A Steel Curtain Call for the Super Bowl's First Dynasty

ACCORDING TO CHINESE ASTROLOGY, the Year of the Ram started on Jan. 28, 1979 and ended on Feb. 15, 1980.

According to the Pittsburgh Steelers, it ended some three weeks earlier, with 12:15 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XIV, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Vince Ferragamo and Mean Joe Greene
(Sports Illustrated photo)

It ended, 40 years ago, with one of the most indelible plays in Super Bowl history.

The upstart Los Angeles Rams made it to pro-football's biggest stage despite winning just nine games during the regular season, the fewest ever to that date for a team appearing in the National Football League season finale.* The defending champion Steelers were making their fourth Super Bowl appearance in just six seasons, having won matches IX, X and XIII.

Led by its already legendary quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, Pittsburgh had gone 12-4 during the 1979 season, then beat the Miami Dolphins and Houston Oilers in the playoffs. They had the NFL's highest-scoring offense while their Steel Curtain defense had allowed the seventh fewest points.

Los Angeles QB Vince Ferragamo wasn't even his team's starter until the 12th game of the season, after a broken finger sidelined incumbent Pat Haden. Though he'd steered L.A. to an aggregate 6-1 record, the big game was just his eighth NFL start. Plus, the Rams had outscored their opponents by just 14 points during the regular season, beating the Tampa Buccaneers 9-0 for the conference championship.

Experts were predicting the biggest slaughter since Abraham spared Isaac.

The official game program

L.A.'s game-opening drive stalled on its own 26-yard-line after three plays for a net total of five yards. Then the Steelers went to work, Bradshaw deploying running backs Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier to gain 55 yards, setting up a Matt Bahr field goal. Steelers 3, Rams 0.

Five minutes and nine plays later, L.A. answered back. Running back Wendell Tyler's 39-yard dance through Pittsburgh's defense put the Rams in the red zone. Moments later, Cullen Bryant bulled in from the one. L.A. 7, Steelers 3.

Early in the second quarter, Harris plowed into the end zone, putting Pitt back on top, 10-7. Then strange things started to happen, things that make odds-makers and bookies nervous.

Rams placekicker Frank Corral tied the game five minutes after Franco's plunge. Then, after the teams traded three-and-outs, L.A. defensive back Dave Elemendorf's interception of a Bradshaw pass led to another Corral F.G.

At halftime, the score stood: Los Angeles Rams 13, Pittsburgh Steelers 10.

With Pittsburgh's ground game struggling in the third, Bradshaw connected with Lynn Swann for a 47-yard TD, the Hall of Fame-bound wide receiver beating double coverage to haul in the heave.

Wendell Tyler on the run.
(Sports Illustrated photo)

The champs were back on top, 17-13, but the Rams refused to lay down.

Ferragamo quickly connected with Billy Waddy on a 50-yard passing play that put L.A. on the Pittsburgh 24. Running back Lawrence McCutcheon then tossed a half-back option TD pass to receiver Ron Smith.

Though Corral missed the extra point, it was Rams 19, Steelers 17 midway through the third and things were about to get even worse for Pittsburgh.

Swann, leaping high for a catch, had his legs cut out from under by a Rams defender. The acrobatic receiver landed hard on his right shoulder, his helmeted head slamming to the Rose Bowl turf. He left the game with concussion.

Bradshaw was intercepted twice more before the quarter's end, the second time when Rams cornerback Rod Perry caught a pass meant for the Steeler's remaining Hall-bound wideout, John Stallworth.

The third quarter wrapped with L.A. clinging to that slender two-point lead, but the Rams could do little with the possession gained by Perry's piracy. Their punt gave Pittsburgh possession on its own 25-yard-line with 12:59 left on the clock. Then, the Steelers galvanized.

A Harris run gained two yards. An incomplete pass left them there. It was third and eight on the Pittsburgh 27 when Bradshaw took the snap, dropped back about 10 yards, then uncorked one of the greatest throws in pro football history.

Perry leaps in vain as Stallworth gathers in the pass.
(Sports Illustrated photo)

His high tight spiral sailed 46 yards down field. Just clearing Perry's outstretched hand, the ball was caught by Stallworth in full stride at the Rams' 36. With Perry lying prone on field, the Steelers receiver raced untouched to the end zone. Steelers 24, Rams 19.

The champs never looked back, scoring once more after a Ferragamo interception to seal the win, 31-19.

