EDITOR'S NOTE: No national publication has a richer sports history than that of Sporting News, which was founded in 1886 in St. Louis. The following content appeared in the Jan. 25, 1969 issue of the Sporting News magazine.
After the 1968 regular season, the New York Jets were pitted against the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowll III. The first two Super Bowls had resulted in blowout wins for the National Football League over the American Football League. The fate of the AFL was on the line in Super Bowl III, as the Jets needed to make the game competitive to preserve the viability of the league considered inferior in terms of financial support and player experience. New York did more than keep the game competitive. Its shocking upset of Baltimore saved the AFL and fueled the 1970 merger of the two leagues, forming the NFL we recognize today.
Original publish date: Jan. 25, 1969
Docile Colts back Namath Guarantee
By Lowell Reidenbaugh
MIAMI, Fla. — Along Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, where luxury hotels rise white-faced like temples of sun and fun, the temptation was strong to break up in a vigorous guffaw any time the New York Jets were mentioned in the same breath with the Baltimore Colts.
Such an association simply overplayed the "sun and fun" theme.
Most everywhere that Super Bowl talk was heard — in posh lounges and the swank yachts in nearby marinas, at cab stands or on construction sites for still more new pretentious hotels — the Colts would hijack the Jets by anywhere from 17 to 20 points.
The championship of professional football would remain with the National League, just as it had in two previous confrontations, it was generally agreed. And if voices from Fort Lauderdale, where the Jets were in training, promised a Jet upset, nobody could attribute any substance to the predictions.
Packers in Command
Green Bay had defeated Kansas City, 35-10, in the original Super Bowl in 1967, and Oakland, 33-14, in the second confrontation. The powerful Colts, beaten only once in their 14-game NFL schedule, would demolish the come-latelies, with their 11-3 record, and the gap between the two leagues would remain wide and frightening for still another year.
Like Pompeii before the eruption, Miami and the NFL microcosm relaxed in the assurance that all was well with the establishment. Nobody was shaken when, on January 9, Joe Willie Namath, New York quarterback who talks as fluently as he throws a football, "guaranteed!" a Jet victory.
Pure bravado!
When, at last, put-up or shut-up Sunday arrived, 75,377 jammed every available seat in the Orange Bowl and frenzied millions sat bug-eyed before TV set for the public spanking they knew was about to be administered to the upstarts from across the tracks.
A Miss by Michaels
First rumblings that all was not well were heard when Lou Michaels, Colt placekicker, missed on a 27-yard field goal attempt that climaxed the Colts' first series of downs.
By 4 p.m. there were positive signs of a football tremor.
By 5 p.m. the seismograph in Commissioner Pete Rozelle's Park Avenue office had recorded a full-scale quake.
And by 6 p.m., the entire football universe was aware of a geologic cataclysm.
The Jets, sure enough, had resisted that hijacking effort and beaten the Colts fair and square, 16-7.
Nothing flukey, no mirrors, no sleight of hand. Just hard-nosed, convincing football that made believers out of countless skeptics.
The Colts, 34-0 winners over Cleveland in the NFL title game, were virtually helpless in the face of Namath's superior play-calling. And the Jets, 27-23 victors over Oakland in the AFL championship battle, penetrated Baltimore's vaunted defense with surprising ease.
The Jets scored only one touchdown, on Matt Snell's four-yard sprint around the left side, but Jim Turner's three field goals, of 32, 30 and nine yards, helped build a 16-0 cushion before the Colts got on the board.
By that time, many spectators were inching toward the exits and the writers who had predicted a Colt runaway were huddled in the tunnel, outside the Jet dressing room, awaiting a chance to interview the newest darlings of the sports world.
By their early departure, the failed to see Johnny Unitas, hero of Baltimore word titles in 1958 and '59, engineer an 80-yard drive that culminated in a one-yard touchdown plunge by Jerry Hill.
19 STRAIGHT: How one Jets play fueled the history-altering upset
Three Minutes to Go
When Michaels converted, the Colts still trailed by nine points, but three minutes and nine seconds remained, time for almost anything in the free-scoring world of professional football.
An onside kick, recovered by Tom Mitchell at the Jets' 44, elevated Baltimore's hopes and Unitas moved the Colts to the New York 19, with a second and five situation. Suddenly the momentum died and three passes, one intended for Willie Richardson and two for Jimmy Orr, fell incomplete, and the Colts were done in for keeps.
Weeb Ewbank, dismissed by the Colts after a nine-year coaching term that produced two world titles, attributed the Jet triumph to two factors: "Poise and execution."
"They (the Colts) are a great team," Ewbank, damp from the full-dress shower he had been given by his exuberant athletes. "But we are a great team, too, and this is the start of a new era in pro football."
Weeb, completing his fifth season with New York but only his second above the .500 mark, admitted the Jets "put in a couple of new wrinkles for the game, mainly pass patterns. The running game was going good and we stuck with that. It went on ball control and fact that we didn't make any errors.
Never A Bad Call
"Namath was fabulous, he didn't make a bad call," added Weeb, clutching the championship trophy that he had received from Rozelle moments earlier.
