market. He was the perfect person to give the league some star power. Television was becoming the engine that drove pro football into massive popularity during this time, the mid-1960s, and Namath became the toast of the town in the Big Apple. His career got off to a rocky start in his rookie season of 1965, as he split time at QB with Mike Taliaferro and the team lost it’s first 6 games. Namath took over as the full time starter after that and turned the team’s fortunes around, as they won 5 of their last 8. Namath’s play earned him the AFL’s Rookie of The Year Award.

Publicity photo of Jets’ rookie QB Joe Namath

When Namath appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine in ’65, teammate Sherman Plunkett was the first to anoint him “Broadway Joe”, a moniker that has stuck with him to this day. He parlayed his playing success into a massive amount of advertising opportunities, hawking everything from pantyhose to shaving cream to Ovaltine drink mix, and began to appear as a guest on television shows and in starring roles in movies as his career went on. Broadcaster Howard Cosell used to call him “Joe Willie” and also touted him as a new breed of sports superstar, showing a personality rather than being an unknown robot hidden beneath a helmet. He set himself apart from all other players, with his cocky persona, his signature white spikes and an appearance on the sideline wearing a fur coat. Namath’s playing career reached it’s zenith when he led the Jets to a 27-23 win in the AFL Championship game over the defending champion Oakland Raiders in 1968. That win propelled the Jets into Super Bowl III against the mightiest of the mighty NFL clubs, Don Shula’s Baltimore Colts. The Colts were made heavy favorites, while the Jets were ridiculed as an inferior team from the “Mickey Mouse” AFL. Namath, growing tired of the jokes and ridicule, announced at a banquet prior to the contest that “we’re going to win the game. I guarantee it.” When he delivered on that guarantee with a 16-7 Jet upset, his popularity grew even more. He was considered the savior of the AFL, and many of the league’s players, subjected to the same scorn as the Jets, said that the upset was a win for the upstart league. After the big Super Bowl win, Namath purchased a night club, the Bachelor’s III, which got him into trouble with commissioner Pete Rozelle when it was revealed that the club was regularly visited by organized crime figures. Namath threatened to retire rather than give up the club but eventually gave in and sold it.

Broadway Joe on the sideline in his fur coat

Namath is largely regarded as one of the most influential figures in pro football history, and rightfully so. But there is a group of people who question his credentials to be a Hall of Famer, which he became in 1985. His overall career numbers do bear out that argument. In his 13 year career, his teams posted a losing record of 68-71-4. He threw for 173 touchdowns and 220 interceptions, hardly stellar numbers. His career didn’t end well, as he was traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 1977, looking like a shell of his former self as his injury-ravaged knees couldn’t hold up. He may have ridden a single victory, the Super Bowl upset, to his HOF stature, but the fact remains that that single game changed the course of professional football forever. It validated the AFL as they became equal partners in a newly merged NFL a couple of years later. Incidentally, Namath’s star power is still strong today at age 76, even if the products he endorses have changed. He was recently seen in an ad for the Medicare Coverage Helpline.

In an earlier post celebrating the NFL’s 100th Anniversary, we featured the quarterbacks who helped grow the fledgling American Football League into an entity on par with the NFL that led to the merger of the two leagues. Most of those QBs, who kept the AFL afloat throughout the 1960s, were players who were shunned by NFL teams at some point. They flourished when given an opportunity and proved they belonged on the same field as the supposedly superior NFL signal callers. This week’s NFL 100 post will take a look back at the quarterbacks who starred in the established NFL in that same era of the ’60s. Surprisingly, the most successful field generals of that decade in the NFL traveled similar paths to stardom as the guys who toiled in the AFL. Green Bay’s Bart Starr for example, who won 5 championships in the ’60s and was MVP of the first 2 Super Bowls, began his NFL career as a little known 17th round draft choice of the Packers in 1956. He languished there as a backup until Vince Lombardi arrived as head coach in 1959. Under Lombardi’s tutelage Starr developed into the Hall of Famer he became. Known as perhaps the greatest passer of the decade and easily an equal of Starr was John Unitas of the Baltimore Colts. He was a ninth round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955 but didn’t make the team out of training camp. He worked in construction and played semi-pro ball in the steel city that year. In 1956 one of his semi-pro teammates was invited to try out for the Colts and Unitas joined him. They had no idea at the time, but the Colts had stumbled upon a player who would go on to lead them to 3 NFL titles, win 3 league MVP awards and be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. There were a number of quarterbacks during the decade who fashioned successful careers with their teams but failed to deliver when it came to winning championships. Y.A. Tittle, who started in the 1950s guiding a high-powered offense in San Francisco and had even greater success after being traded to the New York Giants, is the best example. He was a Pro Bowler in 3 of his 4 seasons with the Giants and won NFL MVP in 1963. He also guided New York to the NFL championship game his first 3 seasons there, but lost in all 3 attempts to win the ultimate prize. Fran Tarkenton is another player who had an amazing career, but never reached the top of the mountain. He played for both the Giants and Minnesota Vikings in the ’60s and established himself as a future Hall of Famer, well into the 1970s in fact. Unfortunately, the Viking teams he played on were expansion outfits and his Giant tenure was when the iconic franchise was suffering through one of it’s worst periods.

