NY Jets #53 - Part 2

There is an extraordinary pipeline that runs back and forth between the Jets and the New England Patriots.  Since 1997, they have traded coaches and stars back and forth.  Most of it, of course, has been to the benefit of the good people of West Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont (I guess), Rhode Island and Massachusetts and all other bandwagoneers.  Belichick was defensive coach for both teams, Parcells was Head Coach for both, and so was Pete Carroll.  Eric Mangini was Belichik's protege.  Curtis Martin went from New England to the Jets, making him the most valuable acquisition we've gotten out of the pipeline, but of course New England has enjoyed the greatest benefits in the larger sense.  Belichick - whom Parcells presumptuously appointed as Jets Head Coach when the old man "retired" to become GM in 2000 - takes a perverse pleasure in snatching up our seconds and making them firsts.  Like Danny Woodhead.

Former Patriot Larry Izzo #53 came to us in 2009.  Izzo was one of those players whom you hoped would turn Belichick's stomach when he was dressed in green, but then Izzo was found to have a spine injury that forced him to retire a couple of months later.  It was not to be.  I liked Izzo because he represented a kind of player for whom no opportunity is ever turned down; in other words, he is a special teams man with more special teams tackles than any human being alive.  We assume that this would apply to anyone in the CFL.  No offense, fellas, and no pun intended.  Finally, the famous story about Larry Izzo is that at training camp in his rookie year with Miami (1996, undrafted) Coach Jimmy Johnson said that only two players were guaranteed to make the team - Dan Marino and Larry Izzo.  No one knew who the second guy was; they do now, mostly.  But I think Jimmy Johnson liked to say the name - "Larry Izzo," with its connotations, sounding like some guy fallen off a truck, like some nobody whose name sounds like "zero." His name has been bothering me for a long time because I could not remember the larger significance of it.  But now I remember.  Though there is no known relation, "Izzo" was Vince Lombardi's mother's maiden name.  Pedigree asserted, albeit nominally.  Larry Izzo was the omega to Marino's alpha.  Each of them would make it to opening day.  In the universe, one cannot exist without the other.

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The 1975 Topps card of center Warren Koegel #53 immediately reminds me of a Presidential portrait, or even better, the famous painting of William Blake.  It's the image of a noble personage, a man looking hungrily beyond the the renderer's view.  Maybe that's the way he wanted it.  There weren't many "action" shots for that year's Topps cards.  Most of them were retreads from the years before or were reflective shots where the Jet players were asked to look off in the distance, and the players vacantly obliged.  Some have hands casually on both hips.  One or two try the lame, posed action shot - always amusing, for who are they defending against?  One or two look like they were taken during warm-ups at Foxboro the season before.  Among them all, Koegel's image looks like it belongs to a man who with a vision.  

His nickname was "Moose;" according to a rather detailed article on him for Coastal Carolina University in 2001 (where he was athletic director at the time), this nickname derives from the fact that he wore #14 as a Little Leaguer, the same number as "Moose" Skowron of the Yankees.  His Little League in Seaford, NY was very near the one I played for in North Merrick; what's incredible is that for someone as detail-oriented as I  (and about only a handful of things, mind you) I have no idea what numbers I wore in Little League, or even if I had a number at all.  That's bizarre.  It's another one for my mental health care professional.  

At any rate, Koegel (pronounced "ko-ghel," by the way) was director at Coastal Carolina and is apparently now in the same position at Jacksonville State.  Koegel was the offensive captain for Penn State in the late 60's and early 70's, with Jack Ham as defensive captain.  In the Coastal Carolina link above, there is an interesting detail about the end of Koegel's career in 1975.  He blew out his knee just before halftime in the away game against Kansas City, one of only three wins for the Jets that whole season.  His knee was repaired by Dr. James Nicholas, the eminent Merlin to Joe Namath's Arthur, the sports physician who enabled Joe to play longer than he could or should have.  "I haven't had any trouble with my knee since," Koegel says.  The irony is that Koegel's knee gave out before Joe's heavily braced ones did, which may be a testimony to Nicholas after all.  With the exception of John Riggins, the good doctor was sadly the most talented and able member of the team that year.

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Out of Michigan State, drafted by the Jets in 2000, #53 Courtney Ledyard's KFFL profile through news releases looks like a journey back in immediate time.  In an instant, we know all the history we need to know, but nothing essential about the man - only the "transactions" of the quickly summarized past.  No looking through microfilm for us, or scrolling through the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, searching for "Ledyard, Courtney."  Those days are gone.  One link, one source.  That seems to be what it's all about.  At the above link, we begin with NFL Europe, where he was consigned in September 2001, and then to injuries earlier at the August 2001 camp, then his earlier re-signing in the spring of that year.  Such is Courtney Ledyard, whose name sounds like a band that toured with Lynard Skynard and Molly Hatchet.

