Sack Exchange: The Definitive Oral History of the 1980s New York Jets

MEET THE JETS: THE NAMATH ERA

Beginning in the 1920s, the New York Giants reigned as the premier NFL team for the city that never sleeps. However, by 1960, the AFL gave football fans another New York team to root for, the Titans. By 1962, the team is re-christened the New York Jets.

FRANK RAMOS: There were five original owners of the Jets. They bought the team for $1 million. The Titans had been bankrupt. Leon Hess, Sonny Werblin, and Townsend Martin all owned equal shares of the team, and Donald Lillis and Philip Iselin owned lesser percentages of the team. So those five men were there from the beginning. I began the first year of the Jets [1963]. I had been in the service at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the U.S. Army. I was assigned to the Sports Information Office at the academy, and I worked with Joe Cahill, who was the longtime sports information director there. Joe had started at West Point in ’43 — in the famous years of Doc Blanchard, Glenn Davis, and Red Blaik. Joe was there throughout that whole time. The day I got out of the service was the day of the Cuban Missile Crisis showdown — when Khrushchev backed down — and that was the day I got my discharge. Then I stayed on as a civilian, and worked there with Joe. At one time Joe had worked with Pete Rozelle, who was the PR person for the 1960 Olympic Games, and Joe had worked in Squaw Valley when the U.S. hockey team was coached by the army coach, Jack Riley. Joe had worked there with the hockey team and with Rozelle.

When Rozelle became the commissioner, he did talk to Joe about the possibility of joining him in the NFL. But Joe had young kids and was still at West Point, so he declined, and I know that Pete hired Jim Kensil — he was also up for that job. But a few years later, Sonny Werblin talked to Joe about going to New York to be an assistant to him, and be in charge of PR. There was no such thing as marketing at the time in pro football, but he would be overall in charge of all those types of things. Joe was thinking, did he really want to leave West Point after twenty years? I said to Joe I thought the AFL definitely had a chance. There was room for two teams in New York, especially. And I thought pro football was really catching on — New York was one area where there weren’t any real pro football teams. Army got as much coverage as any team — more so than Rutgers, Columbia, or any team in the New York area. It’s still not a hotbed for college football. I said, Since you’ve been here, all your people — like Red Blaik, Davis, and Blanchard — are no longer there. He says, You know, if I go to New York, I’m going to take you with me.

I was hoping for that — he did take the job and he did hire me. Joe went down in April to take the job, and I stayed at West Point as the acting sports information director. And then I joined him after I completed all the brochures and everything that Army needed, and joined the Jets in June of ’63. I’m originally from Long Island, but my family moved during my sophomore year of high school to Miami. I finished high school in Miami and went to school at Florida State.

JOE FIELDS: I was born in Gloucester, New Jersey, and grew up in Deptford, New Jersey. First of all, I played football in grammar school — in a touch football league. All of the kids who were too heavy to make the weight on the Pop Warner teams played in this touch league. I went to Gloucester Catholic High School — to tell you the truth, I wasn’t very good. I started my senior year, and didn’t really think about playing in college football. I did get recruited at a couple of schools — one being PMC [Pennsylvania Military College], which later changed its name to Widener [University]. One of my old coaches took me and a couple of the other guys to PMC, and it was just a little bit out of reach financially, and there was no help. But around July, Bill Manlove — who was head coach at PMC at the time — called and said he could give me a $1,500 loan if that would help.

Actually, my mom talked me into it. She said, You love football, you really like to play. Why don’t you play now that you’ve got the loan? So I ended up going to Widener. And what happened was back then you had to make the traveling squad as a freshman. I made the traveling squad as a freshman, and then my junior year, we had a guy playing for us, Billy White Shoes Johnson, and he was my teammate. Some scouts started to come around and see him. At the time, I was like 6' 2'', 220 or 230 pounds, and Carroll Huntress — who was a scout for the New York Jets — pulled me aside one day when he was looking at films of Billy. I was at an awards dinner. And he called me out of it down to the clubhouse at Widener, and said, Hey Joe, every time I watch films of Billy, I see you! I really think you can play professional football if you would gain some weight. He goes his way, and I go my way. I start thinking about it, what the heck is twenty pounds? So twenty or thirty pounds later, I came into training camp at Widener at 250.

Again, towards the end of the season, Carroll Huntress shows up, and he says, Your size is good, and timed me in the forty [yard dash], and did all the nonsense things they do. He says, I think you can play . . . but I’ve never seen you long-snap. So I happened to be, again, at another banquet. I went into the field house, and in shoes and a suit and tie, I long-snapped for him. After that, he told my coach, There are three centers in the country — Jack Baiorunos at Penn State, Dennis Franks at Michigan, and Joe Fields. And I think Joe is the best.

