New York Jets By The Numbers: #14

On December 16, 1990, Troy Taylor, a backup quarterback for the New York Jets originally from the University of Oklahoma, threw a 10-yard TD pass to Rob Moore against the Indianapolis Colts. He was making that token, Rudy-like appearance in a late season effort during a lost season. But was there a "Troy" for Troy the same way there was a "Rudy" for a Rudy - the story of a ragtag walk-on so obnoxious that you couldn't help but want to squeeze his little body even while you wanted to crack his nattering skull? Actually, there is a "Troy," but it's a terrible film with Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana. In his single season with the New York Jets, Troy Taylor wore #14.

Oddly, only two other players have worn #14 for the Jets. The first we'll mention is the most famous among Jets fans who remember watching games at Shea Stadium. He is Richard Todd, the heir apparent, the once and future king. His reign was a heady mixture of insane highs and moribund, head-scratching lows, the likes of which have activated trauma-based panic attacks throughout Greendom for years. Whatever deep structure memories I have of being an alone, desolate, despondent child come mostly from watching games that Richard Todd was not able to win between the years 1977 and 1983. These, my friends, were the Todd Years.

No, not that Richard Todd. The one drafted from the University of Alabama, just like that other famous guy from Alabama. He labored under the burden of being Namath's successor. He was his own man, too, once shoving and threatening a New York Post reporter (who hasn't wanted to do that?). He had an aw shucks accent but he was also perennially insistent that New Yorkers just back the hell off until he was good and ready to accept the mantle. He was burdened with troubles from the start, too, though. He busted up his ribs so badly in 1978 that after every pass for the rest of his career he was forever adjusting the dense overnight packaging that surrounded the bones under the number 14 of his uniform. "Todd is God," the swirling banners at Shea would sometimes read.

Well, no. No, actually he was not. He was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated after two reasonably strong seasons, bringing the Jets to playoff losses that usually culminated in Todd interceptions. He was, in he end, like a lot of athletes, just part of the Jinx. The Jets went 7-9 the year he was on the cover, and that, my friends, was that. He was sent packing to New Orleans. Yet he returned to New York City and became a successful stock broker, both before and after the 1987 crash.

I could just go on and on about him. He would launch these magnificent downfield passes to the stutter-stepping Wesley Walker, his favorite target. Two game-ending moments stick in my memory, both from the 1981 season. The last comes first to mind - his pass intended for Derrick Gaffney that was intercepted by Bill Simpson in the AFC Wild Card loss to Buffalo in a downpour at Shea. He had lead the team back from a 24-0 deficit, only to come up just that short. I don't know how many times that moment has crept into my brain when I have nothing to think about. But then neither can any Jets fan my age forget his clinching drive in the 16-15 home win against Miami, and the pass he threaded to Jerome Barkum, and the way the tattered, homemade confetti flew from the shaking rafters as he made his way across the field to the locker room when it was over. NBC's Bob Trumpy - obnoxious, as always - compared the injured Todd to George Gipp. "Doesn't it remind you of Ronald Reagan, Dick?" he asked of a likely beguiled Dick Enberg, forgetting that in the movie that the Gipper died. Todd's career wasn't quite at its end just yet, either, but such things couldn't last more than another season afterwards. "In Todd We Trust."

Did we really think Neil O'Donnell could save the Kotite Jets from themselves? I don't remember. But somehow the idea of him actually coming from the Super Bowl to the Meadowlands set off all kinds of goofy possibilities. The only trouble is, I was drunk a lot of the time, and so I don't recall imagining anything other than maybe thinking that nothing could be worse than a 3-13 season. I was wrong. O'Donnell started the season at 0-6. Somewhere in the midst of the 1996 season, the Jets won a game. Who was it against? The team that plays the Globetrotters? Neil O'Donnell retired with an excellent passer's rating, and unlike Joe Namath, he threw literally twice as many touchdowns as interceptions, a dubious statistic when you consider that he was always accused of holding onto the ball too long. I would probably do the same, myself. It did not endear him to his next boss, the current general manager of the Miami Dolphins, Bill Parcells. I recall the coach yanking O'Donnell out of that fateful final game against the Lions in 1997, when Barry Sanders crossed the 2,000 yard line (and then some) and Parcells replaced Neil with Ray Lucas. Coach and QB traded barbs on the sidelines. Parcells was never really fond of the position of quarterback, so we knew right then and there that Neil O'Donnell, our savior, had spent his last game in a Jets uniform. Hardly knew ye, but knew ye enough, Neil.

