Behind Namath’s guarantee
How did Super Jets really feel about Joe’s boast?
This is an excerpt from Bob Lederer’s new book “Beyond Broadway Joe — The Super Bowl Team That Changed Football,” published by HarperCollins and available where books are sold.
There were two weeks between the AFL Championship Game and Super Bowl III. Print and electronic media compared the teams and declared that Super Bowl III might be a bigger mismatch than the first two NFL-AFL Championship Games in which the NFL’s Green Bay Packers had dominated their AFL counterparts. The Jets’ players read it, heard it, and kept quiet, except for the key player in the game.
On the Thursday night prior to the big game (January 9, 1969), Joe Namath was driven to the Miami Touchdown Club banquet to be awarded a plaque as the “Outstanding Professional Football Player of 1968.” The American Football League’s hierarchy loved the ceremony because Namath was the league’s first player to be so honored.
Namath delivered a few remarks to the packed audience. He thanked his parents and family, his high school coach Larry Bruno, Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, former Jets owner Sonny Werblin, Jets coach Weeb Ewbank, the Jets’ owners, and his teammates for his past and current football success.
Then came the spontaneous words that would cement the legend of Broadway Joe Namath in the annals of NFL history: “You can be the greatest athlete in the world,” he said, “but if you don’t win those football games, it doesn’t mean anything. And we are going to win Sunday. I guarantee you.”
The New York Times’ Anderson, the only New York media reporter there that evening, didn’t think Joe’s words were particularly noteworthy. It was just one more matter-of-fact utterance from the quarterback who had said several times over that he expected to win Super Bowl III, so Anderson didn’t even send a dispatch about the dinner remarks to his editors.
Anderson didn’t even report Joe’s first public salute to the Jets’ defense. (“I read where one [reporter] wrote that our defense can’t compare with the Colts,” Joe had remarked. “Anybody who knows anything about football knows that we have five guys on defense alone better than them [the Colts].”) The following morning, the lone article about Namath’s remarks appeared in a Miami Herald sports section story under the banner headline “Namath Guarantees Jet Victory.”
Well, even Namath almost immediately recognized that he had gone further out on a limb than in any of his earlier public pronouncements. “When he got back to the hotel that night, Joe called me,” explained defensive captain Johnny Sample to NFL Films. “Joe said, ‘I said something and I think it is going to be in all the news, the papers, TV, radio, everything.’ What the heck did you say? Joe responded, ‘I just told them I guaranteed we were going to win.’ I said, ‘You didn’t do that, did ya?’ Namath said, ‘Yes, I did. We’re going to win, aren’t we?’ I said, ‘You’re right. We’re gonna win, but you shouldn’t have said that.’”
In the first days of Super Bowl preparation, Weeb Ewbank, after studying films of the Colts, had told his assistants: “If we can’t pass on these guys, we ought to get out of the business . . . . We can beat these guys. We’re going to win this game.” That set the tone for the team. However, according to defensive lineman Carl McAdams, Ewbank had admonished the Jets players the day before the awards dinner “not to say anything to make these [Colts] players mad.”
Linebacker Ralph Baker was having breakfast when he saw the Miami Herald sports section. “Winning was tough enough without giving them extra incentive,” he said. “I figured we’d be in for a lecture from Weeb, but it never happened.” Ewbank read his newspaper and saw it as the worst kind of bulletin board material for the Baltimore locker room.
Center John Schmitt remembered, “Weeb was so pissed off. Weeb came down from his room and Joe was at the table next to me. Joe was kind of hungover to be honest. Weeb rarely lost his temper with Joe and he was never angry with Joe. Weeb held the newspaper. ‘Joseph, did you say this? I asked you not to do this,’ he scolded Joe.”
Jeff Richardson was caught off guard by Namath’s remarks. “We were upset and surprised,” he admitted. “[The Colts] were saying so many negative things about us, and we were saying nothing but nice things about them,” recounted Richardson. “I told the media that Bubba Smith [the Colts’ giant defensive end] was a superstar and, tonguein-cheek, I said I didn’t know if we have anyone who could handle him. Bubba called me when he read it in the papers the next day and thanked me. We wanted them to think they were going to play a bunch of kids and that they were going to just slaughter us.”
