When the Feeling Isn’t Super Anymore : McMahon Isn’t the First Champion Quarterback to Wear Out Welcome

Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas can empathize with Jim McMahon.

Like McMahon, Unitas was traded to the Chargers after a falling-out with the team for which he had been a winning quarterback in the Super Bowl. Charger followers can only hope McMahon’s move to San Diego this season turns out better than Unitas’ did 16 years ago.

With Unitas, going from the Baltimore Colts to the Chargers in 1973 was a case of flitting from the frying pan to the fryer. All he did in escaping one untenable situation was land in another. After one miserable season, he was out of football.

True, there is one significant difference between the cases of Unitas and McMahon. When Unitas joined the Chargers, he was 40 and obviously near the end of his career. McMahon is only 30, but comes with a long history of injuries in seven seasons with the Chicago Bears.

Nevertheless, the parallel is unmistakable, even to the point that both found their heirs apparent waiting for them when they arrived.

The man poised to take over Unitas’ job was a rookie from Oregon named Dan Fouts. McMahon’s quarterback-in-waiting is Texas Tech rookie Billy Joe Tolliver, who had an outstanding exhibition season before suffering a broken collar bone in the final game.

Unitas, 56, recalled the transition he had to make in a telephone conversation from Baltimore, where he is an executive with National Circuits, a computer technology firm. His departure from Baltimore, he recalled, was even less pleasant than McMahon’s from Chicago.

“In ‘72, Joe Thomas came in (as general manager) with (owner) Bob Irsay and raped the town and the team,” Unitas said. “Thomas fired Coach Don McCafferty and announced that Johnny Unitas would never play another down in a Baltimore uniform. We had Marty Domres, and Thomas wanted him to play.

“Ironically, Thomas made that statement after (the Jets’) Joe Namath and I had combined for 800 to 900 yards (872, of which Unitas accounted for 376) in the second game of the season. But he was fishing for excuses. By the sixth game, Domres was starting.

“After the season, I met Irsay at the Super Bowl, and he said, ‘We’d better trade you.’ I said, ‘OK, but just let me have a say where I go.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way.”

The Colts were not even the first to tell Unitas of the deal that sent him to San Diego.

“A writer from the Baltimore Sun called me,” Unitas said. “He asked, ‘What are you doing going to San Diego?’ I said, ‘I didn’t know I was.’ He said, ‘Well, you are, for $150,000 and future considerations.’

“After that I got a call from Ernie Accorsi, the Colts’ PR man, and he said Joe Thomas wanted to talk to me. I said, ‘Fine, put him on.’ Thomas said, ‘You’ve just been traded to San Diego,’ and bang, he hung up. That was it, after 17 years with the ballclub.”

This was a player who had come to the Colts in 1956 as a free agent, led them to a 23-17 victory over the New York Giants in the legendary overtime NFL championship game in 1958 and been voted the greatest quarterback of all-time by the Hall of Fame selection committee in 1969. His election to the Hall of Fame itself in 1979 was almost anticlimactic.

Later, Unitas was offered a front office position by the Colts, but he elected to accept the trade.

“The Colts offered me $300,000 over 10 years to learn the business from the bottom up,” Unitas said. “I told them there was no way I could work with Joe Thomas.”

Once Unitas reached San Diego, he found out that his lot wasn’t going to improve. He quickly became disenchanted with the regime of owner Gene Klein.

“There wasn’t any coach, really,” he said. “Harland Svare was technically the coach, and then Ron Waller took over, but it was ridiculous. The whole organization was bad. If the fish stinks from the top, it stinks all the way.”

The one thing Unitas enjoyed about his brief tenure as a Charger was breaking in Fouts as his successor.

“Working with Dan was easy,” Unitas said. “He had the ideal temperament and the overall ability, intelligence and work ethic. He studied hard, and he knew where to go and what to do. I knew he would be a good player.”

Unitas’ one Charger season was a disaster. In the opener, he completed only six of 17 passes for 55 yards, was intercepted three times and sacked five times. He came back with two excellent performances but was replaced by Fouts during the fourth game after going two for nine. He never got his job back.