When I was six, my family went to visit my uncle in Massachusetts, and Mom encouraged him to draw me some pictures of some football players. Aside from being a PhD from MIT, and an entrepreneur, he was also a fine artist. He made some pencil drawings of players running with and catching the ball. He asked me what number to give the wide receiver.

The first thing I thought of was Don Maynard. "How about 13?"

He shook his head. "That's too low for a receiver's number," said the mathematician. "How about 83?"

I nodded. George Sauer, after all. And Jerome Barkum. Both #83.

Finally, after years of patient waiting #14 has finally found renewal with Marcus Henry, wide receiver. But now I'm inclined to agree with my uncle. I'm not sure how I feel about receivers getting the low numbers. It almost makes it seem as though these guys aren't being seriously considered as permanent receivers - almost like they're ephemeral standing is only accentuated by an inappropriately low number. Yet look at the late Chris Henry, the incarcerated Plaxico Burress, the incompetent Roy Williams, Randy Moss, (on the Raiders), Deshaun Jackson, Donte Stallworth. I suppose it all started with Keyshawn Johnson insisting on the primacy of low numbers with the hope for high results. And in 2008, all Jets with numbers 14 through 17 were receivers. In 2009, though, we went back with Danny Woodhead from #23 to #83 and David Clowney from #17 to #87. Is it part of a promotion deal? Wallace Wright (15), Braylon Edwards (17), and Brad Smith (16) have yet to get the memo.

Although he started out on the practice squad, couldn't the Jets have given Marcus Henry his #86 from his playing days at Kansas? We may never know because he isn't even on the squad now. Bring back the 80's, anyway.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 13 - Don Maynard

Don Maynard's #13 is one of three numbers that have been retired by the New York Jets organization. He is, without question, one of the very best receivers in the history of football. In that way, he is that rare thing for the Jets - a player who is a legend in the NFL and not just on his team. With maybe the exception of Joe Klecko or Curtis Martin, Maynard is one of the few players on the New York Jets who is a legend for his consistently excellent performance and not just for his eccentricity or charisma. Until the 1980's, at least a decade after they retired, he and Charley Taylor were still the top rated receivers in NFL history.

He was always my Mom's favorite Jet because he played without shirtsleeves, something she nevertheless discouraged in me when I went outside and pretended to be Don Maynard. In the old footage, one sees this strange picture of a weedy man in shirtsleeves, long legs and white shoes, scampering the sidelines or running the post for a Namath pass. His face always made him look a little older than he was, and I always felt he resembled one of the more haggard, nearly forgotten persons in a Walker Evans photograph, looking with caution into the distant horizon, hoping for a better day.

Even as a boy, Dad told me about the mythical 75 yard Namath pass Maynard caught against the Raiders in the 1968 AFL Championship. Dad was there, after all. I suppose everything that makes Maynard great can be encapsulated in that one catch. The point Dad made about Maynard is that he could catch passes that he couldn't really see, as if he could feel where they were before he caught sight of them. I believe that's supposed to be called "spatial intelligence." Don Maynard had it. I read about the catch in the Punt, Pass and Kick books from my childhood, and they described how Maynard twisted his body around to the other side after seeing that the pass was not to his left. So he maneuvered around as best he could to catch it over his right shoulder. Many people rightly believe it was one of the best catches you'll ever see, and I rewind it on my NFL Films recap of the game, imagining how my Dad must have felt when he saw it.

Had it happened in the present era, his catch would have been challenged. It came late in the game and eventually set the Jets up for a clinching touchdown that was caught by, yes, Don Maynard. Had Raiders coach John Rauch the power to do so, he would certainly have thrown the red flag. Maynard makes the catch, comes down with the ball but then drops it once he's down. Also, the hash, end zone and sideline markers are so obscured by the horrifically scarred Shea Stadium turf that it is not entirely clear at first whether Maynard came down with possession of the ball in bounds. However, cognizant of the fact that history protects all officially made decisions, I can still attest that after watching it again and again, rewinding it like a good NFL official in a warm box above the field, the pass is clearly caught in bounds with both feet in place and that, remarkably, Maynard maintains possession. The catch holds up.

