MIAMI - If you base everything on the results, strip away all context and just look at the man based only on what happened on the football field, Joe Namath was, at best, a below-average quarterback.
He only led the league in touchdown passes once, but led it in interceptions four times, and finished his career with 47 more interceptions than scoring throws. He twice led the league in passing yards, but he also led the league in attempts those seasons, artifically inflating those numbers. The highest passer rating he ever had in a season
was 74.3, which would have placed him better than only four full-time starters in 2010.
Yah, you say, but the game was different back then. It was much more difficult to pass in the 60s and 70s, and nearly every offense was geared around the run. Besides, a true measure of a quarterback's worth is wins and losses.
Fine, we'll go there. Namath played 13 seasons in pro football. He won 10 games exactly twice. He made the playoffs exactly twice. In fact, his career record as a starter is one game below .500. And then there's his lack of durability. He played every game in only six of his 13 seasons, and only played in 140 of a possible 197 games in his career.
No matter how you look at it, the only reason Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame, the only reason we remember him at all, is one sentence he uttered. At a dinner before Super Bowl III, at which the AFL's Jets were huge underdogs to the NFL's Colts, Namath was being heckled by Baltimore fans. In response, he said "We're gonna win. I guarantee it." And really, what else was he going to say? What starting quarterback is going to face hecklers from the opposing team and say "You're right, we're gonna get our asses kicked. I don't even know why we're going to take the field." Of course he's going to have confidence, or at least display false confidence. He's the quarterback, the team leader.
Of course, the Jets went out and shocked the Colts. They started slowly, but they completely controlled the game. They were up 16-0 by the time the Colts called an aging Johnny Unitas off the bench to try to lead a comeback attempt. Unitas got the Colts one touchdown, but no more. The Jets had won 16-7, the AFL had beaten the NFL in the Super Bowl for the first time, and Namath ran off the field with his index finger in the air and became a football immortal.
Quickly and permanently, Joe Namath became the story of Super Bowl III, became the reason for the Jets upset. But look closer. Namath remains the only quarterback to win the Super Bowl MVP award without throwing a touchdown pass. Sure, he threw for 206 yards, but Matt Snell ran for 121 yards and a touchdown, and the Jets defense was so dominant that Baltimore starter Earl Morrall went 6-for-17 passing with three interceptions. Namath didn't even throw a pass in the fourth quarter as the Jets turned to the ground to run out the clock.
Sure, Namath played a good game in Super Bowl III. I'm not trying to deny him that. But the Jets played so well they probably would have won with Namath's backup in the game, or with any number of other quarterbacks under center. But that's not what's remembered. The memories of this game revolve around Namath's guarantee, one sentence that somehow has turned him into a legend.
Showing posts with label New York Jets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Jets. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
December 20, 1980: The sound of silence
MIAMI - It sounds like a dream to people who hate bad football announcers, who think they just get in the way of enjoying a game. NBC tried an experiment for its final game of the year in 1980 by broadcasting the game with no announcers. There was no play-by-play, no color commentary, no sideline reporters. The only sounds were the sounds of the game.
While it was passed off as an experiment, one designed to challenge the long-standing belief of what made a successful broadcast, in reality, it was a ratings grab. Seeing a drab matchup between the 3-12 Jets and the 8-7 Dolphins, with both teams already eliminated from the playoffs, ABC executives came up with the announcer-less idea simply as a gimmick to draw a larger audience than would otherwise have been expected to tune in. In pushing the novelty of the game, they were hoping to overcome the perception that it was simply a boring, meaningless game.
The results were ... uh... underwhelming. While it seemed like announcers would get in the way, viewers and producers quickly realized how awkward the game was without the context provided by announcers. The game producers did what they could - adding graphics whenever possible, showing pre-recorded interviews, adding microphones throughout the stadium. But things still seemed missing. The interviews seemed forced and out of place when thrown up unexpectedly during the game. The NFL wouldn't relax some of its player-access restrictions, so the players weren't miked, making the quarterback signals inaudible throughout the game. Viewers complained about a low buzzing sound during parts of the game. What made it worse was that NBC had the technology to use the now-standard score "bug," showing the score and time remaining constantly, but nobody had thought to do it for this game.
