And Tony Eason? Yeah #11 Tony Eason quarterbacked for the Jets as a backup from 1989 to 1990, my last two years at school. Put him up there with Frank Reich, Bubby Brister, Jack Trudeau, Boomer Esiason, Jay Fielder. Quarterback castaways. This is where the road mostly ends, fellas. Cast off your burden here, ye mighties but look upon this sight and despair. He played two seasons with the Jets in the Coslet years. And I cannot recall a single thing about his play with us. Sometimes it just works that way. I was at college, drinking very heavily, and working on deadlines. I had priorities, such as they were.No. 11 Brian Hansen came to the Jets in 1994 when Louis Aguiar's directional punting didn't work out. He played five seasons with us, though when I look him up on the Jets' all-time roster, I see that his information is exactly the same as Don Silvestri's. So Brian Hansen enabled me to locate some errors on he New York Jets website. How about that. Yeah. (Time elapses) It's kind of hard to say interesting things about a punter. It's not Brian Hansen's fault.
The Jets had their share of guys who backed up Joe Namath in the 1970's, but the last to do it before Richard Todd was given the full-time job was Steve Joachim, #11 in that magic year of 1976. College coach that he was by nature, Lou Holtz must have noticed that Joachim won the Maxwell Award for excellence in college football after playing for Temple University. In 1974. Originally drafted in 1975 by - say it together - the Baltimore Colts, Joachim's statistics indicate "1G," one game, while his career indicates one team: the New York Jets. We do not know if he even so much as threw the ball.
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| Is this Patrick Ramsey's only pass for the Jets? |
Ed "Butch" Songin was a New York Titans #11 who apparently quarterbacked behind Al Dorow in 1962 after quarterbacking for the Boston Patriots the years before. We have no photographs, no stories, no images, no half-true anecdotes. To have been an unknown player on a team that was practically a rumor on even the AFL scene is a difficult burden to carry. The only thing I do know is that he passed out of this world on May 25, 1976, a relatively young man, no doubt. The cause of death remains unknown. RIP Butch.
Jim Turner has the unique distinction of being one of five New York Jets to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. He is also a placekicker who's nickname is "Tank," a distinction normally reserved for nose tackles. The Football Issue of September 1969 (left) shows Jim putting the boot to it. He is the last of the straight-on kickers, for both the Jets and the NFL as a whole. He scored nine points of the Jets' 16 in Super Bowl III. If you own the NFL Greatest Games replay of the game, there is a great moment caught on the sideline where a clearly agitated Joe Namath is unhappy about not getting the ball closer for Jim Turner to kick a field goal. Placed in the strange position of reassuring his somewhat high maintenance field general, Tank just keeps saying over and over, "It's OK, Joe. It's OK. Don't worry about it. It's OK." |
| Troy Woodbury |
That was three years ago. If you go to JetsTwit, you'll get the answers that can only come when a writer takes a blog to the next level - analyzing Twitter content on the Jets in the blogosphere. Wish I had thought of that. Take a look at about 2:27 in the video at the bottom of the link, and you'll see Woodbury's first NFL catch, playing as one of several receivers filling in for injured Wayne Chrebet in a loss to Jacksonville in 2002. He promptly takes the ball to the sidelines at the end of the play.
1 comment:
There is actually some interesting background on Butch Songin - he was an All-American hockey player at Boston College, where he played on a national championship team. He also has to have been one of the few players to play both pro hockey (in the AHL; tough for Americans to make the NHL in those days!) and pro football. He died of cancer.
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