Three things for #13: If you see Maynard interviewed about the 1968 season on America's Game, he still gets choked up. Secondly, on the Jets' history DVD, Maynard insists that George Sauer, not he, was the better receiver of the two. Finally, when the Jets were wallowing in the misery of a second moribund season under Ritchie Kotite 1996, Don Maynard announced that we would gladly volunteer to coach the Jets although he had absolutely no coaching experience. Pride, humility, and guileless delusion. This skinny, wiry, slightly goofy Texan is, in my books, still one of my favorite football players on any team anywhere, period.

New York Jets By The Numbers: One More 13

Were it not for Dave Jennings, the lucky #13 would have been the sole property of one player, a distinction not found with many numbers on many teams anywhere. Dave Jennings punted for the Jets for three seasons in the 80's after kicking productively for the Giants for more than ten. In fact, the Giants of the late 70's were so bad (think Pasarcik to Kotar to Herman Edwards, 1978) that some years their only Pro Bowlers were Dave Jennings or, maybe, Brad Van Pelt. Your punter is your Pro Bowler - you have had a bad season.

However, Jennings also has the unique distinction of his own, of having broadcasted more Jets games than any other person - 14 seasons' worth. And what I always liked about Jennings was his insistence on being mercilessly dry witted with reference to the extraordinary ineptitude of the team in the Kotite years. Listening to him do the play-by-play of the away win at Indianapolis in 1995 (one of three wins that year) with whomever it was with him in the booth was a not exactly the Algonquin Table, but it kept the me listening to some pretty bleak %#&*ing games. When the Jets started turning around in 1998, he sounded impressed and cautiously hopeful, but always as an outsider. He was often apostrophic - "Jets fans," he would say, addressing the imaginary listener on WFAN, "you really have to put your gripes aside and be impressed with your team today." Lucky Dave - this year, he got to broadcast Giants games.

And I know what you're thinking. Is there any significant link here to "Dave Jennings," the English professor played by Donald Sutherland in "Animal House," who smokes dope, beds Karen Allen and declares John Milton boring - even boring to Milton's wife? Well, no. No. Not at all.

The Belated Super Bowl Post

Traditionally, the list of the Greatest Games in NFL History begins with The Greatest Game Ever Played, the Colts' 23-17 OT victory over the Giants in 1958. Next, the list usually puts Super Bowl III in second, with our Jets defeating the nearly unbeaten Colts in January 1969. Now, we finally witnessed THE greatest game in NFL history, and Joe's Guarantee will take a tertiary place in history, with Alan Ameche's game-ending touchdown now in second.

First, some crow. In my entry entitled "Of Prospects Drear," I said the following: "The Giants will not go far in the playoffs. What possible chance against New England or the Colts? This is Tom Coughlin's last year. Like other New York teams, they look like a team that's still hoping that no one notices how scared they are to win outright." So I eat crow, willingly and gladly. I'd rather be wrong than the Patriots be 19-0. I know I'm not alone in getting Coughlin and the Giants wrong. However, I do recall suggesting to many people that the Giants really were the only team that could beat the Pats. Somewhere in all our hearts - and I suspect in the hearts of many Pats fans - there linked the inevitable sense that Big Blue would not just endure, but prevail.

As my brother, the Giants fan, said to me, second only to his team's glorious victory was his knowing that Tiki Barber was watching from home and that Jeremy Shockey was watching from the press box and not from the field.

He has every right to his euphoria, and not just for being a Giants fan. This year's Super Bowl was exactly what the game of football - America's game - desperately needed after a year riddled with ignominy and underachievement (and not just the Jets'). It was a beautiful, majestic game played heroically by two teams who met each other's match, no matter what their records. I think it so extraordinary that no matter how titanic the persona of the Unbeatens, we all sensed that the New York Giants, one of the lowest performing teams to make it to the Super Bowl, were exactly the team - indeed the only team - capable of performing the awesome job put before them. Players and coaches on the Giants had failed to prove themselves under different pressures during the past year, yet they found a new sense of resolution and calm under the greatest pressure possible. In this sense, in his final drive against New England as time was expiring, Eli Manning found a groove that is often elusive to players throughout their entire careers.

And it was beautiful to watch because I despise the Patriots' industrial precision. The plain truth was that Tom Brady was beaten because it had been a long, long time since he had played under such continuous pressure from such a defensive rush. He was constantly battered, thrown, rattled and distracted by a front line that had decided to play a relentlessly perfect game of its own. He overthrew Randy Moss once too often as a result. Then, to see Belichick misjudge the game clock so as to leave the field before the final play was an appropriate gesture from a character riddled with flaws.