Carroll sat me down and said, If you don’t get drafted, we’d really like to sign you as a free agent. So I thought about it, and I got some letters from other teams. I thought to myself, I gained the weight, I went this far — I’m going to try it for a year or two and see if I don’t get drafted. Then what happened was on draft day, I got drafted in the fourteenth round by the New York Jets, which was interesting because I had never even been in an airplane — I didn’t even know where the airport was! A friend of mine, Ken O’Brien — who was our quarterback at Widener — took me down to the airport, so I could fly up and get a physical with the Jets. When I was flying up in the airplane, there was a guy they drafted in second round from the University of Miami, Joe Wysocki, and he was, like, 6' 3'' and 290 — he was a guard. And when he walked in the airport, I just said, If all the guys are like this, there’s no way that I belong. He had, like, twenty-three-inch arms — the guy was huge. Anyway, Joe didn’t end up playing — he hurt his knee — and I ended up playing fourteen years. So I guess first impressions are a little bit off.

RICHARD TODD: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. My father was a schoolteacher, and moved all over the place — lived in Arkadelphia, Arkansas; Bristol, Virginia — he got his doctorate degree at the University of Alabama, so I lived in Tuscaloosa. We settled down when I was in the eighth grade in Mobile, Alabama. I remember playing Pee Wee football when I was young — the coach got mad at me and I got mad at him, and I threw my helmet down, and it banged against his shins. He was jumping up and down, and I walked back home — about a mile away in Arkansas [laughs]. I guess football started in the ninth grade. I stuttered — and I still stutter quite a bit, but not as bad as I used to. I always wanted to be a wide receiver — I never thought about being a quarterback because I was pretty fast back then, and I liked to run and catch the ball. And then the quarterback — who was going to be the quarterback in the ninth grade — his father got transferred out of town, and the family moved. So they lined everybody up to see who could throw the best, and I could throw the best. So I was the quarterback on the freshman team. We had a couple of really good receivers, and I could throw it deep, so we threw the ball quite a bit. My coach, Richmond Brown, he was always a real positive influence. And I guess that’s when I really started.

I played at Davidson High School — we didn’t have really good teams, but we had a lot of fun. Our coach, Glen Yancey, he actually coached three quarterbacks that played in Division I — myself, Scott Hunter, and I can’t remember the other one, but Scott Hunter played professional football, also. I committed to Auburn because that was when they had Pat Sullivan, Terry Beasley, and all these guys — Pat Sullivan won the Heisman Trophy that year [1971]. But I ended up going to Alabama — I went because of Coach Bryant. That was really the only reason. They ran the wishbone, and I was just a big old slow fullback. But we had great teams in Alabama — we split the National Championship my sophomore year with Notre Dame. We were the UPI champions; they were the AP. They beat us — that was before the Bowls, they used to come out with the National Championship before the Bowls came out. I think that was the last year they did it — 1973. We were number one and they were number two, and they beat us by one point at Tulane Stadium. That was my sophomore year, and my senior year. I had a pretty good year — I was the Most Valuable Player in the Sugar Bowl [in 1976]. We actually played Penn State, and Greg Buttle was on that team. We became good friends.

I was being told all the time when I was at college — and by all these different scouts — that I’d be recruited as an athlete. I guess the last game I played real well — I threw for quite a few yards and ran for quite a few. The Sugar Bowl I threw for over 200 yards, and I played in the Senior Bowl, which was the All Star Game, where all we did was throw. Steve Largent was the receiver and Sammy White — White was a number one pick for Minnesota that year, and Largent set all those records for the Seattle Seahawks. I threw for, like, 350 yards. Ray Perkins was a scout that I was talking to quite a bit — he was with New England at that time. Down at the Senior Bowl, he said, You’ll probably be picked in the third/fourth/fifth round as an athlete. Anyway, I had a really good Senior Bowl, and I saw him at the end of the game, and he said, Forget what I said!

I was taken by the Jets. I remember talking to the Broncos, and I think if the Jets weren’t going to take me, there was this player and that player, and if those players were around they would pass on me and take those guys. One of those guys was Mike Haynes — a defensive back for New England — he was taken earlier. So they took me in the sixth round. The next team that would have taken me was Denver, I believe — it’s probably good that didn’t happen [laughs]. So that’s how I got tied up with the Jets.

RANDY RASMUSSEN: I’m from Nebraska — I played football in high school and at Kearney State College. I was always into football, big-time. I got drafted, made the team, played for fifteen years, walked away, and didn’t get beat up so bad.