While the overwhelming reaction to the game, in retrospect, seems to be negative, there is one surprising aspect: the switchboard in NBC recorded the viewer feed back as 831 pro, 518 con. So some people liked it. But people didn't like it enough to make it common. Every game since has had announcers.
But the announcerless game wasn't completely for naught. Because of the number of graphics necessary for producers to tell the story of that game, graphics started becoming more and more common in football broadcasts. NBC announcer Dick Enberg said that while he was relieved the experiment didn't work, he did learn that it was appropriate to let silence carry the broadcast in certain situations. So there was some good that came from it.
While it was passed off as an experiment, one designed to challenge the long-standing belief of what made a successful broadcast, in reality, it was a ratings grab. Seeing a drab matchup between the 3-12 Jets and the 8-7 Dolphins, with both teams already eliminated from the playoffs, ABC executives came up with the announcer-less idea simply as a gimmick to draw a larger audience than would otherwise have been expected to tune in. In pushing the novelty of the game, they were hoping to overcome the perception that it was simply a boring, meaningless game.
The results were ... uh... underwhelming. While it seemed like announcers would get in the way, viewers and producers quickly realized how awkward the game was without the context provided by announcers. The game producers did what they could - adding graphics whenever possible, showing pre-recorded interviews, adding microphones throughout the stadium. But things still seemed missing. The interviews seemed forced and out of place when thrown up unexpectedly during the game. The NFL wouldn't relax some of its player-access restrictions, so the players weren't miked, making the quarterback signals inaudible throughout the game. Viewers complained about a low buzzing sound during parts of the game. What made it worse was that NBC had the technology to use the now-standard score "bug," showing the score and time remaining constantly, but nobody had thought to do it for this game.
While the overwhelming reaction to the game, in retrospect, seems to be negative, there is one surprising aspect: the switchboard in NBC recorded the viewer feed back as 831 pro, 518 con. So some people liked it. But people didn't like it enough to make it common. Every game since has had announcers.
But the announcerless game wasn't completely for naught. Because of the number of graphics necessary for producers to tell the story of that game, graphics started becoming more and more common in football broadcasts. NBC announcer Dick Enberg said that while he was relieved the experiment didn't work, he did learn that it was appropriate to let silence carry the broadcast in certain situations. So there was some good that came from it.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
November 17, 1968: The Heidi Bowl
OAKLAND, Calif. - There was 1:05 left on the clock when everything went dark. The 7-2 New York Jets had just kicked a field goal to take a 32-29 lead over the 7-2 Oakland Raiders. After the ensuing kickoff, at precisely 7:00 Eastern time, the NBC affiliates across the country cut to commercial. When the broadcast feed returned, football fans were watching not the final minute of the football game, but the opening credits of the made-for-TV movie Heidi.
It seemed like a weird time to cut away from the game, but NBC was contractually obligated to show Heidi starting at 7:00, regardless of whether the game was over. It had rarely been a problem in the past, as most games at that time were over within the three-hour window they were given. If they weren't, it was fairly common practice to flip away from games that weren't quite finished - that afternoon, the end of the San Diego-Buffalo game had been cut off so NBC could show the entire Jets-Raiders game.
This time, though, NBC studio heads changed their minds. Seeing how exciting the Jets-Raiders game was, they felt like it would be all right to delay the start of Heidi by a few minutes. The problem was they couldn't get through. So many people were calling in to local NBC studios asking if the whole game would be shown (or, in some cases, asking if Heidi would be shown on time), that the NBC executives couldn't get through to communicate their decision to keep showing the game. So the switch was made, and at 7:00 everybody in the country east of Denver, instead of seeing the Raiders starting their last-ditch drive, instead saw Heidi running through a field of flowers.
It was the old days of television, where the signal was sent over telephone wires rather than by satellite, so switching back would be a time-consuming and labor-intensive option. Plus, the NBC heads still couldn't get through to say they wanted the game switched back on, anyway. Communication was so poor that the people in NBC's studio didn't even know what was happening in the game.