Joe’s roommate, Jim Hudson, was absolutely convinced the Jets would win, but said to Joe, “Oh s--t. Why did you say that?” according to his second wife, Lise. Don Maynard had a muted reaction: “I didn’t react because we were confident — and that’s the big word that didn’t come out in the press
much before the game.” Maynard’s longtime teammate, Larry Grantham, agreed with Weeb. “You don’t walk into a house and kick the dog and see if he will bite you,” Larry explained. “We knew it was Joe [who said it], we never said too much about it, and we never have.”
Another AFL original, Paul Rochester, wasn’t entirely sure what Namath was up to. “I figured he must have had a few drinks. I didn’t care — he got our attention and we had to back him up. If anything, it brought us together.” Bob Talamini, also an AFLer since 1960, thought “Joe was stating a lot of confidence in the team. He was supposed to have confidence, but he did excite [the Colts] more than they would have been.”
Halfback Emerson Boozer thought nothing of Joe opening his mouth. “Joe didn’t say anything we didn’t feel as a unit,” he remarked. “Pete Lammons was also saying it.” Matt Snell went further: “The Colts looked at us as this young, start-up league, with a young punk making a guarantee. They were determined to hand us our heads. I wasn’t worried.”
Jets special teams captain Mark Smolinski woke up to discover that “the guarantee” had embroiled him in a family controversy. “They called me from Michigan, asked about Joe’s prediction and said, ‘What’s Joe doing?’ They pointed to a Detroit Free Press Super Bowl prediction by popular columnist Joe Falls: Colts 270, Jets 0. They wanted to know how would I show my face at home if the Jets got humiliated? I told them I’d come home with my head held high; I even told some of them to bet the ranch that we would win.”
Ralph Baker suggested to equipment manager Bill Hampton: “I think Joe’s trying to add to the pressure on himself on purpose. He’s at his best when the pressure is on. Like in the [AFL] Championship Game when we were behind in the last quarter, and in Houston when we needed to go 80 yards and get a touchdown late in the fourth quarter.”
Namath was inspiring and rocketing the spirits of young teammates. Earl Christy grabbed Jets’ broadcaster Merle Harmon in the Jets’ hotel. “Merle, did you hear what Joe said?” Christy asked excitedly. “Joe said we’re going to beat the Colts! We’re going to win the Super Bowl!” Harmon observed afterward, “I think that Joe’s prediction helped the Jets win the game because it got his teammates hyped.”
Bill Rademacher told newspaper columnist Jerry Izenberg, “Joe has been trying to shake us up. That’s why he started all the talking. Well, now, we are properly shook, and I’ll tell you something else. It’s more than just pregame behavior. Joe is telling the truth. We’re going to win.”
To some, “the guarantee” was a master psychological ploy. “Joe said he didn’t plan the guarantee, he just did it,” remarked John Dockery, one of Namath’s close friends on the team. “He had the guts to say it in a simple declarative sentence. You say to yourself, ‘Our QB said it. Maybe [a win] is a possibility. It drifts through your brain, drifts through your psyche and you think maybe he’s right, maybe there is a chance. A lot of us were saying this is going to be one tough game and the likelihood of winning it is slim and none. So when Joe said it, it took the pressure off us. It all went in Joe’s direction.”
Defensive tackle Carl McAdams observed, “I kinda enjoyed reading it in the newspaper. Even some of the New York newspapers gave us such little chance of winning and questioned why we were bothering to go to Miami. What Joe said made me feel better. I think it really helped us more than it disturbed the Colts. With Joe coming out and saying this, we thought we’re really going to see something [from Joe] this week.”
Remembered Randy Rasmussen, “All I could think was, ‘Oh God. What did you do?’ I was a little disturbed, but it almost had to be done, and he was the guy who had to do it. We’ll probably never know for sure if it psyched us up or psyched them down, but something happened.” Rookie Jim Richards said, “We didn’t need to rile them up any more. After thinking about it, it gave me confidence that Joe felt that highly of our team. It gave me a pick-me-up.”
Another rookie, Steve Thompson, had seen enough of Namath in the locker room and on the field to feel “the guarantee wasn’t out of place or over-the-top. This game was no David versus Goliath,” Thompson commented. “In college, you were told not to poke the bear because it would rile the other guys. I didn’t think professionals were motivated that way. He was our leader — and he said we can beat these guys.”
From the book, Beyond Broadway Joe: The Super Bowl TEAM That Changed Football. Copyright ©2018 by Bob Lederer. Reprinted with permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.