Fouts was so impressive the following week in his first start, a 27-17 loss to the Oakland Raiders, that Raider Coach John Madden said, “He’s a big plus for the Chargers in the future.”

And that was a big minus for Unitas’ future. All told, Unitas threw just 76 passes in 1973, his 18th and final pro season, completing 34.

“I had signed a two-year contract, and I figured I’d play at least that long without any problems,” he said. “My only problem was that Tommy Prothro came in as coach and asked me to retire.”

That was 1974, the year of the first NFL players’ strike. During the training season, Unitas crossed the picket lines.

“I felt I had an obligation to the owner (Klein), and the players’ association was of no benefit to me,” Unitas said. “I was in camp with all the rookies, and Prothro asked me to ride on his golf cart. He said to me, ‘Does it bother you that you can’t do the things you used to do?’ I said, ‘I can still do those things.’

“He asked me, ‘Have you thought about retiring?’ I said, ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll abide by your wishes.’ We met with Klein, and we worked out a settlement. Klein told me, ‘As long as we have this agreement, your checks will keep coming.’

“I said I would play, coach or scout or do whatever they wanted me to do. Prothro said, ‘If you want to see a game, you can see it from the stands.’ That was the end of my career.”

Unitas signed to do television color work for CBS, and remained with the network for five seasons before becoming a businessman.

“I might have tried to keep on playing, but I wasn’t about to jump from team to team at that point,” he said.

Unitas had played in a rather unique Super Bowl when it came to quarterbacks jumping from team to team. The three quarterbacks who played in Super Bowl III were the only winning Super Bowl quarterbacks, before McMahon, to finish their careers in other organizations.

Joe Namath, who led the New York Jets to victory in that game, finished with the Rams. Unitas and Earl Morrall, who shared the position in the loss to the Jets and would also share the position in Baltimore’s victory over Dallas in Super Bowl V, finished with the Chargers and Miami.

Morrall, 55, whose 21-year career (1956-76) is second only to George Blanda’s 26 in longevity, owns Arrowhead Country Club in Davie, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale. He also is a member of the Davie town council.

He was a little luckier than Unitas when he moved on from Baltimore after 1971. He ended up with the Dolphins after being waived, going to Super Bowls VII and VIII as the holder for extra points and field goals and throwing 150 passes during the perfect 1972-73 season after Bob Griese was hurt.

Namath’s fortunes more closely paralleled those of Unitas. He was released by the Jets after the 1976 season and signed with the Rams.

In his first three games in 1977, Namath completed 34 of 67 passes and led his new team to two victories.

Before his fourth game, played on a Monday night in Chicago, Namath told a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal, “If I didn’t think I could play, I wouldn’t. But I still honestly believe that I can perform up to my expectations.”

As it turned out, that game was to be Broadway Joe’s lasts. After going 16 for 40 with four interceptions en route to a 24-23 defeat, he was replaced by Pat Haden in the waning minutes. He never played again.

Thus, there is precedent for the move McMahon has made. Three rather renowned quarterbacks have done the same thing with mixed results.

Asked to comment on McMahon’s situation, Morrall said: “Injuries have slowed McMahon a little bit, but he’s an astute guy, bold and brash, and I think the trade will help San Diego more than the Bears. It’s a questionable trade for the Bears in that egos (McMahon’s and Coach Mike Ditka’s) were involved.”

Unitas was less positive about McMahon’s future.

“Jimmy has been hurt so much that the Bears probably got tired of waiting for him to be in one piece,” Unitas said. “He’s not durable, so most of the time, he’s not there. They want someone who’ll be showing up week after week.

“Plus he raised some hackles with his attitude, and you can’t have disruption. You either do or don’t tolerate his type of guy. You’ve got to have everybody on the same page.”

And Unitas gave one last note of caution to Chargers followers:

“He can still play, but, remember, he was on a tremendous team in Chicago. If he doesn’t have the horses to go with him, he may not turn out to be as good a player as the fans expect.”

Obviously, it is not automatic to expect a Super Bowl winner to get there again . . . with a new team.