What was happening was one of the most exciting endings in regular-season history. After taking the kickoff to the 23 yard line, Daryle Lamonica completed a 20-yard pass to Charlie Smith on the first play, with 15 more yards being tacked on because of a facemask penalty. On the next play, Lamonica found Smith again, this time for a 43-yard touchdown. The Raiders had gone 77 yards in two plays to take the lead, and nobody east of the Rockies saw it.
But things weren't done. On the ensuing kickoff, the Jets had trouble recovering the bouncing ball. Oakland's Preston Ridlehuber picked up the fumbled kickoff at the 2 and stepped into the end zone for another Raider touchdown. The Raiders had scored twice in 32 seconds, all while most of the country was watching a touching movie about a young girl being raised by her grandfather in the Swiss Alps.
The oblivious viewers were no doubt a little surprised to see a crawl start across the bottom of the screen at 8:40. Just as Heidi's cousin Clara was summoning the courage to walk after falling from her wheelchair, the score showed up on the bottom of the screen: Oakland 43, New York 32.
Outraged viewers flooded NBC studios with calls, calling with such frequency that the switchboard in New York blew 25 fuses. NBC scrambled to try to fix things, going so far as issuing a public apology at the end of the movie and showing the final 1:05 of the game in its entirety on the evening news. That wasn't enough to placate fans.
The Heidi Bowl, as the game came to be known, changed the way football was shown on television. Soon afterwards, a rule was put in place that the end of a game cannot be preempted in the home market of the two teams. The reaction also showed NBC just how popular televised football had become in America, and the AFL in particular. Soon, NBC was able to nearly double its ad rates for AFL games. This game, along with those same Jets beating Baltimore in that year's Super Bowl, helped legitimize the AFL to the point it was able to merge with the NFL for the 1970 season.
It seemed like a weird time to cut away from the game, but NBC was contractually obligated to show Heidi starting at 7:00, regardless of whether the game was over. It had rarely been a problem in the past, as most games at that time were over within the three-hour window they were given. If they weren't, it was fairly common practice to flip away from games that weren't quite finished - that afternoon, the end of the San Diego-Buffalo game had been cut off so NBC could show the entire Jets-Raiders game.
This time, though, NBC studio heads changed their minds. Seeing how exciting the Jets-Raiders game was, they felt like it would be all right to delay the start of Heidi by a few minutes. The problem was they couldn't get through. So many people were calling in to local NBC studios asking if the whole game would be shown (or, in some cases, asking if Heidi would be shown on time), that the NBC executives couldn't get through to communicate their decision to keep showing the game. So the switch was made, and at 7:00 everybody in the country east of Denver, instead of seeing the Raiders starting their last-ditch drive, instead saw Heidi running through a field of flowers.
It was the old days of television, where the signal was sent over telephone wires rather than by satellite, so switching back would be a time-consuming and labor-intensive option. Plus, the NBC heads still couldn't get through to say they wanted the game switched back on, anyway. Communication was so poor that the people in NBC's studio didn't even know what was happening in the game.
What was happening was one of the most exciting endings in regular-season history. After taking the kickoff to the 23 yard line, Daryle Lamonica completed a 20-yard pass to Charlie Smith on the first play, with 15 more yards being tacked on because of a facemask penalty. On the next play, Lamonica found Smith again, this time for a 43-yard touchdown. The Raiders had gone 77 yards in two plays to take the lead, and nobody east of the Rockies saw it.
But things weren't done. On the ensuing kickoff, the Jets had trouble recovering the bouncing ball. Oakland's Preston Ridlehuber picked up the fumbled kickoff at the 2 and stepped into the end zone for another Raider touchdown. The Raiders had scored twice in 32 seconds, all while most of the country was watching a touching movie about a young girl being raised by her grandfather in the Swiss Alps.
The oblivious viewers were no doubt a little surprised to see a crawl start across the bottom of the screen at 8:40. Just as Heidi's cousin Clara was summoning the courage to walk after falling from her wheelchair, the score showed up on the bottom of the screen: Oakland 43, New York 32.
Outraged viewers flooded NBC studios with calls, calling with such frequency that the switchboard in New York blew 25 fuses. NBC scrambled to try to fix things, going so far as issuing a public apology at the end of the movie and showing the final 1:05 of the game in its entirety on the evening news. That wasn't enough to placate fans.