JEROME BARKUM: I’m from Mississippi and went to Jackson State University. Played there and was drafted number one — ninth picked in the draft in ’72. And got a college degree in health and physical education, with a minor in business. I come from — as most ball players — very humble beginnings. I thoroughly enjoyed every level of play that I’ve had from high school all the way up to the National Football League. Back when I was drafted, I got the phone call from Richard Caster — who had said that the Jets may be interested in drafting me. I had gotten letters from the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys over and over again, and never received anything from the Jets. Obviously, we didn’t have any cell phones back then — we had a pay phone in the barracks, kind of like army barracks, that had been trailered into our campus for us to live in. There was a kind of common courtesy on draft day that no one could be on the pay phone because we were waiting on that phone call, if you will. So the phone rang, and the first time, it was Caster. And then about an hour or so later, it was [Jets head coach Wilbur] Weeb Ewbank and Paul Zimmerman, who was a reporter for the Post at the time. Weeb called and said that they had drafted me number one. I kind of thought I had an opportunity to play in the National Football League, but I had no idea that I would be drafted number one. So it was a very pleasant and jubilant surprise.

GREG BUTTLE: I’m from Margate City, New Jersey. I played county league football for the Margate City Colts, and we had some pretty fun teams down there. I really got into it because my brothers were part of football, so I played football because they did and my friends did. Other than that, I didn’t get into football because I said, Oh boy, I want to be a football player. In that time — that was probably ’67 to ’69 — I was a huge Baltimore Colts fan. Because down by the Atlantic City area — which is where Margate was — the Colts were in Baltimore and the Eagles were in Philly, but Philly wasn’t that big a deal in football to me, where I would go and look in the papers. Of course, back in those days, you didn’t have the Internet and all the media acquisition that you have today. So we end up being undefeated when I was a kid, and because we were undefeated and won the title they took our county league football team to Baltimore, to watch the Baltimore Colts play the Chicago Bears. So there I am, in old Memorial Stadium, watching Johnny Unitas throw to Raymond Berry, and Dick Butkus running around the field, and Mike Curtis playing middle linebacker. It was just spectacular stuff for me — it was really my first professional football game.

And then the next year, 1968, we do it again — we win our championship in the county league football. And this year, they’re going to take us up to New York to watch the New York Jets play the Denver Broncos at Shea Stadium. And I’m looking at this guy play — Joe Namath — and he’s got white football shoes on . . . nobody had white football shoes. The next thing you know, the Jets are in the Super Bowl, as are the Baltimore Colts — and of course, I’m a huge Colts fan. I watch the Jets beat the Colts . . . and I cry. I can’t believe that they lose. I play high school football, and I go to mainly Regional High School down in Linwood, New Jersey, and I really turn into an athlete my freshman year. I was always a little clumsy, but I had pretty good hand-eye coordination, and I was getting to be a better athlete — I play football, basketball, and I run track. The next thing I know, I’m going to Penn State. So I go to Penn State, and I get a little better — bigger, stronger, and faster. I leave Penn State as an All-American linebacker. And what do you know . . . they draft me to the Jets. I’m ready to puke! The last team I wanted to go to was the Jets — I wanted to go to the Steelers. No — the Jets draft me. In 1976, I was the sixty-seventh player chosen. I think there were five or six linebackers taken in front of me at that time. Abdul Salaam, Richard Todd, Shafer Suggs, Bobby Martin, Lawrence Pillers — there were a lot of draft choices. We only played fourteen games then, and there were seventeen rounds of drafting in that time.

CLARK GAINES: I’m originally from Georgia — Elberton, Georgia. I grew up in a family of eight children — seven boys and a girl. Very poor — kind of a poverty child, as they say. Had a talent and a skill — we played sports, especially football. But it was during segregation in the South, when I was growing up in the ’50s, and the schools were segregated. In 1968, there was a group of about twelve of us kids who decided to integrate an all-white public high school. I started playing football at the school as an eighth-grader, and starter on the varsity team as a ninth-grader. That’s kind of how my career started. I decided I didn’t like the big schools, so I decided to go to junior college — Lees-McRae Junior College. I was a junior college All-American — second in the nation in rushing my sophomore year there, and transferred to Wake Forest. Played there for two years — All-Atlantic Coast Conference, and MVP of the team . . . I think I was probably MVP for every team I’ve ever played for before I got to the Jets.