Unitas, Tarkenton with coach Shula at the Pro Bowl

Out west, a pair of gladiators led their teams for most of the decade and were competitive but never reached the ultimate goal. San Francisco’s John Brodie and Roman Gabriel of the Los Angeles Rams are both borderline Hall of Famers but as of today haven’t been given that honor, despite having Hall-worthy credentials. A couple of underrated QBs of the era are Don Meredith of Dallas and Charley Johnson of the old St. Louis Cardinals. Meredith took over the Cowboys’ reins  from Eddie LeBaron in 1962 and guided the franchise through most of the rest of the decade, reaching NFL title games in consecutive years in the mid-60s. Unfortunately, his Cowboy teams suffered the same fate as many other squads of the era, losing both times to Lombardi’s Packers. Johnson served 2 years of active duty in the Army while playing for the Cardinals but still remained their signal caller for almost the entire decade. There was a lot of musical chairs among the quarterbacks of the 1960s NFL also, as teams looked for the right winning combination. The Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns found the right answers when they turned to former Ram backups. Bill Wade for the Bears in ’63 and Frank Ryan for the ’64 Browns delivered titles for those franchises. Sonny Jurgensen and Norm Snead were traded for each other after the 1963 season. After quarterbacking the Eagles for 7 years Jurgensen went on to play 10 more for the Washington Redskins and although he never got his team close to the playoffs, he earned Hall of Fame recognition. Snead finished out the decade with the Eagles but never got them anywhere either, and wound up as a journeyman QB with 3 other teams into the mid-’70s. When the Browns turned to Ryan as their starter in the early 1960s, Detroit acquired Cleveland’s old starter, Milt Plum, to lead their team for most of the rest of the decade. He had some success there but the Lions always wound up playing second fiddle to the Packers in the Western Division. The Pittsburgh Steelers were a mess in the 1960s. They started the decade trying to squeeze some life out of Bobby Layne, who had led Detroit to NFL titles in the 1950s but was playing out the string in Pittsburgh. They followed up the Layne era with names like Rudy Bukich, Ed Brown, Ron Smith, Bill Nelsen, George Izo, Kent Nix and Dick Shiner. Nelsen would have relative success in the NFL but only after being traded from the Steelers to Cleveland, where he finished out the decade upon the retirement of Ryan. Overall, the 1960s delivered similar results to the AFL as far as quarterback play was concerned. A few Hall of Famers, a couple of borderline HOFers, some backups who got opportunities and made the most of them, and a lot of journeymen keeping their careers afloat with different franchises.

Sonny Jurgensen (9) in his early Eagle days

It’s time for another Throwback Thursday feature with the NFL entering week nine of its’ season, and two old NFL franchises, the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles, are matched up this week. That will take us back to a playoff game between these two teams, played on New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 1988 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The game was a coaching matchup of two men who served together on the Bears’ coaching staff during their 1985 Super Bowl run, Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan. Ditka was a Chicago icon dating back to his playing days with the team in the 1960s, while Ryan, during his time as the defensive coordinator of the team in the Ditka regime, stole as much of the spotlight as he could from the head coach since his defensive unit was the strength of the team. There was no love lost between the 2 men, and Ryan left to take the Eagles’ head coaching position in 1986. The game itself was no masterpiece, at least allegedly, since there wasn’t much of the action visible to the fans in the stadium or on television. A deep fog descended on the field making visibility difficult for the players, coaches and officials. The game, won by the Bears 20-12, would go down in NFL lore as “The Fog Bowl”.