Despite three interceptions, Bradshaw was named the game's most valuable player, largely on the strength of 60 Prevent, Slot Hook and Go, a play they'd repeatedly tried and failed to execute in practice that week.

It would be Bradshaw's last Super Bowl. An elbow injury would force him to retire after the 1983 season.

The victory over the Rams also marked the end of the Pittsburgh Steeler dynasty, the first of the NFL's Super Bowl era. They'd not return to the big game until 1996.
_______________________________

* For a now-standard 16-game NFL season.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

The Jets, the Pats and Death from the Sky at Halftime

FOR 60 YEARS, the New York Jets and New England Patriots have regarded one another with a wariness befitting Cold War superpowers, using whatever treacherous means necessary to gain competitive advantage. Executives have been pirated, head coaches coaxed away, star players persuaded to defect.

December 9, 1979, at
Shea Stadium in NYC

Largely led by Bill Belichick, New England has dominated on the field of play, rolling up a 67-54-1 all-time record with six Super Bowl championships to the Jets' measly one. Two times Belichick was named head coach of the Jets, only to be demoted in 1997 after the Bill Parcells ploy backfired and only to resign in evident disgust when tabbed again in 2000, all without ever actually coaching a game for them.

There's been the evil of Spygate, the embarrassment of The Butt Fumble.

Twice the Patriots/Jets convergence has had near fatal consequences and once, 40 years ago this weekend, it was actually, literally, deadly.

In 1969, just days after designing the offensive scheme for the Jets' Super Bowl III victory, Clive Rush was hired by the Patriots as their head coach. On Feb. 12, he was given the honor of introducing the team's new general manager, George Sauer Sr. (father of the champion Jets receiver George Jr.).

Rush stepped up to the podium, gripped the microphone and began screaming as electricity from a short circuit coursed through his body, according to the Boston Globe. Were it not for a Patriots board member ripping out the wires running to a wall socket, Rush's coaching career -- and indeed his life -- might have ended right there.

Then, on Sept. 23, 2001, early in Belichick's second season as the Pats' head honcho, Jets linebacker Mo Lewis slammed into New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe as he sought to escape New York's pass rush. Bledsoe suffered a torn blood vessel in his chest. Only a team doctor's prompt decision to rush him to the Mass General emergency room kept the quarterback from dying.

While the quick thinking saved his life, it couldn't save his job as backup QB Tom Brady stepped in to the starting role and hasn't relinquished it to this day.

But in between the Rush Electrocution and the Bledsoe Bleed there was a third incident, during halftime of a game at New York's Shea Stadium, that took the life of not a player or coach but of a Patriots fan. It was an accident so improbable, so tragically bizarre, that even the urban legend detectives at Snopes.com felt compelled to confirm it really did happen.

It happened on Dec. 9, 1979. I was there with my pal, Eddie, my dad and more than 45,000 other people.

Game day souvenir

It was the last home game of the season at the gusty multipurpose stadium near the shore of Flushing Bay, perhaps two miles southeast of LaGuardia Airport. The 6-8 Jets had gone into the locker room with a 17-12 lead over the 8-6 Pats.

Mid-game entertainment would be provided by the Electronic Eagles of The Radio Control Association of New York, an organization of gas-powered remote-controlled model plane enthusiasts. Only these weren't ordinary planes or even the hobby drones now popular across the U.S. They were flying contraptions, one of which was configured to look like a lawnmower.

As the innocent, if ill-conceived stunt flying exhibition got underway, my pal and I had headed off to the souvenir stand in search of swag, leaving my dad holding a pair of high-powered Bushnell binoculars I'd received as a bar-mitzvah gift a year earlier. Our seats were in the upper deck on what would be Shea's first-base side during baseball season.

Dad, now nearly 87, picks it up from there:

"The lawnmower plane was flying clockwise around the playing field at about the height of the top of the grandstand, with an occasional swoop downward and over the seating area. I was standing, following the show with the binoculars. 

After a swoop or two at the seating area across the field the plane swooped in and failed to swoop out again, as was expected. Instead, it crashed into several spectators, who went down. The crowd started to chant "Sue! Sue! Sue! It stopped when the injured party (or parties) didn't get up, when the crowd realized that the injury was more serious than originally thought. 

I don't think anyone anticipated a fatality."