It was ironic — I was living off-campus at Wake Forest. I was married, had a daughter — it was my senior year. I remember the Cowboys’ scout being in my living room — I had a trailer on campus — and he said that they wanted to sign me as a free agent, and thought very highly of me. I had the contract in my hands, and the phone rang. It was the Jets. They said, I hear you’re going to Canada, but we’d like to talk to you before you make the decision — that was the first I’d heard about me going to Canada! I guess they had the inside track. I said, Well, as it stands right now, I have Dallas in my living room. I’m getting ready to sign with them. They said, Please, can you just wait and listen to what we have to say? We’ll be down there tomorrow morning. I told the Dallas scout, and he said, Normally, we don’t wait for anyone. But we think enough of you that we will.

I listened to the Jets — they came down, we had a talk, and I thought, My better chances would be with the Jets as opposed to Dallas. Because [the Cowboys] had just come from the Super Bowl and they had a host of running backs, they didn’t really need me. I figured John Riggins had just been traded to Washington, Emerson Boozer had just retired, and they’d traded for Ed Marinaro from the Vikings. I said, I’ve got better chances and probably a better opportunity to make the club with the Jets than I do with Dallas. Believe it or not, $800 was my signing bonus — it was $200 less than what Dallas had offered me.

PAT LEAHY: I am from St. Louis, Missouri, and I was a college soccer player. I got a tryout here with the old football Cardinals, and what that evolved into was a tryout with the Jets — the year that Bobby Howfield was hurt, which was ’74. [The tryout] transpired because the coach of the Jets at the time was Charley Winner who, prior to that, was the head coach here with the Cardinals. And so a couple of people here recommended me to him. So that was my tryout.

TIM DAVEY: I started out as a ball boy in the summer of ’69. Went to college to become an athletic trainer, and worked in training camp following every year in college. When I finished college, Weeb Ewbank hired me as the first full-time assistant trainer with the Jets. It was around ’77–’78 that I bumped up into the administration of the training room, until I left in ’86–’87. My title in the ’80s was director of operations.

2

THE NAMATH ERA

Unquestionably, the man who was to make the New York Jets one of football’s top teams was quarterback Joe Willie Namath. Coming to the Jets in 1965 as the top draft pick, it doesn’t take long for Broadway Joe to leave his stamp on the Jets . . . and the city’s nightlife. But by the early to mid-’70s, Namath and the Jets fall on hard times.

FRANK RAMOS: [The Jets beating the Colts, 16–7, in Super Bowl III] is still the most magical moment in the history of the Jets. When you think about it, Joe Namath may be the most magical name in the history of professional football. He transcended sports. There aren’t too many football players that had their own television show, where they didn’t do sports interviews, but they interviewed celebrities [1969’s The Joe Namath Show]. I think that just tells you what a magical moment it was — and still is.

JOE FIELDS: You can talk all you want about statistics, completion percentages, and all that crap, but Joe Namath was the only person who had the power and the ability to merge two leagues. Now, just imagine how powerful the AFL owners were and the NFL owners were. Powerful men — very stubborn men. The NFL owners really believed that they were better than the AFL. Namath winning the game and then telling them beforehand they were going to win the game against, my god, the Baltimore Colts, of all teams — a team that has been around forever and is synonymous with the old NFL — that they were able to do it and do it in a way that left no doubt in anybody’s mind, Namath doing that literally forced the merger of those two leagues. They owe the NFL, what it is today, to Joe Namath winning that Super Bowl.

RICHARD TODD: Joe was my idol — in 1969, when they won the Super Bowl, I was in the eighth grade. I remember that like it was yesterday. And he was an Alabama quarterback. He sort of reminded me of — if you compare players — Dan Marino. Back then, we could all throw a twenty yard out — it’s just Joe looked good doing it and Marino looked good doing it. The rest of us, we just looked like we were throwing the ball. They had the grace, and they looked better than the rest of us trying to throw it. Joe was a special player, obviously.

I started meeting Joe my sophomore year [of college], and we worked out in Tuscaloosa all the time in the summers. I think he had a lot to do with me being drafted by the Jets because he told these guys, Y’all take a look at this Todd kid because they don’t throw at Alabama — they run the wishbone. I think we averaged, like, six times a game throwing my senior year — we’d just run over everybody. We had a great running game and we won football games — you can’t really argue with the system because it worked. But Joe and I, I’d run passes for him — he never ran passes for me, but I’d always run passes for him [laughs]. So we’d throw together, and there would be guys working out. Kind of had a ritual in the summertime we went through. But I just remember the same thing — him in seven-on-seven early in practice, when you’re in just shorts, shoulder pads, and helmets, and just watching him throw.