Bears, Eagles enjoying “Fog Bowl” action

The Chicago “Monsters of The Midway” defense, although a couple of years removed from their ’85 championship, was still a formidable unit and held the Eagles to 4 Luis Zendejas field goals on the day. Randall Cunningham, Philly’s elusive quarterback, threw for 407 yards in the game but couldn’t get his team into the end zone. He was intercepted 3 times and sacked 4 times. Bears’ QB Mike Tomczak also threw 3 picks, but was able to find his wide receiver, Dennis McKinnon, through the fog for a 64 yard touchdown to open the scoring in the first quarter. When Neal Anderson scored on a 1 yard run for the Bears in the second quarter to up the Bears’ lead to 14-6, the game was pretty much over. The teams spent the rest of the afternoon trading Zendejas and Kevin Butler field goals and feeling their way through the fog. McKinnon was able to make himself visible enough to catch 4 passes for 108 yards and his TD, and a pair of Eagles, running back Keith Byars and tight end Keith Jackson, also had over 100 yards receiving, making up most of the passing yardage from Cunningham. Unfortunately for the Bears, they would get torched 28-3 by Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers the following week in the NFC Championship game, and San Fran would go on to win the Super Bowl.

Bears’ fans express their sentiments during the “Fog Bowl” game

One of the most important figures in the 100 year history of the NFL being celebrated this year is former commissioner Pete Rozelle. He wasn’t considered very important when he first took over the job in 1959 following the death of then-commissioner Bert Bell. He was a young general manager of the Los Angeles Rams at the time and wasn’t a popular choice for the commissioner’s post. It took 23 ballots by the owners to get him confirmed for the job. He took over at age 33 and wasn’t shy about making changes to the game during his tenure. The NFL at the time was a 12 team league playing their games in half-filled stadiums and television wasn’t much of a part of the league’s plan, as only a few teams had local or regional TV contracts. He took over the same year a rival circuit, the new American Football League, was being formed with a plan to start play in 1960. Rozelle took immediate action to counter the new league. The NFL added an expansion franchise in Dallas and a year later in Minnesota, and allowed the foundering Chicago Cardinals franchise to move to St. Louis, effectively cutting off the AFL’s path to 3 different cities they were considering. The AFL’s Dallas franchise, owned by league founder Lamar Hunt, was forced to move to Kansas City after 3 seasons and an AFL team slated to be placed in Minnesota had to be quickly relocated to Oakland before it even started play. Rozelle recognized the power of the media to promote the game early on and negotiated a deal with the CBS network to carry NFL games regionally. He also championed the cause of shared revenue with the owners, which they agreed to. The shared revenue model still exists today and is a major reason the league is as competitive as it is. The owners awarded Rozelle with a five year contract to remain in his job in 1962. He faced a couple of his most important decisions the next seasons. Prior to the 1963 season, Rozelle suspended Green Bay’s Paul Hornung and Detroit’s Alex Karras for gambling, a powerful move on his part. In November of that year, however, he made a decision that he later said was his biggest regret during his tenure as commissioner. He allowed NFL games to be played on the weekend of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, a decision that was widely criticized. The rival AFL had cancelled their games and drew praise for that decision. Also, the AFL had negotiated a television contract of its’ own with NBC and began competing for players with the established league, landing a big fish when the New York Jets signed Joe Namath. When the New York Giants signed Buffalo placekicker Pete Gogolak, it started an all-out war between the leagues to “raid” each other’s rosters for star players. Established NFL stars like John Brodie, Mike Ditka and Roman Gabriel signed “future” contracts with AFL teams. Rozelle, realizing the battle between rival league owners was hurting the game, worked behind the scenes with Cowboys’ executive Tex Schramm and Chiefs’ owner Hunt among others to negotiate a merger of the two leagues. The negotiations were successful and in 1966 the merger was announced. Due to television commitments, the two leagues remained separate until 1970 but a common draft was instituted and an annual AFL/NFL Championship game was set up to be played after each season. During this time the AFL added expansion franchises in Miami and Cincinnati.