The lawnmower plane crashed into field level seats behind the Patriots' bench, along what would be the third-base side of the stadium, and into a crowd of New England fans who'd made the trip to Queens for the game.

Game day program

Kevin Rourke, 25, of Lynn, Massachusetts sustained a concussion, according to a New York Times report. Another fan, John Bowen, 20, of Nashua, New Hampshire, died from his injuries four days later at a hospital in New York City.

The Queens County District Attorney's Office ruled the incident an accident and declined to bring charges against the pilot of the wayward craft, Brooklyn auto body repairman Philip Cushman.  Bowen's father later filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against the Jets, the Electronic Eagles and Cushman.

But from there the trail goes cold. I could find no official record of the case or how it ended.

In the third quarter, New England rallied for a brief 19-17 lead before the Jets added 10 more points. A late Patriots touchdown brought them to within one but New York held on to win, 27-26.

Just grown men playing a game.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

O.J. Simpson Runs to Glory -- December 16, 1973

I WAS THERE because somebody dumped New York Jets tickets on my dad.

"The consummate runner fulfills the promise"

It was Dec. 16, 1973, one of those punishingly cold days at Shea Stadium, when icy wind whipped in from Flushing Bay, numbing everything in its path. Green Bay's Lambeau Field may be synonymous with "frozen tundra," but a late season Jets home game could just as easily freeze you to the marrow.

On this day, the team was 4-9. By the 1 p.m. kickoff, snow was falling.

So why go?

Why trudge out to the C-shaped municipal stadium surrounded by parking lots and expressways to sit in the arctic chill, drink watery hot cocoa and watch bad Jets football (a virtually redundant description throughout the 1970s)?

Two words. Make that two initials: O.J., as in Simpson, a man on the cusp of rushing for more than 2,000 yards in a 14-game season, something never accomplished before or since.

O.J., aka The Juice, winner of the 1968 Heisman Trophy while at the University of Southern California. Selected with the first overall pick by the Buffalo Bills in the 1969 National Football League draft, he was handsome, articulate and charismatic. A first-magnitude star.

If you were born after 1994 -- after his descent into infamy -- it may be difficult to comprehend the hold he had on the American public, as an athlete, part-time actor, sportscaster and pitchman for orange juice, western boots and rental cars.

He'd come of age in an era that saw the first wide-spread acceptance of black celebrities as just plain celebrities. In 1965, Bill Cosby became the first black to play a lead role in a television drama, I Spy. Three years later, while Simpson was running to greatness at USC, Diahann Carroll took similar stride for black women in Julia. In 1970, Flip Wilson got in his own TV variety show.

Why run through airports when you can fly?

During the 1960s, Muhammad Ali transcended professional boxing to become one of the world's most widely recognized celebrities, a man willing to sacrifice his career for his principles. But where he was controversial and brash, Simpson was silky smooth and universally liked, by men and women, white and black. He transcended race in the same way Barack Obama would three decades later.

O.J.'s affable demeanor and good looks made him a natural for the tube and silver screen. Holding out for a better deal before signing with the Bills, he even threatened to bypass Buffalo for Hollywood, where he'd already had bit parts in Dragnet, Ironside, Medical Center and It Takes a Thief.

While he eventually signed, he didn't hit the ground running. O.J. rushed for just 1,927 yards over his first three seasons combined, barely surpassing Jim Brown's single-season record of 1,863. But things changed in 1972, when the Buffalo hired a new coach, Lou Saban, who plugged in The Juice and let him run.

Simpson's 1,251 yards led the league. His 94 yard-run from scrimmage in an October game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was the longest in the league that year. He averaged 4.3 yards per carry and 89.4 per game but scored only six touchdowns as the Bills staggered to a 4-9-1 record.

By game 10 of the 1973 season, Simpson surpassed his previous season total, running for 1,323 yards, 123 of them at the Jets' expense in week 3. Though held to under 100 yards in three games, he finished the year in a rush, piling up 480 yards just over weeks 11, 12 and 13. Arriving at Shea, he'd already carried  the ball 1,803 yards and Brown's record was only 60 yards away.

That record fell before the end of the first quarter and, with the frost-bitten Shea faithful to bear witness, he piled up precisely 200 yards on the day as the Bills bullied the Jets, 34-14.  It would be the last game for Jets coach Weeb Ewbank, architect of their Super Bowl III victory, and my first as a fan.

For the season, Simpson had juked and jetted his way to 2003 yards -- almost 1.14 miles -- pursued by 11 men swearing to stop him.