FRANK RAMOS: Weeb Ewbank was a very experienced coach when he got there, and [had an] offensive belief in the passing game, which he had started when he was an offensive coach for Paul Brown with the Cleveland Browns, and was in charge of Otto Graham’s pass protection. When he was at Baltimore, they had a great offensive line, and a great passing game with Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry, and passing to Lenny Moore, who was a halfback. Ewbank brought the same type of offense to the Jets, with Namath, Maynard, and Sauer, and that type of passing game, and a belief in mixing up the pass and the run. But the pass was a more fundamental part of the offense than the run. He certainly treated the players like men — Weeb had very few rules.

BILL HAMPTON: The year after the Super Bowl, we played Kansas City [in the 1969 AFL Divisional Playoffs], and we had three shots on the one-yard line to score a touchdown. But it never happened. We couldn’t score. They tried running and throwing — they just couldn’t get it in. And the weather was terrible, besides — it was a tough game. [The Jets lost, 13–6.]

FRANK RAMOS: Namath had a number of injuries after that Super Bowl. In 1970, he broke the navicular bone in his wrist, which is probably the most damaging injury that he ever had. Because the navicular bone, if you don’t get blood flow in there, it’s possible that your career would be over. He survived that, but he only played five games in 1970 — a year after the merger. He also had a shoulder separation, and subsequently, more knee surgeries. In 1972, the Jets also had injuries to Gerry Philbin and John Elliott — two of their defensive stalwarts. Namath was having a great season offensively, but the defense was having a tough time.

RANDY RASMUSSEN: He was still Joe Namath. He was Joe Namath at Alabama, he was Joe Namath in his early years, he was Joe Namath in his later years, as he is Joe Namath now — a very football-smart quarterback.

JEROME BARKUM: The first two years I was with the Jets, I never saw Joe other than on the airplane, the bus, or on the football field. He was a very famous guy, obviously. Some of the guys would come in and treat Joe like he was a celebrity. [They] wanted his autograph and everything. Joe and I gradually got to know each other. I think he respected me for that. I was very gracious to play with Joe, but I didn’t smother him like a lot of the other guys did. We became friends very subtly — we would go deep-sea fishing together. I remember once, we were traveling out to Montauk Point, and we went in my van. Rich Caster, Joe, and I went fishing. Joe had this connection with some police guy who took us out fishing. We said, Joe, you’re going to drive — we’re not going to chauffeur you around. So Joe started driving. He was kind of confused where to go, so he stopped and asked this kid who had a cone of ice cream. And this kid recognized Joe Namath, and dropped his ice cream! He couldn’t believe that this guy was in his neighborhood. You could see him running to tell his friends — I don’t think any of his friends believed him.

Playing with Joe was an experience because I was coming out of Jackson State University, and not really clear on how to run pass patterns based on the way it is in the NFL — which is timing. So I would run — and I knew I had pretty good speed — and the ball was thrown already. I’m going, like, What the hell’s going on?! Caster told me, You plant your foot, snatch your head around, and there’s the ball. And surely, there was the ball. Because I’d never really been coached that way before — coming out of a small school. So, Joe was very patient. We all make mistakes, and I see quarterbacks today getting all over receivers and fussing at their players. Joe was such a confident quarterback — so much so that he would always say to you, Don’t worry about it — we’ll get the next one. Through that, you develop a lot of respect for him, and obviously, over time, he developed confidence in you. And with that, it made you a better ball player.

GREG BUTTLE: It was funny because here was a guy that I hated as a child, and now I’m playing with him. He was absolutely a gentleman. He took me under his wing — it was almost as if whenever he would go out, he’d say, Come on Buttle, let’s go. It would be him, Richard Todd, myself, and Ed Marinaro. We’d go out and have a blast. He wouldn’t let you pay for anything — he paid for everything. If he was going to go to Jones Beach, he’d say, Come on, we’re going to Jones Beach. If he was going out to a nightclub after practice, he’d go, Come on, we’re going out to so-and-so. Into the city — the whole nine yards. He was really great. It was an experience just meeting him, and finding out he was a human being — just like us — and he worked just as hard as anybody to do anything. He was Joe Namath.

CLARK GAINES: I’d watched Joe play as a high school kid and a college kid. You watched him on all the commercials, and I can just remember thinking that I could actually play on a team with this guy. I always thought that Namath stood on Times Square, wore a mink coat, could throw a ball up 100 yards, and hit a fly off a plate of ribs! That was my impression of him. And to play with him . . . he was just such a great teammate — always supportive of me. Would help me in any way, and a guy that never, ever forgets his teammates. He can see me at Super Bowls a thousand miles away, and I’ll hear him yelling, Clark! Just a wonderful guy.

