NY Jets #65 - Part 1 (and a #22)

A kid can pick up on the dynamics at play in his parents' marriage. You learn what your parents choose to not talk about. You observe what single word or phrase from one sets the other off. You learn what makes marriages happy or not. I guess we learn these things because someday we're going to be living a life that resembles the one we started observing from a very early age. I learned a great deal about my parents from the backseat of our car, as I watched the sides of their faces for their reactions to one another.

We did a lot of errands together. I may not have appreciated it as much as I should have, being hauled off to hardware stores, furniture stores, appliance stores, paint stores, to Sears, to the liquor store, to the supermarket. My parents would disagree about which supermarket was best. Mom said A&P; Dad preferred Shop Rite. They would dispute these things as if they were fighting over different faiths or political views. When I went with Dad, he went to Shop Rite and told me to "tell Mom we went to A&P."

Consequently we didn't watch a lot of Jets games during the football season; we listened to them on the car radio. And until the time I was old enough to mind my brother, or probably felt it wasn't cool to go anywhere with my parents, this meant we tuned the car radio to WCBS for Jets games on Sunday and heard Spencer Ross and Sam DeLuca #65. Among the various issues both small and smaller about which my parents would assent or demur, they both agreed that Sam DeLuca drove them crazy.

Sam DeLuca passed away in 2011. He played offensive line for the Jets after playing seasons with the Giants, the Toronto Argonauts and San Diego Chargers. He was a New York boy with a Brooklyn accent who went to high school with Sandy Koufax and Larry King. He was on the first front lines that protected Joe Namath on the Jets, and he recalled in a WABC profile that after a game, the team would assemble on the bus and then pick Namath up out of another stadium exit so as to avoid being delayed by hundreds of people waiting to get a view of the golden boy. An injury in the 1967 preseason ended DeLuca's career, but no sooner did he finish with that than he picked up work in the announcer's booth, first with pre- and postgame interviews with the Mets, and then with the Jets. He did what used to be called the "color" for Jets games on WABC with Merle Harmon in the early 70's and then with the longer gig with Spencer Ross from 1979 to 1983.

I couldn't quite gauge at first what made my parents so equally mad about Sam DeLuca. Did he sound like a lot of know-it-all guys my Mom grew up with in Greenpoint - guys that pretended to know more than they actually did? (Mom always took issue with guys who talked too much during a broadcast. She once called the NBC network and demanded to talk to someone about a young Bob Costas who was venting opinions when he was supposed to be calling a baseball game.) As I piece it together today, I realize that what made them both so angry about DeLuca was his need to drive home a particular point he felt to be relevant through several plays and even through quarters of a game.

"Why doesn't he just call the game or be quiet?" Mom would say as we drove around, looking for parking at the Hempstead Pergament.

"And going back to what I was trying to say before about Richard Todd's habits in the pocket..."

"Again with Todd in the pocket!" Dad said. "Wasn't he talking about that ten minutes ago?"

"...it's a point I can't emphasize enough that if a quarterback doesn't see the entire field, it's going to be very difficult to be successful in the NFL."

"I feel like a prisoner in my own car!" Mom said.

I don't remember if these are any of the actual things Sam DeLuca said, but I do remember how my parents responded. They could very well have been talking to one another through Sam DeLuca, telling the truth of their frustrations and feelings the way couples do when they find something upon which they can finally agree.

The truth is that Sam DeLuca was ahead of his time. He provided not just the "color" but a  commentary of expertise well beyond the monosyllabic bits of thought that less successful commentators gave. His kind of talk is now industry standard. Ask Tim McCarver about the "right kind of outs to make." Think of Joe Morgan's discussion of the lack of validity in Moneyball. Ask Jon Gruden about the absence of competitive spirit among football players. But when I call Mom and Dad and ask whether they caught the games on Sunday, or the last Mets game on TV, they often talk about - on different ends of the phone line and in different parts of the house - how the announcers are appalling. It is now the rule rather than the exception. Whether they realize it or not, they are still talking about Sam DeLuca.

"Just call the game," Mom says. "I turn the sound down."

"I don't even bother with it," Dad says, "It's why I watch golf."

***

John Hudson #65 played center for the Jets from 1996-99. His career spanned eleven seasons, starting with Philadelphia in 1990 and ending with Baltimore and, presumably, the Super Bowl victory their team enjoyed against the Giants. Today, according to his Wikipedia page, Hudson is a football coach for Henry County High School in Paris, Tennessee.

But in my search for information on him, Google assumed I was making a mistake. Did I not mean former '68 veteran safety Jim Hudson #22, who died last Tuesday in Austin, Texas?