Pete Rozelle after the NFL/AFL merger was successful

By 1970, pro football was beginning to grow into the television monster it has become today. The annual championship game, which would become known as the “Super Bowl”, became the top sporting event in the country if not the world. Today the game has almost reached the status of becoming a national holiday. Before the leagues could effectively merge, Rozelle had to convince 3 NFL owners to move their franchises to the newly formed American Football Conference, since the NFL had 16 teams and the AFL only 10. Cleveland and Baltimore, two teams that had been merged from the old All American Conference in 1950, were chosen along with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Rozelle also came up with the idea of a weekly prime time game, and with his vision Monday Night Football was born and another network, ABC, was added to the league’s revenue stream. The man who was regarded as professional sports’ most successful commissioner presided over its’ golden era, but wasn’t without his troubles over the years. Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis was a constant nemesis, beginning in the days of the merger when Davis, who was AFL commissioner at the time, had to give up his post to allow Rozelle to preside over the newly merged leagues. He battled in the courts with Rozelle over moving his franchise from Oakland to Los Angeles and back again. (The Raiders are planning another move, to Las Vegas, next season.) When the Raiders won the Super Bowl following the 1980 season, Rozelle was put in the awkward position of having to award the Lombardi Trophy to Davis.

Rozelle presents the Lombardi Trophy to Al Davis

Rozelle retired from the commissioner’s post in 1989, citing health issues. Davis would later say he regretted giving Pete so much grief during his time as commissioner, and felt that he may have contributed to Rozelle’s health issues. Rozelle left with the sport in great shape and left behind a legacy that is unmatched by anyone in the game’s 100 years when it comes to how much he helped grow the game. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985 while still serving as commissioner and in 1990 the league instituted the Pete Rozelle Award to be given to the MVP of the game he helped create, the Super Bowl. Rozelle passed away of brain cancer in 1996. Taking a look at the sport today compared to when he took over: a 12 team league now has 32 franchises, the Super Bowl is the world’s most popular sporting event, the league’s players are among the most recognizable sports heroes and the annual draft of college players has become a cottage industry in itself.

Rozelle presides over the 1966 draft, on a blackboard

For one of this week’s NFL 100 features, we’ll look at a character who left a long and lasting legacy in the league as a player, coach and studio analyst, Mike Ditka. When he joined the Chicago Bears as a rookie tight end in 1961, he proceeded to redefine the position from what was always a blocker, almost an extra lineman next to the tackle, to a legitimate receiving threat. In that rookie year, he caught 58 passes and scored 12 touchdowns, a Bears’ rookie record, and was named NFL Rookie of The Year. He played 5 total seasons with Chicago and was a Pro Bowler in all of them. His rugged style of play earned him the nickname “Iron Mike”, as he not only changed the tight end position with his receiving ability but also was known for his yardage gained after the catch, regularly trucking defensive backs and linebackers on his way to picking up extra yards. A contract dispute with owner George Halas got Ditka traded to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1967. He played there for 2 years and then was traded to Dallas where he played his final 4 seasons. The highlight of his Cowboy days came in 1971 in Super Bowl VI when he scored a touchdown to help the team defeat the Miami Dolphins 24-3 to give legendary coach Tom Landry his first championship.

Mike Ditka, All Pro Bears’ tight end

Ditka retired in 1972 and was immediately hired to join Landry’s coaching staff in Dallas. He spent 9 years there, learning from the best. The Cowboys made the playoffs in 8 of those seasons and won the Super Bowl again in 1977. While serving as an assistant on Landry’s staff, Ditka wrote a letter to Halas, who he had a strained relationship with, saying he would like to return to Chicago as the Bears’ head coach when he was ready. Halas took him up on that request in 1982 when he went out on a limb and hired his old tight end to lead the Bears. Ditka held a team meeting upon taking the job and promised the players that if they stuck with him he would have them “in the dance” within 3 years. By 1985 he delivered. His ’85 Bears club reached “the dance”, the Super Bowl, and demolished the New England Patriots 46-10 in the game. Although it was the only title Ditka would win in Chicago, that ’85 Bears team is considered one of the greatest of all time, especially the defense. They had swagger, led by coach Ditka, his flamboyant quarterback, Jim McMahon, Walter Payton and William “The Refrigerator” Perry and even put together a video, the “Super Bowl Shuffle”, before they had qualified to play in the game. They were a confident bunch.