JOHNNY BUBBA CARUSO: I became a Jets fan because Shea Stadium was right here — I live in Astoria. Back in the day, in ’72–’73, I was eight, nine years old. Going into the South Bronx for the Yankees or the Giants wasn’t really an option. The South Bronx was pretty nasty. But getting on the train right here, I was there and back in no time. Going to Corona was never a problem. So that’s it — became a Mets fan and Jets fan. Figure around ’76–’77, I started to go to every game. If anything, I missed maybe three or four games in ten years — not even. The first game I saw was 1973, when O.J. broke the 2,000-yard mark.

JOE FERGUSON: Because it was an inter-conference game, it seemed like every time the Bills played the Jets, it was a big game. I don’t remember just having mediocre games with them. It seemed like there was something always on the line — whether we were good and they were bad, or they were good and we were bad. It didn’t matter. They were a steady rival. I don’t remember the intensity level changing all that much — except for the day O. J. Simpson broke the record against them at Shea Stadium. It was the last game of the year and it was snowing. We got to a point where he broke the rushing record, and it got to a point in the fourth quarter where he got in range of breaking 2,000 yards. Our guys just pulled together and our intensity level was extremely high, and their level was just to go home. So, just stay in bounds and let’s get this thing over with. But it was an exciting time for our team because of what O.J. accomplished. It was a great day for the Bills organization.

They took him into the locker room — the press was going in with him, and he wouldn’t even do an interview until the rest of us got in there. He pulled all of the offensive line and myself into a different room where all the press was, and he introduced everyone. He said, Here are all the guys that got me here. He was that kind of guy. Don’t get me wrong — O.J. had a bit of an ego about him, but he was never an overly cocky guy. He was a very intelligent player — he knew the blocking schemes, he knew what he had to do. Never seen him mad at anybody, to be perfectly honest with you. Just a classy guy to me . . . but that’s just strictly my opinion.

JEROME BARKUM: I was actually a holdout [during Barkum’s rookie season of 1972]. They had six preseason games back then, and I was holding out because I wanted more signing bonus. An agent that I had at that time thought they were low-balling us. So I held out for three preseason games. The fourth game, I think, was a game against the Giants up at the Yale Bowl. So I went on for a couple of plays — I had a wristband on, trying to use that as a means to know what to do and which way to go. And then the next game we played down in Dallas. At that time, Don Maynard was kind of one leg in and one leg out of the league, and he told me, Weeb says you’re going in the next series. So I went in, and the ball was thrown to me. When you’re holding out, when you show up, you want to make sure that you perform. Well, the ball was thrown to me, and there was a picture taken of it — my hands were extended, and the ball was in my hands, but I lost the ball in the light because we played at Texas Stadium at night. I’m still looking back as if I’m looking for the ball — but it’s just landed right in my hands. I welled up in tears because I was happy — the first ball that was thrown to me, I caught it and it was a touchdown.

PAT LEAHY: Joe, at that time, was kind of at the end of his career. But he still had a tremendous amount of charisma, and he was able to occasionally show why he is presently in the Hall of Fame. We had a run there at the end of ’74 of six in a row, and he was tremendous.

RANDY RASMUSSEN: We won the last six games in a row [in 1974], and we finished 7–7, and missed the playoffs by one game. I thought the next year, we were really set up to go. And that next year was one of those silly strikes. It got us off tempo. Those three-win seasons really take the wind out of your sails. They’re real downers and bummers, and they’re long off-seasons. Stuff happens during a season, and if it happens at the wrong time, you can’t pull it all together. Winning is habit-forming, just as losing is habit-forming. We got stuck in a rut there for a couple of years.

JOE FIELDS: 1975 started with a strike. We went on strike, and they let us back in on a Thursday. But there were only four teams that went out on strike — the Jets, the Patriots, the Redskins, and somebody else. Now, all the other teams kept practicing, and they let us back in on Thursday, and the season started on Sunday. We played Buffalo. We hadn’t practiced in a whole week, and we ended up getting killed by Buffalo, 42–14. It wasn’t a very good strike for us. The coach was Charley Winner.

I was very lucky because my rookie year, the starting center, Wayne Mulligan, got hurt — he had some injuries. A lot of times, the game was out of reach — we’d be getting beat 31–7 in the fourth quarter. And my offensive line coach was a guy by the name of Bob Fry, and he would put me in. You learn a lot when you get thrown in those kind of games. That got me ready to start in my second year — I was very fortunate that way.

