RobKirkpatrick.com

With Super Bowl XLIII just one week away, it’s a good time to look back to perhaps the biggest upset in American professional sports, which took place 40 years ago in Super Bowl III.

The Baltimore Colts came into Miami’s Orange Bowl on January 12, 1969, having compiled a 13-1 record in the 1968 regular season. In the playoffs, they’d knocked off the Minnesota Vikings 24-14 (the game wasn’t that close; Baltimore led 21-0 after 3 quarters) and then avenged their only loss of the season by destroying the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL championship game. 

The American Football League, an upstart league that began play at the beginning of the 1960s, sent the New York Jets to the Super Bowl in January 1969. New York had won a weak division in 1968 by going 11-3 and slipped by the Oakland Raiders 27-23 in the AFL championship.  

Jets QB Joe Namath had had an erratic season, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns.  Meanwhile, Colts QB Earl Morrall had stepped in for injured legend John Unitas and won the 1968 NFL MVP.  The NFL’s Green Bay Packers had destroyed the AFL champs in the first two championship matchups (35-10 over the Chiefs in SB I and 33-14 over the Raiders in SB II) and most folks assumed the results would be similar in Super Bowl III.  Not Namath. Eating up the spotlight, he famously outraged the Colts–and his own coach–by guaranteeing that the Jets would win Super Bowl III.

And the Jets made good on Namath’s guarantee–and shocked the pro sports world–by defeating the Colts 16-7. Although Namath was named the game’s MVP, the New York defense was really the story of the game in shutting out the feared Colts offense until late in the fourth quarter. By then, Colts coach Don Shula had relieved MVP Morrall, whom the Jets had rendered totally ineffective, with Unitas, who led his team to its only scoring drive.

The image of Namath leaving the field of the Orange Bowl with his finger raised to indicate his team was No. 1 is an iconic one from the era.  One interesting subplot to the game was that Namath neither threw a touchdown in the game nor attempted even one pass in the 4th quarter.  A free-throwing ”gunslinger” who had become the first quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in a season, Namath reigned himself in for Super Bowl III and managed a conservative game plan that centered around the running game of Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer.

An interesting comparison can be made to Brett Favre’s 2008 season as Jets QB. Given the keys to the city and invested with the hopes of a woeful frachise that has had little to cheer about since its victory in Super Bowl III, Favre looked to have the Jets headed for the playoffs after successive road wins over the Patriots and the previously unbeaten Titans.  New York sat at 8-3 in late November, and fans of the J-E-T-S were talking Super Bowl once again.

Big Apple fans are not easily pleased, though, even in the best of times. On 66 WFAN radio in New York, many callers (and hosts) were complaining that Brett Favre was not the same freewheeling, gunslinging quarterback they’d been fantasizing about when he signed with the Jets shortly before the beginning of the season.  But with little time to pick up his new team’s offensive scheme, he stayed conservative for most of the season and focused on short, high-percentage passes while relying on the team’s ground attack.  Sound familiar?

Bet then in cold and rainy Week 13 contest at the Meadowlands, Jay Cutler and the Denver Broncos shocked Favre and the Jets 34-17. It was all down hill from there for Gang Green. Under the heading of “Be Careful What You Wish For,” Favre began to take more chances, throwing the risky passes that had always defined his style of play. But the 39-year-old quarterback who was born 10 months after Namath’s Super Bowl triumph began to show his age.  He threw just 2 touchdowns and 9 interceptions as the Jets went 1-4 down the stretch and failed to qualify for the postseason.

As passers, Namath and Favre were cut from the same mold. But they will be remembered very differently by New York football fans. Namath won a Super Bowl by keeping his own game in check. Favre couldn’t take his team to the Super Bowl because, in the end, he tried to play too much like Namath.

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As the publicity for my 1969 book begins, one of the most enjoyable interviews I’m bound to have was with my 13-year-old nephew (and future Connecticut School of Broadcasting student) Cameron Wallace, who invited me to appear on his YouTube channel to discuss 1969: The Year Everything Changed.  Check out it and let him know what you think about his interviewing skills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60StxbP6Q4&feature=channel 

-Rob