We looked at Jim Hudson rather simplistically a couple of years ago. I should have included a 1997 Times article on his work as a successful trainer and owner of thoroughbreds in Texas. This part of the article stood out:

So far, (Hudson) has saddled seven winners and earned $140,050 in purses here since April 28. He has got the multiple stakes-winning filly Icy Morn, a monster who has won 20 of her 38 starts, ready for the $50,000 Mockingbird Stakes race on Sunday. He torments his barn mates with incessant needling -- even once barricading his rival trainer Bill Leach into a restroom with a golf cart.

At first I was not able to tell from this whether it was the "monster" Icy Morn or Hudson himself doing the needling. Dad always talked about Hudson's reputation for being a tough safety who'd hassle players he was covering, and I think much of it might have been based on the fact that Hudson was thrown out of the Heidi Game. One thing about Jim Hudson that I did mention was his interception in Super Bowl III: "Jim Hudson got in front of the pass that should have gone to Jimmy Orr but went instead to Jerry Hill in Super Bowl III. This was, perhaps, the most important defensive play of the most important game in New York Jets history."

Jim Hudson #22 robbing Jerry Hill
(cribbed and cropped Walter Iooss 
photo from Getty Images)

I should have added that had Hill caught the pass for a touchdown (never mind if Earl Morrall has been able to see Jimmy Orr from the halftime band dressed in Baltimore blue that was lining the end zone) then the Colts would have tied up the game and entered halftime with some needed momentum that might have made the difference, and the history of football itself might have been different. In America's Game, Michael MacCambridge writes that the AFL was seen as so inferior that in the days leading up to Super Bowl III that Pete Rozelle casually mentioned to reporters the possibility that future Super Bowls might match up the two best professional teams overall, even if that meant two NFL teams. In light of this, Jim Hudson changed history by keeping the Jets ahead, where they - and the teams of his league - would remain.

At first the news that came out about Hudson's passing did not include the cause of death. He was 70. However, this weekend Wikipedia was updated with information from The Daily Texan that Hudson died from traumatic dementia encephalopathy. Later the Times published news more specific and telling:

The cause was Parkinson’s dementia, his wife, Lise, said, adding that doctors believed that it had been caused by football-related trauma. At her husband’s request, she said, his brain and spine would be given to researchers at Boston University who are studying the relationship between head trauma and neurological disease.

“He was a hard-hitting, tough football player,” she said. “What he wanted to do was help researchers come up with alternatives to protect players better, especially kids coming up.”

This is the second death in as many months of a Longhorn and former '68 Jet from a brain disorder - first, George Sauer of complications related to Alzheimer's and now Hudson by trauma-related Parkinson's dementia. Sauer's disease may or may not have been related to the violence of the game, but Hudson's career, which ended only a season after Sauer's, was responsible for his. They were very different men - Sauer the soft-spoken poet, Hudson the fiery gambler and businessman. 

Aside from ending up on the same professional club (along with Pete Lammons who was also on that Texas team) Sauer and Hudson were both linked by an extraordinary moment in the 1965 Orange Bowl, which was probably the game of their lives that up to that point. 

Put into the role of quarterback, Jim Hudson threw a 69-yard touchdown pass to George Sauer in the first half that eventually helped make the difference in the Longhorns' 21-17 victory over Joe Namath and top-ranked Alabama.

The next time all three Longhorns would meet again on a professional field it would be with the same team, led by Joe Namath. But now the pass to Sauer from Hudson takes on a different quality. Their deaths were so close in time together and were likely brought on by football careers that took up only a brief part of their lives. It's almost as if their touchdown that night is a part of the secret language of life, reminding us of how, as Shakespeare says, time's passage brings about "store with loss and loss with store." This brief, bright moment in their lives came and went without much existential content, but time eventually turns it into something oddly poetic.

NY Jets #22 - Danny Woodhead's Revenge

I wasn't paying attention when Danny Woodhead was waived in September 2010, probably because I believed too firmly, too calmly in a lot of big things and big ideas. The Jets were picked by their own coach to "lead the league in fucking wins." And to be honest, I don't really remember if he was wearing #22 or #83 by then. I know he wore both; I just never believed that when Rex Ryan said he loved Danny Woodhead as much as he did that he would ever let him go, only to be snapped up by the Jets' biggest rival. Danny Woodhead is exactly the spiritual core the Jets lack as they hurtle toward the abyss in the 2010 season. Before the game with the Steelers in Week 15, I predicted that they would lose every remaining game of the season and that Rex Ryan will be fired by year's end. When they beat the Steelers, I felt a brief measure of relief. But we should have kept Danny Woodhead. As a fairly effective rusher way second on the New England Patriots to Benjarvus Green-Ellis, Danny (I find it difficult to refer to a short man by his last name; that's wrong of me, obviously) will finish the year with the Pats and will appear on their roster next year. He will go to the playoffs; he may win a Super Bowl; he will finish better than Rex Ryan. Though he seems like an awfully nice boy, he will have his revenge.