Playing with Joe was awesome. Growing up, you always heard about Joe Namath. That was the year too where he had sat out to sign his contract [in 1975], so he came into camp a little late. I was low man on the totem pole at center — out of seven centers, I was number seven. So when Joe came in, the first day, they wanted him to get in snaps after practice. The coach yelled, Fields! Come over here and give Namath some snaps! For a kid from Widener College, that was pretty exciting — Joe Namath. I asked him, Joe, how do you want me to bring the ball up? And he just patted me on the ass, and said, Put it up there anyway you want kid, and I’ll get it. Joe was just that kind of guy. Joe was a real team guy. Back then, we had team parties, like, every two or three weeks — and Joe never missed a party. He was a bona fide team guy.

JEROME BARKUM: John Riggins was a very weird guy — very eccentric [laughs]. He used to get fan mail, and people thought he was black — not all the way, but they wanted to know if he had some black in him because he was at that time considered fast. So I nicknamed him Chocolate Chip. I had a nickname for a lot of the guys — I kidded around a lot. But he was a great guy. He wasn’t overkill with his behavior, being around you or anything. But he was just an eccentric guy — with a derby hat on, Mohawk haircut, his toenails may be painted, he may have on suspenders and shorts . . . getting on the airplane to go on a trip. And while you’re playing with him, if you’re blocking for him, if you don’t get your guy out of the way, he’s going to run over you and that guy. He was just a very fast, serious, running back. I hated to see him go [when Riggins signed with the Washington Redskins in 1976]. I think it was contractual. He was a very good guy, but he had his own style.

FRANK RAMOS: The Jets had several drafts that didn’t work out for them, and they really fell on hard times. Charley Winner was the heir apparent to Weeb Ewbank, as the head coach. Probably with hindsight, it was a mistake — for Charley and the Jets. Charley probably should never have taken the job under his father-in-law [Weeb], and Weeb probably never should have hired him at that time. But that’s 20/20 hindsight. After Winner got fired, they brought in Lou Holtz.

3

MEET THE JETS: 1976

In addition to several players you’ve already been introduced to (quarterback Richard Todd, linebacker Greg Buttle, and others), 1976 welcomes some more colorful characters to the New York Jets . . . Lawrence Pillers (defensive end), Abdul Salaam (defensive tackle), Ken Schroy (safety), and Joe Gardi (coach).

LAWRENCE PILLERS: I’m from Hazlehurst, Mississippi. I went to college at Alcorn State University, and I got drafted to the New York Jets in 1976 as an outside linebacker. When I made it to the Jets, my first professional coach was Lou Holtz. Walt Michaels was the linebackers coach, and it was Joe Namath’s last year with the Jets and Richard Todd’s first year — we got drafted together. It was a wonderful experience for me — as far as football and getting out into the world.

JOE GARDI: I’m from Harrison, New Jersey. Went to Harrison High School, and then went to the University of Maryland. I turned down Notre Dame, Alabama, and Miami, and went to Maryland who, in 1955, were national champs. Went there in ’56, and as a matter of fact, I went to my fiftieth reunion two weeks ago — the 1959 Maryland football team was honored. Most of us were limping, but it was great. Went from the University of Maryland — where I became a grad assistant coach for a year — and came back to New Jersey in about 1961. I went on to a business career, gave it up after three years, and then went into high school coaching. My first job was at Oratory Prep in Summit, New Jersey. They had a record of not winning a game in five years — the longest in the history of the state. We added to that record my first year, and then had two winning seasons, and I became known by a reporter named Gene Picker from the Elizabeth Daily Journal as The Miracle Worker.

Went on to Roselle Park High School after three years at Oratory — hadn’t had a winning season in ten years, the home of Rick Barry. And wound up going 2–1, 7–2, and undefeated state champs in 1969. Then went to the University of Maryland — my alma mater — as an assistant coach, and stayed there for four years. Then I went to the World Football League, with the Philadelphia Bell. Went to work for Ron Waller, the head coach. The league folded in the first year, and then in the second year it started up again. I ended up as the head coach of the Portland Thunder. The league folded, and I think I may have the best record in the history of pro coaching — I was 3–1, so percentage-wise, I don’t think there’s anyone that comes close! I came back to my wife and kids, and wound up a couple of months later going to the New York Jets as a special teams coach and tight end coach, with Lou Holtz.

ABDUL SALAAM: Football has always been a dream. It was like everybody else that started out playing football — you start off with Pee Wee, and you work your way on up. I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio. That’s where I started playing the game. But it’s always been a labor of love. College ball I played up at Kent State. We had a pretty great team up there — I played with Jack Lambert, Nick Saban, Gerald Tinker, and a lot of other guys that went on to do something else in their career in football. We developed the defensive line in Kent called The Four Carat Gold. And I went off from there to the Jets. It was through a connection. Lou Holtz was head coach of the Jets at the time, and he’s from Kent. But Tony Adamle was a great friend and teammate of Walt Michaels, and Tony called Walt, and that’s how I wound up with the Jets — Walt Michaels brought me in.