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Mike McKibben #53 arrived at Kent State two years after the shootings that marked the university in the historical mind.  What was it like then, and how did the jock culture at Kent State imagine itself in light of the countercultural community that the Troop G attacked?  How quickly did people need to move on there in order to move on with their lives?  Was it just a peripheral thing after a while, the way it is, probably, for students today?  People pass by the Prentice Hall parking lot to get to class and get on with their destiny.  


Mike McKibben graduated at a good time to join the Jets.  It would have been a good year for my Dad to join the team, and he was 41.  The jobs were available.  In 1979, McKibben's rookie year, the Jets broke even but could have done much better if not for the injuries that wore the team down to a nub.  Missing Pat Leahy alone cost them at least two games.  Mike McKibben became a starter very quickly, and it looks like he played at linebacker in all 16 games of that season.  He played less the year after that and then was out of the NFL.  He then played for Pittsburgh and then Denver in the USFL a year or two later.  Or vice versa.  

Oh c'mon, don't act like you remember their names right off the bat.  The Pittsburgh Maulers and the Denver Gold.  There you go.  There are no stupid questions here.  No one's judging you.  The interesting thing is that the Denver Gold practically replicated the Pittsburgh Steelers' uniform, while the Pittsburgh Maulers' purple logo looked like something out of the WPA.  Remember that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

"Ledyard, Courtney"

NY Jets #47 - Part 2

Last night, the Jets lost their second straight AFC Championship. They played the first half against Pittsburgh horribly, right down there with the worst of their play this season. They didn't tackle properly; at least three interceptions that could have been. I can't even really articulate all of the frustrations. The second half was less horrible, and had the game gone on for another minute and a half, they would have won, the way they did several times over admittedly lesser teams when the game seemed out of reach. But they didn't do it. Time ran out, the Steelers got their first downs, the game ended.

I have been here before, and not because they were in last year's AFC Title game. My first Jets playoff game was an exact primer for watching how quickly a playoff game can spin out of your team's control. Such was the case with the 12/27/81 Wild Card Game loss to the Buffalo Bills, where the Jets were down 24-10 at halftime, fought back and then lost within the last minute.

Unlike last night, it actually looked worse for the Jets in the second half of the 1981 playoff. In the image below, courtesy of Corbis, Jerry Holmes #47, defensive back, is trying in vain to chase down Bills' running back Joe Cribbs, who is about to score on a 45-yard touchdown run, making the score 31-13 in the third quarter. I remember this. I remember the sense of frustration that only a 12 year-old can feel when he believes that the gods are serving up his hopes to the dogs. The Jets would respond with two touchdowns after Cribbs' score but then would mythically fail on an a Bill Simpson interception Richard Todd pass intended for Derrick Gaffney. I was filled with awe at how terrible it felt. I felt a little of that last night, but my wife and I had friends over, and that was a good distraction from the kinds of things a lonely boy once felt almost thirty years ago when Joe Cribbs added insult to injury.

If you looked closely and see into the eyes of the fans there in the background at Shea Stadium, then maybe you'd see the same expression of horror and haplessness among them. But is that what Jerry Holmes himself is feeling at this precise moment?

This is happening. It is. It's vanishing out of sight. We waited all season, and now this.

I was listening to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me two weeks ago, and their guest was former Ravens lineman Tony Siragusa, the large guy who stands at the end zone and provides whatever insight that a big guy in the end zone can provide, which, to be honest, is something I don't think I really understand, but Fox does; and that's not a statement I make very often. Anyway, he was asked whether he rooted for the Ravens in the playoffs, and he replied that if they still paid him, he would root for them, but no.

Can Jerry Holmes really feel what the fans are feeling right now, in their knit green hats? Who knows. Maybe not there, not then. Still, we all feel it somewhere. That sense of loss. There it goes. It's vanishing. It's gone. Gone for good.

After the 1983 season, Holmes went to play for Walt Michaels and the New Jersey Generals and then for the Pittsburgh (wait for it) Maulers, both of the USFL. (I believe Mike Rozier played for the Maulers.) Holmes left a good thing with the Jets at a time when better things outside the NFL seemed possible. On the verge of next season's lockout, we now know that the NFL really is the only game making a wholesale profit in America, but Jerry Holmes didn't see any of that way back then. How could he? So he had to try.

According to the vast black hole of information, after his playing career, he went on to become the Head Coach at Hampton University in 2008, turned the team around and then was fired for shopping himself around informally for a better coaching job in the NFL. By publicly shopping around, he apparently hurt the school's recruitment for the following year. Still, he had to try. Now he's a secondary coach for the Hartford Colonials of the UFL, which still exists, I believe. Remember when we talked about the Colonials, earlier? Remember? The former New York Sentinels, whose home was in Hofstra? Ah, the UFL.