Danny Woodhead is the talisman the Jets gave away. He's not a premier talent like ones on defense we have given away, like John Abrahams (#'s 94, 56) or James Farrior and Jonathan Vilma (both #51). Imagine a linebacking core like that going against rapist Ben Roethelsberger this weekend. Woodhead is not a shaman. By the looks of it, he is the simple yet talented kid out of Nebraska who tries to sell is own jersey in the big city without a single person recognizing his face. He is exactly what Rex Ryan is not, which is why he might have been magic for a team whose profile has superseded its courage. I talked about his talent when we chatted about #35, which was also one of Danny Woodhead's numbers, just after he was drafted by Mangini, just before he blew out his knee in his first professional training camp. I hadn't been buying the hatred dispensed by New York's snootier outfits this season, with their claims that the Jets' hubris would eventually undo them, but now clearly the haters would appear to have been understating the calamity. Danny Woodhead would never have prevented all of this from happening had he stayed with the Jets; his departure was simply an indication of which the way the wind would blow.

As davidhill points out, though, he left the Jets wearing #27. I have no memory of that, but I believe it. That's how konked out I've been by this season's promises.

****

Do you have a brother like Tank Carter? Tyrone Carter does. Though he played for the Jets in #22 during a single season of 2003, Tyrone has been playing for the Steelers since 2004, and as was widely reported after Super Bowl XL, Tank attended his brother's big game instead showing up to serve a prison sentence of six months. Lucky that the Steelers won because once he was apprehended, Tank's sentence was extended four and a half years. So I ask you again. My brother would probably not request that of me. I'm assuming here that I'm the one going to jail.

****

According to the NFL Players Association, the average career of an NFL player is 3.5 years. As far as I know, only a few American careers are comparable in this sense of their raw attrition. Teaching is comparable. Public school teaching has a burnout rate from the front end of about five years. Number 22 Mike Dennis ended his season with the New York Jets in 1984 after the duration of five seasons in the NFL. So your next rational question is what can Mike Dennis' career teach us about the demands of an average American's professional life? Well might you ask. Well. Might. You. Ask. Or are you better off studying the work of #22 Sean Dykes (no relation to #28 Donald Dykes) whose claim to fame was six games in the strike-ridden 1987 season and, according to the Jets database, "selling Mazdas in the off-season, during his time with the Jets," which in itself is a bit of a paradoxical state of being? No.

Or a viciously cruel state of being. When I played Pee Wee football, I played on a team whose record was 0-6-1. When I played AYSO on Long Island, our soccer team won zero games. My two Little League baseball teams each won one game apiece all season. Was it something I did or said? Was my hangdog look infectious? After all, I was the least effectual member of all of these teams, the player whom the coach looked at with the same disgruntled expression I gave to the kid who told me today that she couldn't answer any of the quiz questions on the chapters of Catcher in the Rye that I had read in class yesterday because she hadn't read the two chapters the two days before before them. Why do I fucking bother? Carl Greenwood played in #22 at cornerback for the New York Jets during the 1995 and 1996 seasons, in which the Jets won all of four football games. He might have asked himself the same question, though that's at least a better record than my years in Long Island sports.

****

A saga involving #24 spilled over onto #22. Ty Law was once a #24, but then wore #22 for the brief period he was brought in for the 2008 season once Jesse Chatman was deactivated for the away Patriots game. Ty Law was always an on-again-off-again prodigal son for Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak. I don't expect Danny Woodhead to return to the Jets anytime soon, but the fierce rivalry between the two teams had its crescendo in Danny Woodhead getting plenty of playing time in the 2010 Tea Party-sized shellacking the Patriots did of the Jets at Foxboro. Activate a rival's former player before the big showdown with the rival. It worked for Danny Woodhead, but Ty Law's career is now officially done. It didn't work in 2008, but then not much did that year.

****

I've been trying to figure out what to say about wide receiver Nick Bruckner, aside from the fact that he was actually from Astoria, Queens. At 5'11", he was a little foreshadowing of Wayne Chrebet, though a little taller. Ah, I know. The reason why we mention him is because he wore #86 in 1983, #83 in 1985 and #22 in 1985 - three numbers in three years. The final change was indicative of a demotion for a wide receiver.

Not unlike Kenny Lewis who, according to the Jets database, wore #24 in 1980 and the #20 in 1981. Then he was #22 in 1983. Is this the fate of special teams, the "Help" of professional football?

My father always told me that Jim Hudson was the most fiery member of the 1968 team. Dad probably got that idea because Hudson got thrown out of the Heidi Game, which must have meant he was a badass because that is one of the most penalized games in AFL history. In the AFL Championship Game, we see him narrowly miss out on an interception, and he pounds the turf so angrily that he looks like an infuriated adolescent unable to control the connection between his still immature frontal lobe and his fist. But most importantly, #22 Jim Hudson got in front of the pass that should have gone to Jimmy Orr but went instead to Jerry Hill in Super Bowl III. This was, perhaps, the most important defensive play of the most important game in New York Jets history.