"Sure I was scared when Joe came out of the game holding his throwing hand, but fortunately he was out during only one series of downs."
Namath was sidelined late in the third quarter when his thumb "got weak." Joe recalled that "it happened earlier in the season. I have to go to the sidelines and work it out when it happens."
Johnny Sample, quoted frequently in the Super Bowl buildup as a one-time Colt cornerback, denied that revenge motivated his performance. "We just wanted to win the game," said Sample, who accounted for one of the four interceptions that halted Colt drives in touchdown territory.
Later, Sample presented the game ball to AFL President Milt Woodard for enshrinement in league headquarters.
Drenched in compliments and perspiration in the sweltering clubhouse, Namath allowed that "I wasn't throwing well to my left all day. I didn't have any interceptions, but I could have had two (one by Jerry Logan, the other by Lenny Lyles). If Lyles had caught that one, he probably would have gone all the way and changed the game." Namath speculated.
Echoing Ewbank's sentiments, Namath tossed a bouquet at the Jet defense.
"I just can't say enough about 'em," he said. "Ordinarily, 16 points aren't enough to win, but they were today.
"This had to be te most satisfying win of my life," Namath admitted.
Breaking off his conversation with newsmen, Namath walked over to a smallish gentleman, decked out in a green Jet blazer and white straw hat, and greeted him with a victory hug.
A Proud Father
John Namath, a 61-year-old steelworker from Beaver Falls, Pa., had no doubt that his celebrated son would produce a win, just as promised. "He can do anything he wishes," said John, father of three other sons, Bob, who accompanied his dad to the game; John, a career Army man at Fort Knox, and Frank, a Michigan insuranceman.
While the Jets were accepting their newly won laurels with remarkable aplomb, the Colts were subdued, but hardly subjugated.
Fully clothed, Earl Morrall sat head down in front of his locker, patiently answering questions that eventually revealed a sameness as a new circle of newsmen replaced an old.
The NFL's Player of the Year, who had walked to the very doorstep of the throne room before the welcome mat was jerked away ,said he was unable "to account for it (the loss). They just made the plays and we didn't. The protection was good. I know I had men open, like when I missed Orr in the end zone."
Morrall referred to a second-quarter "flea-flicker" in which he handed off to Tome Matte, took a return pass and then, failing to spot Orr, the primary target, threw down the middle toward Jerry Hill. Jim Hudson intercepted it on the Jets' 12.
Bad Day for Earl
The interception was one of three against Morrall in the second quarter. The first, on the second play of the period, from the Jets six, was on a pass intended for Tom Mitchell.
The ball was ticked by a linebacker, struck Mitchell on the shoulder and bounced off into the hands of Randy Beverly.
On the next series of Colt downs, Morrall moved the Colts from their own 20 to the Jet 15, aided by a 58-yard Matte scamper, but a pass aimed for Richardson was picked off by Sample on the two. A fourth New York interception was made at the expense of Unitas in the fourth quarter, Beverly grabbing the ball in the end zone.
The Jet defense presented no particular problem, said Morrall. "They stuck with the same defenses we'd seen; they just played them good. We moved on them, but just couldn't get any points."
The Jets piled up 337 total yards, to 324 for the Colts.
Asked what Coach Don Shula had said to him in the third quarter when he was replaced by Unitas, hampered most of the season with an ailing elbow, Earl replied: "Said he had to do something to try to get us going."
Shula, too, was liberal in his praise for the Jets. "They deserved to win," said Shula, in his sixth season as Colt coach. "We did nothing right, no good defense, no big plays. Nothing we tried materialized."
Shula said that most of the talk about the Jets concerned their passing attack, adding, "But they have good running. Snell is a real good back. They ran better against us than any other team the entire season."
In every way, Shula said, Namath measured up to what the Colts had expected.
"He moved the club. He has a strong, quick arm," the Colts' coach observed.
"He beat our blitz more often than we beat him. He beat it about three or four times; we beat him only once.
"He did everything. he knows what's happening and mixes his plays and running very well. He does everything."
The Second Guess
When the Colts tried for a touchdown, on a fourth and five situation from the Jet 19 late in the game, second-guessers were quick to sound off, insisting that since the Colts would also have needed at least a field goal to pull out a victory, this would have been a good time to go for three points.
Shula disagreed. "I decided to go for the touchdown because I didn't want to lose the field position we had then," he explained. "We still would have had to be successful on an onside kickoff."
While the Jets were mentally calculating the $15,000 each had won for their Super-iority, Matte, the Colts' top gainer with 116 yards in 11 tries, confessed that he had already spent the winner's share.
"We're having an addition built to our house," Matte told golfer Jack Nicklaus, a former classmate at Ohio State. "Now I'm going to come up $7,500 short (the difference between the two purses).
"I knew they'd be tough. I said earlier I'd settle for a one-point victory ... the heck with having to win by a one-sided score."
"You played a whale of a game," said Nicklaus.
"It wasn't good enough to win," said Matte. "That's what counts."
The opinion was shared universally.