Tom Landry, Ditka’s coaching mentor

During the 1988 season Ditka suffered a heart attack and was expected to not be available for most of the season. However, he was back on the sideline as an advisor the next game and returned to his full time duties as head coach the following week. A couple of losing seasons in the early 1990s led to his firing in Chicago in 1992. He went on to coach the New Orleans Saints for 3 years, beginning in 1997, but that stint was largely forgettable and was “highlighted” by an ill-fated move in which Ditka traded his entire stock of draft picks to Washington for the rights to running back Rickey Williams, who never panned out in the Crescent City. Overall, it’s hard to think of the NFL’s 100 year history without mentioning Ditka. He and Tom Flores are the only 2 people who won championships as a player, assistant coach and head coach in league history, and Ditka was the first to achieve this. Today he is an icon in Chicago. He owns a chain of restaurants and regularly is on sports talk radio shows in the Windy City. He was a regular football studio analyst on ESPN for years before being dropped for voicing political opinions. Saturday Night Live had a running skit for years featuring Bill Swerski’s Superfans, a group of mythical Bears fans, including George Wendt, who worshipped “Coach Dikka”. Ditka, in 1988, was honored to be the first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

Coach Ditka Halloween costumes were once popular in Chicago

With the NFL season entering week 7, there is a game scheduled, between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, which makes for a perfect Throwback Thursday feature for the NFL’s celebration of its’ 100 year history. That game was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and it was a historic event as it was to become the first ever Super Bowl game. The game was retroactively called “Super Bowl I” but in reality at the time it was simply called the AFL/NFL Championship Game, and was considered an afterthought, especially by the members of the established NFL. The game wasn’t sold out, but NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle made sure it received maximum coverage as the networks who aired each league’s games, NBC and CBS, were both allowed to broadcast it. One of Rozelle’s many attributes as commissioner was his ability to recognize how much media coverage had grown the game. The Packers were a powerhouse at the time, dominating their NFL competition, and were considered huge favorites in this game over the Chiefs, who had beaten the two-time AFL champion Buffalo Bills to reach this point. NFL people had ridiculed the new league as a “Mickey Mouse” operation made up of NFL rejects. Packer coach Vince Lombardi was extremely nervous about the game and how his team would approach it. He realized that although his club was superior, the Chiefs were well coached by Hank Stram and were made up of players who were also professional and would be highly motivated to prove they belonged on the same field with his team. Most of his players may have considered winning the NFL title as the pinnacle of their season and view this game as nothing more than an exhibition. Lombardi gave his team a short motivational speech prior to the game, telling them they “should be proud of their profession and that they could do a lot for the reputation of the league by playing their best” on this day.

Coaches Stram and Lombardi meet before the game

The game itself was competitive in the first half. The Chiefs may have thought they caught an unexpected break when Packer flanker Boyd Dowler re-aggravated an injury he had suffered in the NFL title game and was forced out. However, his replacement, wily old veteran Max McGee, was ready for the moment, even though some of his teammates claimed he was hung over from partying the night before. He opened the scoring by making a spectacular one-handed grab of a Bart Starr pass and carrying it into the end zone for a 37 yard touchdown. K.C. quarterback Len Dawson engineered a scoring drive early in the second quarter, ending it with a 7 yard toss to his fullback, Curtis McClinton, to tie the game. Jim Taylor scored on a 14 yard run and the Chiefs’ Mike Mercer connected on a field goal and Green Bay went into the half leading 14-10. The halftime show for the game was nothing like the extravaganzas put on today on Super Bowl Sunday, but Rozelle did kick up the entertainment a notch from a regular season game by adding jazz trumpeter Al Hirt, 300 pigeons being released, 10,000 balloons and a couple of guys in jet packs wearing football uniforms flying around the stadium as the bands played.

