30. The Jets avenge their “Heidi” loss and win the AFL title, December 27, 1968, Shea Stadium

The New York Jets’ improvement in the Joe Namath era went from incremental to exponential and finally, with one classic fourth-quarter bomb, accelerated up to explosive. The brash young quarterback from Alabama had been Rookie of the Year in 1965, giving the team some rare highlights; he led the Jets to their first .500 season in 1966, their first winning season in 1967, and finally to an 11–3 record and first place in the East in 1968.

            They were nearly at the promised land, one step away from the Super Bowl. However, that one step would have to be a giant leap. Their opponents in the American Football League Championship game would be the 12–2 Oakland Raiders, the defending AFL champs who’d won the West by slaughtering Kansas City in a divisional tiebreaker the previous week, scoring 41 points against the league’s best defense.

            The swaggering, sinister Raiders never hesitated to sneak in cheap or late shots, and their target was always the same: Namath. Cut out the heart and kill the team.

            They’d shoved his face in the mud until he choked, fractured his cheekbone, and punched him in the balls when the refs weren’t looking .º.º. and they’d beaten New York six times in seven tries during Namath’s career. Just that year, in the infamous “Heidi” game, NBC had cut away from an apparent Jets 32–29 victory with 65 seconds left, only to have the Raiders storm back for a 43–32 triumph.

            The Raiders came in with the AFL’s second-best defense and the best offense, a seemingly deadly combination. But the Jets were fourth in defense (Johnny Sample and Jim Hudson were both among the AFL leaders in interceptions) and second in offense. (George Sauer finished second with 68 catches; Don Maynard finished second in yards and averaged 22.7 per catch; Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer were fourth in rushing among backfield tandems; and Jim Turner was the most prolific scorer among kickers.) Plus, in Namath, they had an all-time great in his prime and ready to lead.

            December 29, 1968, was a bad day to play football’s roughest, toughest team. “Nature was in the meanest of moods,” wrote Mark Kriegel in Namath: A Biography: temperatures were near freezing, and winds were gusting up to 50 miles an hour. The field was a wreck, churned up but with no give.

            Before the first play, Dave Herman made a request. Coach Weeb Ewbank had benched mistake-prone rookie Sam Walton, shifting Herman from guard to right tackle. Nervous about playing out of position, Herman asked Namath to run the first play through him as a show of confidence. On that play, Herman “hit big Ike Lassiter harder than I had ever hit anyone in my life.” Lassiter was so infuriated that he focused on destroying Herman instead of doing his job. Namath, meanwhile, coolly engineered a four-play, 56-yard drive, finishing with a 14-yard touchdown pass to Maynard.

            The Jets built their lead to 10–0 on a Turner field goal, but Fred Biletnikoff burned Sample for a 29-yard touchdown. Namath’s bruised coccyx and sore right thumb got banged up again, and his left ring finger got dislocated. Then Oakland’s Ben Davidson drove a knee into the quarterback’s head, giving him a concussion; after a Lassiter body slam on the half’s penultimate play, Namath was so disoriented that he didn’t know where he was at halftime. The Jets’ 13–10 lead seemed extremely tenuous.

            In the third, Oakland quarterback Daryle Lamonica completed passes of 37 and 40 yards for 1st-and-goal from the Jets’ 6. But Hudson led the Jets off the ropes, making three straight tackles, and Oakland had to settle for a game-tying field goal. A revived Namath helmed a 14-play drive to recapture the lead, 20–13. The Super Bowl seemed within reach. Biletnikoff beat Sample again for 57 yards to New York’s 11 to open the fourth, but the Jets forced Oakland to settle for a field goal. The Jets led by four, and the clock was ticking.

            Then came one of those plays that always seemed to spin these Jets-Raiders wars in Oakland’s favor. Namath compounded a risky decision with a bad pass that George Atkinson intercepted at New York’s 37 and ran back to the Jets’ 5. The Raiders scored on the next play for a 23–20 advantage. The crowd was stunned, silent. The Raiders had done it again.º.º.º. They must just have been better or tougher or something than the Jets.

            But Namath was too great to be the goat, and he responded with his finest Shea Stadium moment.

            On first down at his own 32, Namath saw Oakland’s secondary playing prevent defense to avoid getting beat deep. By firing a quick 10-yard out pattern to Sauer, Namath reminded Oakland that he had time for a sustained drive. Now he had them set up perfectly. He cautioned his team to be ready for an audible. At the line, he saw what he’d hoped for: both Raider cornerbacks, afraid to let Namath peck away with short passes, had crept up to the line to guard their man. Keeping both running backs blocking for extra protection, Namath sent Maynard, Sauer, and Pete Lammons deep. Then he faded nearly 10 yards and shifted toward the left hash mark, buying time, before lofting the ball deep and wide, across to the right sideline, where Maynard sprinted past Atkinson.

            Maynard looked over his left shoulder, to where the pass should have been, but the wind carried it past, over his right. Maynard swirled around and made a spectacular catch before being shoved out of bounds at Oakland’s 6.

            Namath then drew inspiration from the oddest of places. According to Kriegel’s bio, the quarterback recalled a short dumpy guy named Petey the Cabdriver who drank regularly at Namath’s bar, Bachelors III, and always complained that the Jets were too risk-averse down near the goal, always running, never passing. So Namath called a play-action pass. Bill Mathis, Sauer, and Lammons were all covered, but perfect protection gave Namath time to find Maynard, the fourth option, free in the end zone. Sidearm, Namath zipped the ball hard past three defenders. It was low, but Maynard snared it. In three plays, Namath took the team 68 yards, right back into the lead, 27–23.

            Namath had struck so quickly, however, that Oakland had 7:47 to try for another comeback. They reached New York’s 26 before stalling out, then got down to the 12 on their final drive. Lamonica called for a short pass in the flat to Charley Smith, a play the Raiders had practiced all week and saved for this sort of opportunity. But the Jet defense, led by Verlon Biggs, pressured Lamonica, and the pass went awry; Jet Ralph Baker saw that Smith was behind Lamonica, meaning the play was considered a lateral, and scooped up the loose ball.

            The Jets had finished Oakland off with the kind of dramatic and unpredictable play that the Raiders were accustomed to pulling off. Still, even though the Jets were now AFL champions, what had seemed unthinkable was no longer enough: in January they’d face the NFL’s Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl. The Colts, the media, and wise men like Jimmy the Greek would write them off, but the Jets now knew how good they really were. Namath, in fact, was ready to guarantee victory.