In time, and with extension of the standard NFL season to 16 games, the record would fall. So too would O.J., in a manner that would have seemed unimaginable fiction to football fans on that snowy day.

Simpson as doomed astronaut John Walker, with co-stars Sam Waterston and James Brolin
in the thriller Capricorn One. Photo from the July 1978 issue of Starlog Magazine

Between those two defining moments, Simpson played pro-football for just six more years, the final two for his hometown San Francisco 49ers. His acting credits included roles in The Towering Inferno, The Cassandra Crossing, Roots, Capricorn One and the Naked Gun movies.

In 1985 he wed Nicole Brown, with whom he had two children over seven tumultuous years during which the former football star cheated on and abused her. They divorced in 1992.

In June 1994, he was charged with murdering her and friend Ronald Goldman, but apprehended only after a 50-mile -- or 88,000 yard -- low speed chase across the Los Angeles freeway system pursued by dozens of police officers sworn to stop him.

Simpson was acquitted after an epochal 1995 trial but found legally culpable in a civil suit two years later and ordered to pay more than $33 million to the victims' families.

Ten years after that, he'd be convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping for crimes involving sports memorabilia -- our communal tokens of hero worship. Sentenced to nine to 33 years imprisonment, The Juice was set free in 2017.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Once the Patriots Were Likeable Underdogs

THEY HAD NO SUPERFANS. They had no song. They had no players named after appliances. Yet there they were, expected to compete on the same field, on the same terms, as the 15-1 Chicago Bears. They were the lovable underdog New England Patriots and they were in the Super Bowl for the very first time.

The twentieth title game of the NFL's modern era

It was 1986 and this was Super Bowl Double X.

Thirty-two seasons later, those Patriots are a barely acknowledged afterthought, eclipsed by the legend of that singular, stupendously successful Bears squad, little more than the answer to a trivia question: Who did the Bears beat?

Who knows? Who cares?

The Patriots have since become such a force, such a fixture on the big stage, that their first championship game forebears are all but forgotten, the franchise equivalent of the lost Roanoke Colony. Who wants to overlook a sickening amount of success to recall the big fail?

Rhetorical question. Don't answer.

Da Bears had da coach, Mike Ditka, who may still be the most popular man in Chicago. Running back Walter Payton, Sweetness, a secular saint struck down by cancer at age 45, keyed the offense. They also had colorful quarterback Jim McMahon, Olympic sprinter Willie Gault, linebacker Mike Singletary and the massive defense linemen Richard Dent and William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

The Fridge: a 23-year-old, 6'-2", 335-pound phenomenon.

The revered logo.

The Patriots' Super Bowl XX roster is somewhat less revered today than Pat the Patriot, the snarling minute man in a three-point stance who adorned their still-white helmets.

Irving Fryar, the first man taken in the 1984 National Football League draft, was their biggest star. His seven touchdowns, scored as a receiver and kick returner, tied for the team lead with running back Craig James. Tony Eason, one of six signal callers taken in the first round of the '83 draft, was their primary quarterback, backed by veteran QB Steve Grogan. Karate blackbelt and future football hall of famer Andre Tippett anchored the defense.

Their coach was Pro Football Hall of Fame member Raymond Berry, once a standout receiver for the Baltimore Colts. He directed them to an 11-3 regular season record and a wild card game match-up with the New York Jets -- and Eason's '83 draft classmate QB Ken O'Brien -- at the Meadowlands.

New England beat New York, 26-14, after a Tippett hit forced O'Brien -- the league's top-rated passer -- from the game. A week later, the Patriots beat the Raiders 27-20 in Los Angeles, setting up a conference championship game with Dolphins in Miami.

Helmed by another class of 1983 draftee, Dan Marino, those same Dolphins had handed the Bears their only regular season loss. Still, it was full speed ahead. The battle cry in Boston: Squish the fish!

New England linebacker Andre Tippett,
from the Super Bowl XX program

And squish 'em they did, 31-14, punching the Patriots' Super Bowl ticket and giving rise to the somewhat faulty fan logic: If the Dolphins could beat the Bears and we could beat the Dolphins, then we must be able to beat the Bears too.

Defrost the Refrigerator! Berry the Bears!

Not so fast. Chicago had rampaged through the NFC post season, beating the New York Giants, 21-0, and then the Los Angeles Rams, 24-0. Eight quarters of football. No points allowed.