KEN SCHROY: I’m originally from Quakertown, Pennsylvania — born and bred there. Started playing football when I was ten years old. Everything was played in Quakertown until I went to high school, and started getting a whole lot of letters and interest — I was a running back and a defensive back. Played both ways, never came off the field. Decided to go to the University of Maryland on a scholarship — I thought that was the best opportunity for me to play, which it was. I was a starter at cornerback for the Terrapins. And then drafted into the NFL my senior year by the Philadelphia Eagles — with a broken ankle, by the way. I broke my ankle the last regular season game of my senior year, and it didn’t really heal that well. I was the last cut of Philadelphia, in which I was picked by the New York Jets immediately after. It was ’76 — they picked me up, and they put me on . . . there was a special name for it at the time, which they did pay me to rehabilitate and start the following year.

4

1976

With a new head coach at the helm — Lou Holtz — the Jets hope to rediscover their winning ways in ’76. Eh, not exactly.

CLARK GAINES: 1976 was the year that Lou Holtz coached the Jets. And as a matter of fact, I remember playing Lou Holtz when I was at Wake Forest [University] my senior year. Lou had said that if Wake Forest beat [his team, North Carolina State], he would pack up his house and leave Raleigh. We beat them — in Raleigh — and I was a captain of the team. I told all the players when we got in the locker room, Don’t pull your uniforms off. First things first — we have to help Lou Holtz pack because he’s leaving Raleigh tonight! When I came to New York, he called me in his office, and I thought he probably was going to release me. I came in, and he said, "Clark, the darnedest thing — I waited and waited for you to come over and help pack me up . . . so I could leave Raleigh."

FRANK RAMOS: When Lou Holtz was there, he was being pulled from different ways — how he wanted to go about structuring the team for pro football. And it was something so different from college football. For Lou, it was a very difficult adjustment for him. I think there have been very few successful college coaches that have come in and been solid and winning head coaches in the NFL. It’s a big adjustment to make — the players are so different to deal with. And Lou probably had more rules for his football team than any coach that I worked with — in all the years that I was there with the Jets.

LAWRENCE PILLERS: He was a good coach, but he sort of acted like a college coach to grown men. Everybody has their own philosophy — I’m not saying that his philosophy was wrong. But to me, he just acted more like a college coach than a professional coach.

RICHARD TODD: We were horrible. Lou has done quite a bit in the college game — I think he was kind of lost in pro football. It wasn’t what he imagined — he was more of a motivator. I don’t think he liked to see beer in the locker room and smoking in the locker room — but these are grown men, you can’t really tell them how to act. And plus, we didn’t have a really good team.

FRANK RAMOS: The fact that they had earmarked [Richard] Todd to be the best quarterback for them at that time, it had nothing to do with saying that he was at Alabama and Joe was at Alabama. It really had nothing to do with that. But they thought that Todd was the best quarterback for them — at that particular time, and where we were going in the draft.

PAT LEAHY: Richard didn’t really play much in ’76. It takes a quarterback a while — it really took him a couple more years.

RANDY RASMUSSEN: I know Joe [Namath] worked with Richard a lot — to get him ready to play.

JOE FIELDS: It’s not really a fair comparison because Joe was at the end of his career, and Richard was at the beginning.

JEROME BARKUM: Richard and Joe are two different kinds of quarterbacks. Joe was a gunslinger, took a lot of chances. He broke all of the rules with regard to passing. Because he had such a great arm and was so confident, he would throw into coverage, but yet, he could get the ball to you. You had a corner coming up and the safety coming over — if the safety was slow getting over, Joe would hit you right between the seams. We also had hand signals back in those days. So he was kind of a freestyle, freewheeling type guy. Richard, on the other hand, was a guy that was very collected, but at the same time, his style was very different. So it’s not fair to even try to make a comparison between a Hall of Famer and as legendary a quarterback as Namath, and Richard Todd. Richard was good at what he did and when he did it, but Joe was the greatest — to me — to ever throw a football.

RANDY RASMUSSEN: [Namath’s] big thing was he could read defenses, and knew what was going on out there. But he needed football people around him, also. A lot of the football — in the real successful years with Namath — was on-the-fly-football. Everybody was reading things as the ball was snapped. I think we had to become a little more mechanical with Richard because he was just