Reunion Brings Back Memories of the ‘Guarantee of Super Bowl III’

They’ll probably get around to talk of “The Guarantee,” the flea-flicker and the rest of it about the time some begin questioning how they ever got talked into taking part in a flag football game 20 years after the fact.

Guys will recall how brilliantly the Jets played that day, Jan. 12, 1969. Others will reminisce about the performance of the Colts in Super Bowl III and recoil in horror or feign amnesia.

Just in the nick of time and, ensuring a modicum of accuracy during USF&G; Legends Bowl discussions this weekend, a book has hit the stands that goes into minute detail about the debacle.

Despite the presumptuous title, “The Game That Changed Pro Football,” and the sometimes naive perspective of the youthful author, Steve Hanks has turned in a strong effort.

To review, the ’68 Colts, Baltimore type, were kings of all they surveyed in the National Football League. Beaten just once during a 14-game season, they had gained revenge for that setback by mangling the Cleveland Browns, 34-0, in the league championship game.

Meanwhile, it was pretty well agreed that New York wasn’t the best team in the old American Football League but hung third or so behind Kansas City and Oakland. The Jets had suffered a couple of horrendous defeats during the season and had required a multitude of breaks to survive the title game against the Raiders.

Reading in the papers that no less an expert than Jimmy the Greek saw them as a 17-point underdog and hearing on radio and TV from Howard Cosell that they didn’t belong in the same country much less on the same field as the Colts, Joe Namath & Co. went to the film.

The players watched and watched until, after a couple of days, tight end Pete Lammons theorized, “Damn, we watch any more of these films, we’re going to get overconfident.”

Larry Grantham, leader of New York’s defense, noted, “When we watched the films, we noticed that they were winning on a lot of turnovers. They were winning on a lot of big defensive plays. We knew that our offense wasn’t going to give them the big plays.”

When he wasn’t checking out Miami’s night life, Broadway Joe was having a ball with the films: “I enjoyed watching the Colt game films as much as a good Lee Marvin movie. Some people were saying that the Jets would be scared of the Colts’ defense. Scared, hell, the only thing that scared me was that they might change their defense.

“The more I saw of the Baltimore movies, the better I felt. Cleveland, Minnesota and Los Angeles were just plain dumb against the blitz. None of them did anything to throw the Colts’ defense off balance, as far as I could tell.”

Meanwhile, the guys from the NFL couldn’t have been more confident. “It never crossed our minds that the game would be close,” Bubba Smith would admit after the game.

“How sure was I of winning?” gasped Tom Matte. “I was so sure, I’d already spent the money. I was having an addition built on my house. I came up $7,500 short of what I had planned.”

The Jets had the Colts right where they wanted them -- fat, overconfident and ready to be taken. Namath, they figured, almost blew it when he got up at a public function and guaranteed that his team would win. Coach Weeb Ewbank cringed, saying, “Joe, Joe, how could you?”

“Come on, Coach, you think we’re going to win, don’t you?” said Joe.

A couple of nights later, during another nocturnal foray, Namath hit the headlines again in a restaurant beef with Colts defensive end-kicker Lou Michaels, reaffirming the Jets would breeze.

It was great theater leading up to a great victory for the Jets. It wasn’t that tough, so wretchedly did the Colts play.

“We were a great team because we didn’t make mistakes,” recalled Matte. “That day, we threw interceptions (four), I fumbled and we had a chance to score 27 points in the first half. We didn’t get any.”

Old Namath watchers were aghast at how easy it was for the Jets, hardly requiring Broadway to air out his arm. A few years later, Joe zinged into B’more and passed for 496 yards and six touchdowns, waxing the Colts, 44-34, reminding of the possibility that Super Bowl III could have been a total wipeout.

“How good was Namath?” John Unitas said that day, repeating the question. “Sixteen-to-seven!”

Jets tackle Gerry Philbin notes correctly that “the game has been dissected more than a frog in a biology class” during the last two decades.

Author Hanks’ work details what was said before and after the game and now, 20 years later. He overstates his position when he says that the 16-7 outcome may well be pro football’s most celebrated score ever. He suggests that previous championship games did not arouse near the interest and that the players in the 1958 “Greatest Game Ever Played” between the Colts and Giants, for instance, aren’t as well known as the Jets-Colts participants.

As for the Jets’ victory being the game that changed pro football, it was just one of many games over a few seasons that got the established NFL teams to admit that AFL teams could indeed play football. And that maybe their razzle-dazzle, bump-and-run style was something worth looking into.