Barefoot Patriots kicker Tony Franklin would break that string with a field goal less than two minutes into Super Bowl XX at the Louisiana Superdome, giving New England a 3-0 lead. Kicker Kevin Butler tied it for Chicago about four minutes later, then gave the Bears their first lead near the end of the first quarter, 6-3.

QB Tony Eason and lineman John Hannah,
from the Super Bowl XX program

The game was, for all intents and purposes over. Da Bears dominated on both sides of the ball, piling on the points while keeping New England off the board. Even the massive Refrigerator was allowed to run one in, running up the score to 44-3 (a one-yard plunge denied the beloved Payton, who went scoreless).

Grogan, who replaced Eason in the second quarter with Chicago already ahead 20-3, connected with Fryar in the fourth for a Patriots touchdown, 44-10. A Bears safety made the final tally 46-10.

Bad as that day was for New England, it was the Patriots who were bound for glory, again and again and again ad nauseum, while the fearsome Bears were one-and-done, still searching for that next championship season.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Miami Diary: When J-E-T-S Spells P.T.S.D.

JOSH McCOWN STAMPED his right foot once, signaling the snap from center.

His New York Jets, having surrendered a 14 point lead to the Miami Dolphins, had the ball again with the score still tied 28-28, but buried at their 15 yard line with just 47 seconds left in regulation time.

My cousin, who grew up not far from the home of the 'phins, leaned over to me and predicted the Jets and McCown would run the ball once, perhaps twice, kill the clock and take their chances with overtime.

I concurred and as the Hard Rock Stadium crowd roared, watched McCown take the snap, then scramble toward the left sideline searching for an open receiver...

In my mind's eye, suddenly it was December 21 1997. Jets' ball, first and goal to go on the Detroit Lions' 9-yard line. A field goal would tie the game 13-13 with more than seven minutes to play. A win would send the Bill Parcells-era Jets to the playoffs for the first time.

QB Neil O'Donnell took the snap, handed the ball to rookie running back Leon Johnson, who scampered toward the right sideline then stopped abruptly before turning upfield and cocked his arm to heave the ball toward the end zone...

"Oh no, he's going to throw it..."

Thought coalesced, mouth agape, eyes wide with horror, all I could do was watch.

Two Jets games, 20 years apart and that exact same reaction, that exact same result: an interception followed minutes later by a loss.

Then it was an errant pass to Lions defensive back Bryant Westbrook. Today it was Dolphin Bobby McCain.

Does it really matter?

The Parcells Era came and went, as did the Al Groh Interval, the Herman Edwards Epoch, the Man-Genius seasons and Blustersaurus Rex. To no avail.

Now we are in year three of Bowles, Todd and year 47 of Super Bowls, none.

Traumatized, shell-shocked, we persist in the hope of a different outcome.

What is the definition of insanity?

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

December '81: Green and White Clad Santa Brings Big, Long Overdue Gift to New York Football Fans

TO BE POLITE, the 1970s were unkind to New York football fans. To be blunt, they sucked.

The Jets, having stunned the world with their Super Bowl III triumph over the Baltimore Colts in 1969, paid a heavy karmic price for quarterback Joe Namath's victory guarantee and never posted a winning season.

All-purpose back Bruce Harper
and offensive lineman
Marvin Powell

The Giants had just one, rolling up a 9-5 record in 1970, during what should have been a victory lap for their intracity rivals. They also had no home, bounding like an unwanted relative from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, to New Haven, Connecticut's Yale Bowl, to Shea Stadium in Queens and finally to the swamps of New Jersey, where the team christened its eponymous new stadium in 1976 by winning three contests and losing 11.

Hobbled by injuries, Namath's decline was precipitous and, by 1977, he was placed on waivers and claimed by the Los Angeles Rams. A succession of successors to championship coach Weeb Ewbank, failed to stem the losing tide.

The Giants' humiliating nadir came on a November day in 1978 when running back Larry Csonka, playing out the string in Hackensack, NJ after a hall of fame career in Miami, failed to corral quarterback Joe Pisarcik's handoff with less than 30 seconds remaining.

The ensuing fumble, scooped up and run into the Giants' end zone by Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Herman Edwards, converted a sure 17-12 victory into a 19-17 defeat.