Flying jet pack football players at halftime

While the Chiefs had stood proud by keeping the game close for a half, the Packers asserted their dominance in the second half. Starr, who would be named the game’s Most Valuable Player, orchestrated a pair of third quarter scoring drives, the first ending on a 5 yard run by Elijah Pitts and the other on another TD toss to McGee, this time from 13 yards out, to extend the Packer lead to 28-10. McGee, who was used sparingly in the regular season, had a career day, totaling 138 yards and the 2 TDs on 7 catches. The Green Bay defense held Dawson and the Chiefs in check the rest of the day, and Pitts scored again from a yard out to seal the deal for his team at 35-10. One of the “highlights” of the second half came when Chiefs’ safety Fred “The Hammer” Williamson was knocked unconscious when his head collided with the knee of a Packer player. The flamboyant Williamson had boasted of planning to use his famed forearm “hammer” to knock multiple players out of the game, but he wound up on the receiving end of an errant blow instead. The NFL moguls and pundits got what they wanted out of the game as the Packers were dominant in the end. Lombardi even added to the fire, stating afterwards that even though the Chiefs were an excellent, well coached club, he thought there were several NFL teams who were better. It would take a couple of years for the AFL to be able to compete, but by Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath and his New York Jets delivered a “guarantee” and an upset win over the Colts, they gained their measure of pride.

Super Bowl I MVP Bart Starr

Our topic today for the NFL 100 post is a look at highly successful defensive coaches, or coordinators as they’ve come to be known today, who never quite succeeded when given their opportunity to become head coaches. Some of the greatest defensive minds went on to make it big as head men, including Tom Landry, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, George Allen and arguably the greatest of all time, Bill Belichick. “The Hoodie” almost made the list of failures after his brief tenure in Cleveland ended disastrously, but he was put in a bad situation there with owner Art Modell announcing he was moving the team to Baltimore. Belichick landed on his feet in New England and to this day is a highly successful head coach. So what coaches who had Hall of Fame worthy careers as defensive assistants never quite made the leap to success as top men? The list is long. We’ll start with Joel Collier. He was a bespectacled, mild mannered assistant under Lou Saban with the AFL’s Buffalo Bills in the 1960s and later guided the Denver Broncos “Orange Crush” defense to a Super Bowl. The Bills won back-to-back AFL titles in 1964 and ’65, mostly on the strength of their defense, the best in the AFL’s 10 year existence. He got a shot at the top job in Buffalo after Saban abruptly quit but failed miserably. When Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins were dominating the NFL in the early 1970s, one of the main components of their success was the play of their “No Name” defense, which suffocated opponents and got its’ nickname due to the fact that there were no star players on the unit. The man who coached that stifling defense was Bill Arnsparger. His success earned him the opportunity to be the head coach of the New York Giants, but in three years at the helm there, his teams posted a dismal 7-28 record and after being fired he returned to the Dolphins to work under Shula. He spent the next eight years there overseeing a defense that acquired another nickname, the “Killer B’s” due to many members of that unit having names that began with the letter B.

Bill Arnsparger and The Killer B’s

When the Pittsburgh Steelers were dominating the NFL in the 1970s, winning 4 Super Bowls, the one constant that drove that team was it’s defense, aptly known as “The Steel Curtain”. Even though their head coach, Noll, came from a defensive background, it was widely accepted that the man who orchestrated that unit was defensive coordinator Bud Carson. He was the coordinator for the team’s defense for the first 2 of the championships, then moved on to become D-coordinator for the Rams, Colts, Chiefs and Jets, all while waiting patiently for a shot at a top job. His chance finally came when Modell hired him to coach the Browns in 1989. He did well his first year as the Browns advanced to the AFC Championship game, only to lose to the John Elway-led Denver Broncos. Modell didn’t show him any patience, however. Carson was fired midway through the next season after the Browns started out 2-7. Although his overall coaching mark for the year and a half he got was slightly under .500, it’s tough to say that Carson was a failure. Unlike Belichick in the 1990s, he never got the chance to prove himself in another job. We’ll treat our next subject on this topic as a tandem. It’s the father/son duo of Buddy and Rex Ryan. Buddy was the coordinator of one of the most prolific defenses in NFL history, the 1985 Chicago Bears. The success of his “46 defense” got him a job as head man in Philadelphia, where he lasted five seasons. Rex Ryan was coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens defense that was dominant for years and helped win the Super Bowl following the 2000 season. Rex eventually parlayed his performance into head coaching jobs with the Jets and Bills. Unfortunately, neither of the Ryans was ever able to raise his teams above the level of mediocrity when given the chance to run the whole show.