It may have been unconscious of him, but then a coach never misses sight of the clock. He knows how much time there is all the time, and to rush the Giants to their celebration before the game was done may have been the shoddiest gesture of all, as if what was most important was not the Giants' extraordinary win but the Patriots extraordinary loss. In his postgame interview with Chris Myers - an admittedly thankless task for any losing coach - Belichick did not even acknowledge that the Giants were to be congratulated on what they had done; he said "they" made the plays and "we didn't." It was ungracious and unmanly of him to speak thus.

But enough bile. There will be plenty of it for two games next year when we play the Pats at home and away. Meanwhile, this game alone will keep my spirits high until pitchers and catchers arrive late in February. It was the greatest game ever played.

NY Jets #12 - Part 2

Dad also promised he would take me to the Sunday game in November against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and I was holding him to it, even if I no longer harbored any actual hope of seeing them win. The only lingering interest he still had was probably for my benefit. He had been traveling on business a great deal of late, and his absences were creating anxiety for Mom, for she was now the one parent in charge.

Other women in the neighborhood would sometimes try to encourage Mom to try craft making, to join the PTA, or be a den mother. What she really wanted was an occasional respite to go shopping in the city. She couldn’t do it if Dad would return from business trips and then to go to Shea on Sundays with me or Uncle Mike, leaving her alone again to play Mommy. Things had to change. So just before the Buccaneers game, Dad felt torn. We came home from Mass, and while I was prepared to go almost immediately to the game, he suddenly told me that we needed to rake the leaves in the backyard.

I froze. He was kidding. He was kidding, right? It was noon, and kickoff would be in an hour. I looked at him. He didn’t entertain the gesture but simply handed me a rake, and to the backyard we went and got solemnly started. He went about it with an eerie calm, as if he knew something that I didn’t. I became worried. What follows is quite clear in my memory:

“Does this mean we aren’t going?” I asked.
“No, no. Not unless you don’t want to go,” he answered, suspiciously.
I looked at him.
“Dad, there’s a game today, right?”
“Yeah. Tampa Bay.”
“At Shea?”
“Yeah.”
“At one o’clock?”
“What the hell is this, twenty questions?" he asked with uncharacteristic impatience.

Then, he adjusted his tone a little. "Yes. Now rake that side.”

He motioned toward the other side of the oak tree in our yard. He had already filled one lawn bag which he casually left open, and began unfurling another. “Hold this one open,” he said. Precious moments were ticking by. What was going on? I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Dad we have to go.”
“We have to do this first.”
“Why didn’t we do it yesterday?”

He looked at me, and in that instant I saw something, a withering look, one I would only understand myself much later in life as a husband with chores to do.

We kept bagging and raking; in the process, he actually turned on the transistor radio, with Marty Glickman doing the one-hour pre-game show on WOR. Dad seemed almost to be teasing me now, to be illustrating the time wasting away. This is a test, I thought. Either that or some kind of joke, and perhaps Joe Namath was around the corner of the house ready to throw the football around the way he did with Bobby on The Brady Bunch.

Then it hit me.

He was testing me, but not so much to discover the depth of my loyalty to the Jets, but to see if he had a kindred spirit. For the first time, I realized it. I knew what was going on here. He was leaving the Jets behind. He didn’t want to go to the game.

Holy shit.

We were raking leaves because he knew he should have done them the day before, because he now possessed a guilty sense of abandoning his wife to a mundane world, and because he wanted to see if I’d tell him to forget about the game. That’s okay, Dad. There are lots of enjoyable things a father and son can do together instead of another Jets game.

But no way. It wasn’t even a question. I helped clean the yard but then stared apprehensively at him when it was all done. He knew my answer. It was hopeless.

“I’ll get our coats,” he said, looking dejected.

“The wind will be bad. It might rain,” he added.

“I don’t care.” I didn’t.

It didn't rain. Actually, the game against the Buccaneers took place on a sometimes sunny afternoon. It would be Namath’s last victory in a New York Jets uniform. His poor play all year had been the product of countless knee injuries, a failing arm, bad protection in the pocket, inferior coaching, and the latent effects of an irresistible man’s colorful life. Tampa Bay was an expansion team that year, going 0-11 into the game. The Jets would shut them out 34-0, scoring 21 by halftime and 13 in the second half. For once, Namath seemed perfect; his passes still arched oddly in the wind, and he couldn’t scramble out of trouble any better than before, but he managed to look like a winning quarterback for one more day. Clark Gaines went over 100 yards, too. And it was beautiful.