The Jets, for good measure, lost by the same score that day, to the New England Patriots. They would finish the season 8-8, a five game improvement from the prior year, while the Giants would go 6-10. Each team would, bizarrely, replicate those records in 1979. Then, in 1980, each finished 4-12.

If there was a bright center of the pro football universe, New York was the planet it was farthest from.

But bad teams get good draft picks and, picking consecutively in the 1981 National Football League draft, the Giants selected hulking linebacker Lawrence Taylor as the second overall choice, while the Jets took the dazzling-if-fragile halfback Freeman McNeil as the third.

... vs. the Packers, Dec. 20, 1981
An NY win would send the Jets
and the Giants to the post-season.

On field, the teams' performance during the first six weeks of the 1981 season suggested little had changed. The Jets dropped their first three games before sandwiching two wins around a tie. On Oct. 11, their record stood at 2-3-1. The Giants, after winning two of their first three, promptly lost a pair before producing another victory, evening their record at 3-3.

From there, the Jets took off. Buoyed by the gutsy play of quarterback Richard Todd and a ferocious defensive line -- Mark Gastineau, Abdul Salaam, Marty Lyons and Joe Klecko, a unit that collectively came to be known as the New York Sack Exchange -- Gang Green reeled off seven victories in nine games.

Among them, a stunning 16-15 victory over the division rival Miami Dolphins in which Todd, playing with a cracked rib and sprained ankle, threw a game winning touchdown to tight end Jerome Barkum with just seconds to spare.

By Dec. 20, the last Sunday of the regular season, the 9-5-1 Jets were scheduled to play the Green Bay Packers. On the line: a berth in the American Football Conference Wild Card game.

The Giants' seesaw season saw them win three in a row twice, while enduring a 1-3 stretch in between. Their regular season had ended the day before with a 13-10 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. With a 9-7 record, they needed help to make the post season. They needed the Jets to beat Green Bay.

And the Jets delivered. With Todd tossing two TDs, running backs Bruce Harper and Kevin Long adding two more and the defense sacking GB QB Lynn Dickey nine times, they dispatched the Packers, 28-3.

Christmas had come early. New York's wallflower football teams were going to the Wild Card dance. With both games set for Dec. 27, the Giants would journey to Philadelphia, while the Jets would host the Buffalo Bills at Shea.

The only NFL playoff game ever played at Shea
Dec. 27, 1981

Of course, for the Jets, disaster is never far from view.

Harper fumbled his return of the opening kickoff. Sixteen seconds in, the visitors led 7-0. By the second quarter, Buffalo increased that lead to 24-0. The New Yorkers fought back, posting 13 unanswered points before the Bills struck again.

As the game clock wound down, Buffalo had the lead, 31-27, but the Jets had the ball and Todd was driving. With 10 seconds remaining, Bills defensive back Bill Simpson intercepted a pass at the one yard line, sealing the victory for the visitors.

It would be the only NFL playoff game ever played at Shea.* In 1984, they'd join the Giants at the Meadowlands. Meanwhile, down the interstate in Philadelphia, the future landlords beat the Eagles 27-21. Their season would end on Jan. 5 with a 38-24 loss to the eventual Super Bowl XVII winner San Francisco 49ers.

But the dreadful decade, 1970-1980, was over. Todd and the Jets would lose the 1982 AFC championship to the Dolphins in a mud-mired game in Miami. The Giants, in 1986, would beat the Denver Broncos to win Super Bowl XXI.
_______________________________

* To be sure, Shea hosted two American Football League Jets playoff games in 1968 and 1969.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

The 46-Year Grift: My Life as New York Jets Fan

THE NEW YORK JETS are toast. Finished. Out of the race. Eliminated. Done.

There. With minutes to go before their 2016 season-opening kick-off, I've said it and gotten it out of the way, freeing my Autumn for more productive pursuits. More importantly, I've shed the burden of expectation -- specifically the expectation of anything good.

The sometimes hurt, sometimes heroic
Richard Todd, whose play in 1981 inspired
 signs declaring, "Todd is God!''
(This page from the 1979 Jets yearbook)

Life as a Jets fan is conducive to this kind of thinking.

I love the Jets, really I do, too much to actually watch them play after decades of disappointment.

Not yet four when they won their sole Super Bowl appearance in 1969, my conscious Jets fandom began in 1978, when the National Football League adopted its 16-game season format, tailor-made for a franchise with a remarkable propensity for going 8-8 and making fans feel good about it.

That's how they finished that year and again in 1979.