NY Jets #44 - Part 2

The other day I joined Facebook. I suppose the feeling I had when I saw my face, name, personal information - my identity, essentially - on the screen for all to see was probably similar to the mixed feelings my grandfather in Brooklyn had when his first TV set arrived to his family's railroad apartment in the early 1950's. I had just joined the century with the rest of America, but it didn't mean that I thought it was any good for me.

The analogy is an admittedly poor one. Facebook is interactive, while television was not, and is not. Facebook has an impermanence in your life based on your need to express yourself in the moment. TV renders us passive and dull and is served to us, cold. But like TV, Facebook is oddly addictive - a rather facile mode of self-expression in a society that values facile self-expression and encourages addictive behavior. I suppose blogging is just as similar, only I thought by blogging, I would change the world. I was so very wrong, of course.

I'm not too sure what any of that exactly has to do with #44 Trent Collins, safety for the New York Jets during the NFL Players' Strike in 1987. But I sometimes think that when I sit down to write, I feel the way Trent Collins must have felt taking the field for three replacement games. He made a pro career out of returning one punt for three yards and, apparently, recovering a fumble. The Jets of the replacement games of that season did not win any fans, and the futility of the entire exercise must have been obvious to Collins. There were empty seats in the Meadowlands and very little opportunity for the players who made it onto the strike squad to extend their career beyond the three games. I remember watching bits and pieces of replacement games that season, with unfamiliar players playing in familiar numbers, not the least of which was #44. I nearly game up on pro football right then and there. Suddenly college sports seemed appealing, the way it does to so many of its fans - as a supposedly purer manifestation of a game. That didn't last long.

But it didn't stop Trent Collins, obviously. Though we know our efforts will hardly even raise an eyebrow, we are entitled to try, anyway. What the hell. Was it a thrill for Collins? Once the itch for professional play was scratched, did he walk away feeling sated, even while knowing a public address announcer would never compete with the noise of a real crowd to call out his name?

****

Having recently graduated from the University of Texas in 1965 (and playing against Joe Namath in the Orange Bowl), Jim Hudson joined the New York Jets and was given the #44. The next season he switched to #22, the number he wore through the rest of his career with the Jets. This raises the inverse question that confronted us two years ago when we first wrote about #22. After leaving the New York Jets in #22 and joining the Oakland Raiders wearing #44, Burgess Owens multiplied his standing in the world by two, which is why it seemed appropriate that he celebrated the Raiders' interceptions in January 1981 after years of mediocrity with the Jets. He wasn't twice the man he was before, but he found his good fortune increased. Whereas though he divided his number by two, Jim Hudson found his fortunes increased and he also celebrated his own Super Bowl interception in January 1969. So, no. Or, yes. I forget what the question was.

****

I'm a little gratified that the reporters who cover the NFL allowed Brian Cushing of the Texans to keep his Defensive Rookie of the Year Award. This wasn't their intention, but by doing so they are not allowing the league to duck the question of whether performance enhancement is everywhere in the NFL. It's everywhere in the NFL, and the more we remain open about the fact that football (and our love of it) develops these physical monsters on the field, the more the league will have to address its priorities in allowing to openly happen. There's nothing more I'd love than to believe that the NFL is clean. I love football. I love the football season. I love winter Sundays, and at the end of a long day of following the before, during and after Jets games, I am exhausted. I love it. But this kind of passion helps produce a game that is actually prone to physical absurdity. I don't want to believe that bigger is better in the glory game, but it's true.

Which is why when you're asked to look at Luke Lawton #44 as "the typical steroid abuser," look again. The NFL would probably like to point at Lawton because traditionally he's only been a practice squad player in Buffalo, the Giants, Atlanta - that is until he started playing for blackhearted Oakland. Since playing there, he has had a regular job in the backfield but also tested positive. He had a short spell with the Jets, Colts, and Eagles, but with Oakland, he became a fixture in the manner that, once upon a time, castoffs had been given a place in Al Davis' Alameda County. Did steroids help with that? I guess. But he's also an easy target. He's the screw-up who finally got an 85 on his chemistry test and showed everybody he could do it. However, the teacher thinks he must have cheated, and, turns out, he's right. But before he closes the books on the case, the teacher should also see if the "A" students in his class cheated, too. Hint: they always do.

Whereas #44 Joe Todd, who played one game for the Jets in 2001, is a pro nobody, but he has gone the route of becoming linebackers coach at both University of Rhode Island and later at Staten Island's very own Wagner College. Note to Trent Collins and Luke Lawton: those who can't do, teach.