The crowd went mad. Men like Dad had howled for and at Joe Namath for 12 seasons, and they were now howling appreciatively one very last time before letting the idol of their fantasies go. After all, Jets fans were not Namath's metropolitan playboy. He was an envied bachelor who got a great deal of action, while they were working class stiffs from Queens, Jersey and the Island.

Namath was Dad’s friend and he was their friend, too. By mere proximity, he had given them the weekly illusion that they were as hip as he, and in return they wanted Joe Willie to fade gracefully away into history. This is what fans and players do for one another; each provides the other with an illusion, and I daresay that with the exception of players’ salaries, it is the fan who eventually receives the better end of the deal. The fan is as close as he can be to someone else’s victory, with no expectation other than to be near it. John Riggins may have shown me that money mattered above all things when he left the team, but I suppose that when a player's salary runs out and the career is over, he then has to rely on the fans’ collective memories in order to move on, or perhaps profit from the past. Even still, no amount of money made at celebrity appearances or at memorabilia signings can bring back the authenticity of the player’s first-hand experiences, which is probably why at such events the player and the fan finally come face to face.They are finally at common ground.

And so this was Joe’s last winning experience on the field of his beloved city. Even at the age of seven, I knew that this was a poignant moment, and as the time ticked away, I began to cry. Dad looked at me. “Jesus Christ, Marty,” he said, hopeless, “they’re winning. What the hell is wrong with you?” The cops heard him and surreptitiously looked round, only to have my father quickly use their own line on them:

“Nothing to see here,” he said.

“I know,” I said, sniffling in response to his incredulity. “It’s just…” I grasped at superlatives, “…beautiful.” I felt transcendent. The player’s greatest gift to the fan was given to me at last.

And, if nothing else, the Buccaneers game finally made me believe the Jets could win when I was there. The Marty schneid was over, at least for now. We counted down the seconds, I tallied up the statistics for Clark Gaines, and as we left, I begged Dad to put off his impending divorce from the Jets. I asked him to take me to the next home game against first-place New England; he said yes. There was no We’ll see. He smiled.

But it wouldn’t last. The following week, despite going ahead by 10 against New England in the first quarter, the Jets returned to normal, coughing the ball over to a vastly superior Patriots team, missing tackles, and with Namath returning to form throwing key interceptions. The final, 38-27, seemed significant to me because the Jets had scored a whole 27 points against a first place club, but on the cold platform of the number 7 line, Dad dismissed this facile observation. Despite my protests, he angrily insisted on leaving the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter. There was no persuading him otherwise. My identification with the Jets as noble failures was no longer charming to him, and as we waited for our train, I sensed that this would be my last home game for a long, long time.

NY Jets #12

Namath by LeRoy Neiman

Only three numbers have been retired in the Jets' history: 12, 13, and 73. Our Jets-By-the-Numbers has now come upon the most legendary man to wear a Jets uniform, #12. Even today, he needs no introduction.

Granted, there are three #12's of whom to speak. One is Al Dorow, the long-suffering first starting quarterback of the franchise when it was the New York Titans. Let's not forget that Harold "Hayseed" Stephens played after Dorow. That's it, then Joe Namath.

The Giants' Super Bowl victory was the single greatest football game I have ever seen, and it is the certainly greatest upset in football history. But before it, one game stood out as such, and that was Super Bowl III in 1969. It is to the Jets what 1940 was for New York Rangers fans - a moment so singular, a moment unmatched for so long, that one comes to believe somebody somewhere must have sold his soul to make it happen in the first place. We put ourselves in the humble place of knowing that it is too much to ask for another such historic moment.

Yet Joe Namath's extraordinary presence in Super Bowl III was transformative toward all of American sport, and Jets fans know that, in raising his finger in "We're No. 1" (no one had ever made such a subjective self-assessment before) Namath became greater than the Jets and their fans. In that way he belongs to us, but just barely. It was a brief, shining moment. He didn't sell his soul, for his brief reign should have earned him more than his soul would fetch. That's the way life works on occasion.

Unitas

Until Joe Namath entered onto the scene, football players were square-jawed stoics in the manner of John Unitas. Yet what Namath added was not less respect for authority but rather a refined sense of individuality in keeping with a changing culture. I realize that there is nothing wrong with the old way, the NFL way, but sometimes we sentimentalize the past, imagining that the hard-nosed NFL way was the only way to play the game. Namath's childhood idol was Unitas, so much so that he wore #19 as a high school player. Yet when you hear Baltimore Colts former linebacker Mike Curtis talk about the private Unitas in the America's Game series, he says he found Unitas to be a "trying man" whose obstinacy toward coaches would have compelled Curtis, had been the coach, to "duck tape his ass."