Since then, it's been one damned thing after another, including:

• AJ Duhe and the Orange Bowl mud;
• picking Ken O'Brien over Dan Marino (taking nothing away from O'Brien, who was arguably the Jets second-best QB in franchise history, but still...);
• taking Al Toon instead of Jerry Rice because they were worried about Rice's durability;
• drafting Blair Thomas, not Emmitt Smith;
• Marino's humiliating "fake spike";
• Bubby Brister's shovel pass;
• Vinny Testaverde's achilles tendon;
• Chad Pennington's wrist;
• Chad Pennington's shoulder;
• Pennington's shoulder, again;
• and Mark Sanchez' "butt fumble".

Ancient history by NFL standards? Sure, but imagine how that history could have gone differently.

Precision Jets pilot Ken O'Brien,
from the 1987 yearbook

More forks in the road: Pete Carroll, the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Seattle Seahawks, began his pro career by leading the Jets to a 6-10 record in 1994 and being fired by then-owner Leon Hess who declared that at 80 years old he wanted to win "now!" Carroll's replacement, Rich Kotite, led the team to an aggregate 4-28 record over the next two seasons. Hess died in 1999.

Bill Belichick, who has directed the New England Patriots to six Super Bowls and four championships, was named Jets' head coach twice yet never coached a game.

The first time, he was part of a package that included the hiring of legendary one-time Giants head coach Bill Parcels, who had recently retired as Patriots' HC, as an "advisor." When the Patriots balked at what they rightly perceived to be a breach of Parcel's contractual obligations to their team, the Jets were compelled to pay compensation, freeing him to step out from behind the curtain and be the top man in the Emerald City.

Belichick was demoted to defensive coordinator. It was a slight he'd not forget. Three years later, when Parcels tired of the Sisyphusian burden of rolling the Jets' karmic stone uphill, the team quickly moved to promote Belichick to the job that they'd supposedly given him three years earlier. Just as quickly, he resigned and went to work for New England.

Given the Jets' star-crossed history, perhaps the result of a Faustian bargain struck by their Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath when he guaranteed that Super Bowl III victory, maybe it wouldn't have mattered if Belichick remained.

The fantastic and fragile Chad Pennington,
from a 2002 season game program.

Sometimes, they just seem cursed:

• Cursed when Bruce Harper fumbled the opening kickoff return at the 1981 Wild Card game against the Buffalo Bills, instantly putting them in a 7-0 hole from which they'd never escape in the last NFL playoff game at Shea Stadium;
• Cursed when Testaverde's achilles tendon tore in first half of the first game of the 1999 season after he'd led them to the 1998 AFC championship game;
• Cursed when placekicker Doug Brien missed two potential game-winning field goals in a 2004 playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers;
• Cursed when -- after using their first draft pick to take kicker Mike Nugent to replace Brien -- Pennington and back-up QB Jay Fiedler sustained season-ending injuries in the same quarter of the third game of the 2005 season.*

Bad decisions? Bad juju? Plenty of both to go around.

Since the NFL's adoption of a 16-game schedule, the Jets have gone 281-317-2 over 38 seasons (two of which were abbreviated by labor issues). Seven of those seasons produced 8-8 records, another 8-7-1, two at 7-9, five at 9-7, six at 6-10 and six at 10-6. These Monsters of the Middling once went 12-4. They also once went 1-15. They've won 10 post-season games and lost 12, including four AFC Championships.

To be sure, all of those bad times were preceded by good times: the New York Sack Exchange defensive line that made the Jets a premier team in the early 80s; O'Brien's almost unerring accuracy; that franchise-best 12-4 season in 1998; their rally to an 8-8 finish the next year when, post-Testaverde injury they'd fallen to 2-6 before being rescued by the unheralded Ray Lucas; plus that brief time when Mark Sanchez and Rex Ryan got us all to buy in.

Every peak only heightened the subsequent fall.

Fandom for any team is an act of faith. Nobody wins all of the time, even if it sometimes feels that way. The Jets are far from alone in seeming to be endlessly rebuilding, forever close to turning that last corner. That's the grift, the long con: we the willing, we the credulous, we the gullible, we believe.

Even if we don't want to, we believe.

* A Cincinnati Bengal since 2010, Nugent just minutes ago booted a game-winning field goal for the big cats as they downed the Jets, 23-22, in the 2016 season opener. Of course he did.

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