The Heidi Bowl, as the game came to be known, changed the way football was shown on television. Soon afterwards, a rule was put in place that the end of a game cannot be preempted in the home market of the two teams. The reaction also showed NBC just how popular televised football had become in America, and the AFL in particular. Soon, NBC was able to nearly double its ad rates for AFL games. This game, along with those same Jets beating Baltimore in that year's Super Bowl, helped legitimize the AFL to the point it was able to merge with the NFL for the 1970 season.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
September 21, 1970: Monday Night
CLEVELAND - It was a novel concept, something that had never been tried and that seemd quite risky. But those kinds of ideas were right up Roone Arledge's alley. The head of ABC sports had come up with many groundbreaking sports ideas, including coming up with ABC's Wide World of Sports and modernizing the coverage of college football, but his latest idea was his boldest yet: a weekly NFL game shown nationwide on Monday Night.
NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle signed off on the idea, and Monday Night Football was born. The premiere broadcast was on September 21, 1970, when Cleveland beat the New York Jets 31-21.
An instant hit was born. Monday Night Football shot almost immediately to the top of the TV ratings for Monday nights, rarely losing the top spot throughout the 1970s. That domination soon spread, when the broadcasts would often be the most-watched television program of the entire week.
Monday Night Football lasted on ABC until the 2005 season, surviving problems such as tape-delayed broadcasts on the west coast to substandard matchups late in the season because of the static schedule. Some of the most iconic moments in NFL history became famous in large part to their happening on Monday night. The growth of Monday Night Football had a lot to do with the growth of the NFL's popularity.
ABC doesn't televise Monday Night Football anymore, with ESPN now taking over the broadcast. Because of that, NBC's Sunday Night broadcast is now considered the Game of the Week in the NFL. But the NFL, and all the networks that televise it, owe much of their success to the popularity of Monday Night Football.
HONORABLE MENTION
September 21, 1955: BRONX, N.Y. - Archie Moore knocked down Rocky Marciano in the second round of their heavyweight championship fight that night in the Bronx. That was news enough, as it was only the second time the great Marciano had been knocked down in his career. One of the greatest fighters of all time, Marciano was defending his heavyweight title for the sixth time, and he showed the form that had made him unbeatable. He got up from his rare knockdown and pummeled Moore, knocking him out in the ninth round to retain the title. It was his last career fight. Retiring the next year with a record of 49-0, Marciano remains the only man to retire as the undefeated heavyweight champion.
NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle signed off on the idea, and Monday Night Football was born. The premiere broadcast was on September 21, 1970, when Cleveland beat the New York Jets 31-21.
An instant hit was born. Monday Night Football shot almost immediately to the top of the TV ratings for Monday nights, rarely losing the top spot throughout the 1970s. That domination soon spread, when the broadcasts would often be the most-watched television program of the entire week.
Monday Night Football lasted on ABC until the 2005 season, surviving problems such as tape-delayed broadcasts on the west coast to substandard matchups late in the season because of the static schedule. Some of the most iconic moments in NFL history became famous in large part to their happening on Monday night. The growth of Monday Night Football had a lot to do with the growth of the NFL's popularity.
ABC doesn't televise Monday Night Football anymore, with ESPN now taking over the broadcast. Because of that, NBC's Sunday Night broadcast is now considered the Game of the Week in the NFL. But the NFL, and all the networks that televise it, owe much of their success to the popularity of Monday Night Football.
HONORABLE MENTION
September 21, 1955: BRONX, N.Y. - Archie Moore knocked down Rocky Marciano in the second round of their heavyweight championship fight that night in the Bronx. That was news enough, as it was only the second time the great Marciano had been knocked down in his career. One of the greatest fighters of all time, Marciano was defending his heavyweight title for the sixth time, and he showed the form that had made him unbeatable. He got up from his rare knockdown and pummeled Moore, knocking him out in the ninth round to retain the title. It was his last career fight. Retiring the next year with a record of 49-0, Marciano remains the only man to retire as the undefeated heavyweight champion.
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