How interesting then that Joe Namath is often seen as the shirker of authority. In truth, he was a remarkable game player, someone who did not hot dog on the field, someone who did not speak publicly against coaches, someone who did not criticize teammates or opponents to the press, ever. During his last season with them, the Jets beat the hapless 1976 Buccaneeers 34-0 at Shea. My Dad took me to the game (see the next post). Afterwards, Head Coach Lou Holtz wanted to lead his Jets (who were late into a miserable 3-11 season) in an arcane and sadly inappropriate fight song in the locker room. According to Gerald Eskanazi in his book Gang Green , after a few awkward seconds, it was Namath who lead the troops in the song. Joe Namath is the definition of a good sport.

He did bring a strange femininity and vanity to a game that had thus far been famous for the broken hands of Chuck Bednarik. In this way, he reminds one of George Best. He was a revolutionary athlete who recognized the power of the American popular machine to make sport athletes as large in the public eye as Sinatra, or as John, Paul, George and Ringo. His resonance through time enables him to be a still recognizable figure on the American scene. I was in attendance at a Giants-Jets exhibition game a few years back, and the PA announced the presence of Joe Willie, who walked onto a platform near a press box and waved. The crowd for both clubs went wild for the profoundly well tanned man in an exquisite suit. He acknowledged the crowd like an icon, because that's what he is.

There are plenty of dark sides to any icon, and Namath's was present the night in 2004 when the Jets were losing to Miami at home, the night they named their All-Jets Team, with Namath holding court and enjoying many, many cocktails in the luxury box. When he was interviewed on the sideline by Suzy Kolber on ESPN, he didn't want to talk about the Jets. He wanted to talk about kissing Suzy. He was just following his after-game routine a little early.

In 1969, recovering from a hit from Dave Costa of Denver

In his extraordinary book on Joe Namath, Mark Kriegal discusses Namath's dependence on alcohol as an old school pain medication. Namath missed most of the first half of the 1970's football seasons because of injuries to his knees and shoulders. Had he been playing at in a time when sports science was more advanced, he might not have been urged to treat his severe knee injury at the University of Alabama as if it were a scrape. But the innovations of the doctors who treated Namath as a pro helped engender advances in sports medicine. He gave his body to the game; his sobriety was its casualty. In the long run, everyone benefited but him.

He took the humiliation of his come-on to Suze Kolbert in stride, citing his own need to sober up. In the spirit of that, he remains my hero because he never took himself quite so seriously as athletes do today. Before Bo Jackson's Nike commercials, before Peyton Manning's humorous ads or Charles Barkley's Rite Guard spots, there was Namath's pantyhose ad. He would later say that he regretted wearing the pantyhose, but the ad signified something that helped me to understand the opposite sex. Women love men that are at ease with themselves, even to the point of forthright self-mockery. Before Joe Namath came, the kind of guy who practiced that convincingly was Bob Hope. After Joe Namath, that kind of guy was Richard Pryor. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

But what about as a quarterback? In truth, Namath threw more interceptions than touchdowns in his career, a distinction that is defied by the most important point of all: he predicted that the Jets would win the Super Bowl, and he was right. For the future of football, looking down the tunnel of a seemingly dubious merger, he made a remarkable prediction. Even today, the 1968 Colts that he beat in Super Bowl III are regarded as statistically among the best ever. There are very few moments in American sport that are as singular as his marching off into the locker room, waving "We're No. 1." It is the great "I told you so" felt by every vindicated person after he has been told for too long that he is stupid for dreaming. That's why he means so much to Jets fans.

One night, while shopping for Christmas presents, an ex-boss who had once told me I would never amount to anything saw me and stopped me, asking how I was. Just as I was about to speak about my new, happy career as a teacher, a group of recently graduated students whom I had taught only the year before came literally out of nowhere, bubbling over seeing me again. With my unsolicited proof right there, my ex-boss just looked blankly at me, not recognizing the person he thought was a failure. I felt suddenly like Namath did, trotting off the field of Miami that night in 1969, having been justified. You doubted me. But you were wrong. And I told you so. Maybe you'll know better next time. Or not. Who cares. We're #1.