Buddy Ryan was well loved by his Bears’ defensive unit

There is one coach who was recently elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame mainly for his work as a long-time defensive coordinator – Dick LeBeau. Actually, he deserved Hall consideration for his playing career alone, as he played 14 seasons and was a top cornerback. His story is a little different than the men we previously featured. He was defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2000 but was thrust into the job of interim head coach when Bruce Coslet resigned. He held the job until 2002 but a paltry 12-33 record got him axed. He returned to being a D-coordinator, for the Steelers, and went on to have tremendous success. He never got another shot at being a head coach, but he may have been content to “stay in his lane” as a successful assistant. One name that shouldn’t really be mentioned here is Wade Phillips. He has followed the same path as the others on the list, having “failed” as a head coach but having great success as a defensive coordinator, to this day in fact, as he is currently guiding the Los Angeles Rams’ defense. He has been the head man for 5 different teams in interim and permanent status, but in my mind never really was shown much patience by any of the owners he worked for. His overall record as a head coach is 83-69, a pretty healthy winning percentage. Dom Capers has been a highly successful defensive coach over the years, but hasn’t had success when given a chance to be the head coach. Part of the reason for that is that his only two opportunities came with expansion franchises. Others who have not taken advantage of head coaching opportunities but who excelled as defensive assistants are Romeo Crennel, a Belichick disciple, Rod Marinelli, Jim Schwartz and Gregg Williams. The art of hiring a top head coach is something NFL owners over the years have failed at many times, and in some ways the NFL over 100 years was bound to have more failure than success among its’ teams. The men mentioned in this article, for certain, should be remembered more for the innovation and success they have brought to the game rather than their failure, which is really more of a failure on their owners’ part than theirs.

In celebrating the first 100 years of the National Football League, there are men and women who stand above the rest for their contributions to making the game great. There are none who stand any taller than Vince Lombardi, who was overlooked for coaching opportunities in the NFL despite a successful run as the top offensive coach for the New York Giants in the 1950s. He worked as a high school coach and as a college assistant at Fordham and West Point before getting his NFL opportunity with the Giants, whose top defensive assistant at the time was Tom Landry. Those 2 legends, along with head coach Jim Lee Howell, turned the Giant franchise into winners as they reached a pair of title games and won the title in 1956. Howell readily acknowledged the talents of his two top assistants, jokingly saying that his main job was “to make sure the footballs had air in them.” Despite the success, Lombardi was passed over for head coaching jobs, both in college and the pros, and he feared that his Italian-American heritage was being used against him in his failure to land a head coaching position. Finally, in 1959, the Green Bay Packers hired him as their new head man. The team was coming off of a one-win season and was a laughingstock in the league. Lombardi immediately turned around the team’s fortunes. They finished 7-5 and Lombardi was named Coach of The Year. His success was only beginning, however. The Packers won the Western Division title in 1960 and lost a heartbreaker to the Philadelphia Eagles in the championship game. The Packers were stopped just short of the goal line on the game’s final play, costing them the win. In the locker room afterwards, the coach told his team “This will never happen again. You will never lose another championship game.” He was true to his word, as that loss was the only postseason defeat his Packer teams would suffer. They went on to win 5 titles in the next 7 years, including wins in the first 2 Super Bowls.