Makes me kind of feel bad for Jerry Holmes, although right now I'm liable to recognize loss and misfortune in any given situation. We're all searching for that moment when opportunity will shift our way. We chase after it - it's a job, a love, a piece of serenity. But all things are elusive in their own way, and some objectives are in fact the very ironic source of our undoing. We either watch it evaporate from the stands or on the field, and I don't know which is preferable, for the sense of loss is palpable either way. There it goes. Gone for good.

Whereas sometimes the objective seems impossible to begin with, even as it rips right past you. Tommy Marvaso, #47 played defensive back in 1976, statistically one of the Jets' worst seasons, particularly on defense. After that, he falls off the statistical map, gone for good from the professional world of football. He has one lone, dubious moment in a quick wrap-up of the NFL Films' week 13, below. At about the :20 mark, veteran tight end Jean Fugett is running alongside Marvaso and then suddenly gets behind him and open for a touchdown from Billy Kilmer.



In this case, two people watching helplessly in the stands were Mom and Dad, while the Jets lost 37-16. It was their last game. They didn't get divorced; Dad divorced the Jets after that, giving up his seasons tickets. Like a lot of people, he didn't even go to the last home game against the Bengals. It was a sensible thing to do after a second consecutive 3-11 finish. He had been watching the Jets' fortunes vanish out of sight since 1969, losing season after losing season, and he decided there wasn't really a point to watching it happen anymore.

But in Tommy Marvaso's case, he may not even have had enough time to watch it vanish completely out of his view. There may have been only a quick moment of recognition to see Jean Fugett there, and then not there. Where the hell did he go? he wonders as he looks to see Fugett with the ball. How the hell did that happen so fast? Gone for good, Tommy.

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Try to grasp this one. Roscoe Word #47 played at cornerback for four different teams over nine games in the 14-game season of 1976. This means that Marvaso replaced him in the secondary in number, if not at position. I'm not sure where Word finished the season, but he had the most traveled single season I have ever seen in the NFL. He began his career with the Jets in 1974. It's difficult to tell where and when he ended up first in the '76 season; it may be that it started with Buffalo, but then he either went to the Giants or back to the Jets, getting his old #47 back, I guess. Then he traveled to that legendary island of misfit toys, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Here his journey came to an end. Which games and where and when, I cannot say.

If you cannot show a respect for a man who was witness to such an allotment of losing over one season, then I do not think you have a heart beating inside you. Consider that the 1976 Jets (again one of our worst squads on record; a team whose own coach quit on them before the season ended) were not even the last place team in the AFC East. That distinction belonged to the Buffalo Bills who, after finishing 10-4 in 1975, finished 2-12 the year later. The Giants finished 3-11 while the Bucs established the industry standard for ineptitude and went winless. It is statistically possible that on his journey, Roscoe Word may not even have encountered a single victory.

Did it matter? Perhaps no more to Roscoe Word than it did to Jerry Holmes. We assume he collected a paycheck wherever he went. His only complaint may have been having to collect all the W-2's. But it's the idea that maybe he finished his career with those legendary 0-14 Bucs that intrigues me. To be a benchwarmer, a replacement, a cog in as mightily broken a piece of machinery as the Buccaneers were that year must have been a humbling experience or, possibly, surreal. Perhaps he saw himself as a fly on the wall, a witness to history. If the great affair is to move, then the trip ought to be interesting.

All I know is that he made a late-game interception in 1974 that made my Dad exhale with a violence of joy that only a man in the throes of passion can truly express, as the Jets held onto a 21-16 victory over the Patriots at Foxboro, keeping the Jets' winning streak on track that year. I have written of this before; it's my ur-Jets moment. The Jets were out of the playoffs by the time Word ended the game, but Dad went to the following week's game against Miami at Shea, which Word helped end yet again with a late-game interception of Bob Griese. Dad came home buoyant, willing to renew his season tickets another year, willing to believe all over again. In two weeks, I saw him become a boy again right before my eyes, and because of this, I think Word is the man most responsible for making me what I am today - a convert, a Jets fan, a neurotic, a wreck, a shell of a human being who fights against high expectation each week after a win and who finds reassurance of humanity's innate ridiculousness with each Jet loss, the naively felt possibility that comes with each Jet win.

Thank you, Roscoe Word. For better or for worse, you have made me who I am. And because the human soul's limitless capacity for faith cannot be measured in a statistical value that I yet know of, I am left only with the option of referring to you as an infinite Jet.