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Weeb Ewbank |
When Weeb Ewbank was patiently building the Jets into a championship team, this canny
little coach in 1966 signed CB Johnny Sample, who had been released by the Redskins after
eight seasons in the "major" league, the National.
"Weeb," said a newspaper pal who had been covering the NFL. "Sample
can’t cover anymore. And besides, he’s a loud liability in the lockerroom."
This was the era in which coaches and writers could be friends and hang out together.
"I know, I know," said Weeb, who had Sample on his side when Ewbank was
coaching the Baltimore Colts several seasons earlier. "But he’s better than
anyone I’ve got."
And so, two seasons later, when the Jets of the American Football League beat the Colts
in the landmark Super Bowl III, Sample was in the New York defensive backfield along with
three other free agents, and they made no mistakes.
Ewbank was a coach who made no mistakes, either, regarding players or plays. The common
thread among his former players, saluting him after his death on Nov. 16, was how wise he
had been, how smart a coach. He died at home in Oxford, Ohio, two days after watching from
a wheelchair the Jets play the Colts in Indianapolis.
Ewbank was 91.
It was a privilege to be around this roly-poly man who worried, who flustered but never
got mad. He was a dream come true for writers as a gracious and windy talker —
although dispensing no secrets.
He stood 5-foot-6, and his players often teased him, in front of him or behind his
back. Curley Johnson, the Jet punter, would sometimes come out to practice walking on his
knees, aping the Ewbank waddle.
When he fussed, someone like Dave Herman, a Jet guard, or Gerry Philbin, a defensive
end, would say, "Weeb, please. Just go away and leave us alone. Everything will be
all right." Earlier, back in Baltimore, Johnny Unitas sometimes said the same.
Ewbank was fired from the Colts after winning two NFL championships, by the owner,
Carroll Rosenbloom. It was assumed he had been deeply wounded, but he never let on, nor
did he express any get-even emotion when the Jets beat Rosenbloom’s Colts in the
Super Bowl six years later.
However, Don Shula, Ewbank’s successor in Baltimore, took note and left Rosenbloom
(who was beginning to criticize him) and the Colts for the Dolphins in 1970.
In their tributes to their old coach, many of the players did not resist telling how
stingy Ewbank could be when it came to negotiating salary raises. Because the half dozen
Jet owners were all millionaires, this frugality made little sense. But Ewbank, like
George Halas and so many others, had survived the hard times of the Great Depression, so
miserliness came easily.
Ewbank once asked Don Maynard, his Hall of Fame receiver, not to tell teammates about
his new contract. "Don’t worry," Maynard is alleged to have replied.
"I’m just as embarrassed as you are."
Ewbank is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame at Canton, Ohio, where he showed up almost
every summer, not because of his overall record — only seven winning NFL seasons out
of 20 and a .507 percentage (including postseason games).
A Paul Brown disciple, Ewbank was organized down to the minute details and was an
innovative offensive coach. Maynard claims the Jets were running a West Coast offense
years before Bill Walsh invented the term. "I played under nine head coaches and 42
assistants, and nobody ever did it as good as Weeb," said Maynard.
Ewbank adapted his team, and the game, to his talent. Against the Colts in the Super
Bowl, the Jets controlled the ball by running Matt Snell, the fullback, over and over
through the weak right side of the Baltimore defense. QB Joe Namath had little to do with
the victory.
It was good that his game plans were so complete, because, after the kickoffs, Weeb was
a nervous wreck on the sideline. During the Super Bowl, he chewed ice cubes and spit out
pieces as the drama he had concocted played out.
Namath, as the Broadway Joe figure, gave his coach fits during his early years. While
the principal Jet owner, Sonny Werblin, was encouraging Namath to be seen around town, Joe
was missing bed checks at training camp and being fined.
The imperturbable Ewbank survived that, too. Soon, a dutiful Namath was praising his
coach and getting more sleep.
Nor did Ewbank mind too much when an adorable Colt, Artie Donovan, used him as the butt
of anecdotes Donovan told years later, when he had a lounge act in his roadhouse and on
television.
"What’s Artie doing telling all these terrible stories about me?" Ewbank
asked at Canton in 1986. A devoted Donovan last week said of his coach, "He took me
and gave me a chance to play. Otherwise, I would have been a New York cop."
Donovan and Sample were just two of several players no one else wanted but Ewbank.
However, when he said, "You’re here until I can find someone better," it
did not come out as a Paul Brown kind of threat.
It was just Weeb being Weeb.
A small-town lad from Richmond, Ind., Ewbank outlived almost all of his football
contemporaries. There is no one around now to tell us about the 1928 QB competition at
Miami University in Oxford. The candidates were two skinny little guys, Brown and Ewbank.
Brown won out that time.
Bill Wallace has been writing about football for half a century and has been with
Pro Football Weekly since its inception in 1967. He is based in Westport, Conn. |