Lombardi and his Packers celebrate NFL title

Lombardi stepped down as Packers’ head coach after the second Super Bowl win and stayed on as the team’s general manager for a year, but still had a yearning to coach, so he left the organization to become head coach of the Washington Redskins in 1969. He turned the Washington franchise around in his only season coaching there as they finished 7-5-2 for their first winning season in 14 years. Lombardi’s final numbers as a head coach were astonishing – no losing seasons, the 5 championships and an overall 105-35-6 record, including a 9-1 mark in postseason games. Unfortunately Lombardi’s tenure in Washington would only last that single season. After falling ill, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away shortly after at the age of 57. On his deathbed, he told a visiting priest that he did not fear dying but regretted that he had not accomplished more in his life. The football world couldn’t have disagreed more with that sentiment. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame a year after his sudden death and the trophy awarded to the winner of the Super Bowl each year was named in his honor.

Vince Lombardi Trophy

Lombardi is a giant of the game for more reasons than just winning. He was a pioneer in improving race relations and treating black players as equals, and even embraced gay players. He always said he didn’t see his players as black or white, but only “Packer green”. One former black player, noting Lombardi’s disciplinary style, once jokingly said that the coach “treated us all equally….like dogs.” His reputation as a taskmaster wasn’t entirely true. He was a master at teaching the game, having been a teacher before getting into coaching. He instituted policies in Green Bay that insisted that the team only stay at hotels that treated his players equally, would make any establishment that was prejudiced against any of his players off-limits to his entire team and made crystal clear to his players that any of them who exhibited prejudice of any kind against another player would be thrown off the team. Some of Lombardi’s critics, as few as they are, have said that his accomplishments are tainted because his teams were loaded with future Hall of Famers. That argument doesn’t hold water when you consider that most of those players were already on the Packer roster before Lombardi arrived, and were underachieving on a losing team. Lombardi molded them into Hall of Famers. One other factor that made the coach an all-time great was his integrity. He was so admired for his upstanding character that in the 1960s Richard Nixon tried to recruit him to be his vice presidential running mate. Lombardi, being a staunch Kennedy Democrat, politely declined. His commitment to integrity is a lesson some modern day coaches could learn from.

Vince Lombardi’s quote about integrity

On this week’s NFL schedule of games, there is a contest to be played between the Los Angeles Chargers and Tennessee Titans. For our weekly Throwback Thursday feature, we settled on a game played between these two franchises when the Chargers were still in San Diego and the Titans were located in Houston as the Oilers. It was September 15, the opening day of the 1974 season and coach Tommy Prothro’s Chargers were visiting Houston’s Astrodome for a game against the Oilers, who were coached at the time by Sid Gillman. Gillman, of course, led the San Diego franchise to huge success in their American Football League years in the 1960s, and this was his first chance to take on the team that had let him go after the 1970 season. Gillman would hardly recognize the Charger team that came into the Astrodome to play that day. His star players from the AFL days like John Hadl, Paul Lowe, Keith Lincoln, Lance Alworth, Dave Kocourek, Ernie Ladd and Ron Mix were all either retired or dispersed across the league finishing out their careers with other teams.

Whether there was any sense of revenge or not, Gillman’s Oilers would take care of their coach on this day, as they ground out a 21-14 win over San Diego. The Oilers featured a balanced attack instead of Gillman’s usual vertical passing game. Their young quarterback, Lynn Dickey, was efficient, spreading the ball around among 6 different receivers. Ronnie Coleman was the bulwark of the running game, gaining 123 yards on 21 carries, although George Amundson stole his thunder by scoring 2 short rushing touchdowns and catching an 8 yard throw from Dickey to account for all of Houston’s scoring. Cid Edwards had 100 yards rushing for San Diego and Glen Bonner scored on a short TD run, while the other Charger touchdown came on a pass from the team’s young signal caller, Dan Fouts, to one of the few Charger players Gillman might recognize from his days as the team’s coach, receiver Gary Garrison. The Oilers, who had finished 1-13 the previous year, improved to 7-7 on the season under Gillman, but the future Hall of Famer stepped down to give his hand-picked choice as his replacement, Bum Phillips, a chance to take over in 1975. Prothro’s Chargers staggered to a 5-9 record and the franchise never worked their way out of mediocrity under his leadership. They finally fired him in 1978 and brought on Don Coryell, who would bring the team back to a level of respectability.

Oilers’ 1974 media guide prominently featured the bow-tie wearing Gillman