The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank

Hollywood would’ve rewritten the entire script– the 1973 New York Jets would’ve been a formidable playoff team on their way to claiming their second Super Bowl title. Management would’ve fought tooth and nail for the success of their team. Back ups would rise to the occasion and play inspired football, pushing beyond their physical limitations and overcoming lack of playing experience to salvage unexpected injuries to respected veterans like Joe Namath. Players that had been with the franchise for over 10 years would end their career in the same green and white uniform they so proudly wore since their rookie year. Their head coach, Weeb Ewbank, would have been carried off on his player’s shoulders, raising his arms to the home crowd at Shea Stadium, acknowledging the support they showed him during his farewell season as the New York Jets Head Coach. 

But as the late Paul Zimmerman notes, “Pro football isn’t played in the story books.” Indeed, Zimmerman’s book, The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank, emphasizes the fact that rarely does imagination match reality.

Instead of success and applause, Weeb ended his career with disappointment and tears on his way to a 4-10 record. With each passing Sunday, Weeb’s efforts to put a winning football team on the field were continuously diminished through self inflicting coaching decisions, injuries to marquee players and little to no support from Jets management. By the end of the season, fans would be hanging banners that read “Impeach Eubank” and “TD’s weren’t cheap. Weeb is!” Everybody was at a loss for words trying to decipher how a man had fallen from grace the way he did. To this day, he’s the only coach to win an NFL title, an AFL title and a Super Bowl in which he coached the 1968 Jets team to the greatest upset win in Super Bowl history. Now, he was ending his coaching career with a loss to the Buffalo Bills on a day when O.J Simpson became the first running back to rush for over 2,000 yards in a single season. 

Upon hearing an announcement from Jets President Phil Iselin right before training camp that Weeb Eubank would retire following the 1973 season, Zimmerman, who at the time was a Jets beat writer for the New York Post, set out to document the highs and lows of the team’s season as told through the eyes of Ewbank, as well as many players, such as halfbacks Emerson Boozer and John Riggins.

Born to the son of a grocery store owner in Richmond Indiana, Weeb’s multi-sport college career ended with him getting his start as a high school coach after the Great Depression. Joining the Navy at the onset of World War II, Ewbank became an assistant coach to Paul Brown on the Great Lakes Naval Station football club, and would proceed to become an assistant with him again for the Cleveland Browns in the All America Football Conference. In 1954, he accepted the position as the Baltimore Colts head coach, and would go on to win two NFL titles, including the 1958 Championship win over the New York Giants that would be labeled “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” Differences between ownership and Weeb would lead to his departure in 1963 as he then became the general manager and head coach of the New York Jets. By 1968, Weeb led the Jets to their first and only Super Bowl victory over his previous Baltimore Colts employer.

Despite learning under Brown, Weeb didn’t adopt the same rigid and totalitarian approach that Brown, and later Lombardi and Shula, would employ. He rarely registered fines to his players for detrimental conduct, nor enforced strict curfews to players in the nights leading up to game day. Instead of mandating dress codes and locker room conduct policies, Weeb had no objections to players expressing individuality and personality, allowing John Riggins to have a Mohawk, or listening to left tackle Bob Svihus preach the wonders of transcendental meditation. He was even exemplary toward the newspapermen, allowing them access to the dressing room right up until kickoff. In essence, he felt that for his players to play like men, they shouldn’t be treated like boys.

Though he gave players freedom and respect, however, Weeb didn’t escape criticism.

Zimmerman notes that within professional football, Weeb had a reputation for being a stingy negotiator, claiming, “I’ve seen more people go to pot when they were overpaid than underpaid.” He refused to work with agents, preferring to negotiate face to face with a player, most of who were “overmatched” as Zimmerman states. Weeb would never let the players get the upper hand, and was even accused at times of being dishonest, as described by Emerson Boozer and Winston Hill when they spent hours over dinner coming to an agreement for contract extensions that would be sent the next morning, only to be delayed because Weeb said he only agreed to those terms because it was late at night and he was tired, and would refuse to accept those terms. 

John Riggins, the premiere halfback for the Jets, sat out all of training camp until he was offered a $150,000 extension, to which Weeb would eventually agree to $130,000 after a six month standoff. Furthermore, Weeb, as some players recall, had a habit of permitting bad behavior for talented players, most notably when Colts defensive back Johnny Sample was caught stealing from his teammates and Weeb didn’t hand down any punishment, much to the displeasure of Colt’s legends Gino Matchetti and Johnny Unitas.

Weeb’s unorthodox style certainly created polarizing opinions of him amongst fans and those inside professional football, and nothing would better encapsulates Ewbank’s reputation as a coach than the conversation Zimmerman had with Carrol Rosenbloom, former owner of the Baltimore Colts. 

“If I had to capsule Weeb as a coach,” Rosenbloom says, “I’d say you’d never find a better man for building a ball club. But after he builds it, you have to take another look.” Rosenbloom cites many examples of the philosophical differences that grew between him and Ewbank, most notably that Weeb had grown stale in his position because he felt he didn’t need to change his approach since he won a pair of titles. Rosenbloom would encourage Weeb to play the younger and healthier players over banged up veterans, but Ewbank disregarded this advice, preferring to rely on a select few veterans for the team’s success. Zimmerman recounts the times in the season when Weeb chose not to play young, talented players instead of aging veterans, such as benching Jim Nance for multiple games when he failed to pick up a blitz in week one. He also acknowledges his cheap approach to free agency and trades was a detriment to adding depth to the team, as shown when the Jets suffered greatly when Namanth went down for two months.

Rosenbloom also reflected on Weeb’s communication deficiencies, particularly only being open with his star players, going so far as relying on them to disseminate criticism to other players, leaving them asking “Why the hell doesn’t Weeb come directly to me? I’m not a schoolboy.” Again, Zimmerman immediately thinks of the times when players and members of the Jets coaching staff complained that Weeb would put up a wall between himself and those he felt he couldn’t trust. As a result, Weeb formed a reputation of creating a double standard with his star players, and being a man who refused to delegate authority to his assistant coaches, leaving them unclear of where they stood with Weeb.

After the 1973 season, Weeb’s reign as head coach would be no more, leaving behind a complex legacy to those he coached and hired. In this book, Zimmerman does a masterful job of reflecting on the successes of a coaches career, but also holds Weeb accountable to his shortcomings that cost him the chance to drive off into the sunset with nothing left behind. As well as Zimmerman paints the portrait of Weeb’s adversity and complicated personality, however, Zimmerman also digs to the root of a man who despite the criticism and the unwanted send off, would do it all over again for the love of football.

In the book’s final chapter, Zimmerman sits with Weeb and goes through his old scrapbook, full of old photographs, coaching manuals, and even a short story Weeb wrote in grammer school about a real life Purdue fullback. These all brought back memories of young boy obsessed with football that grew to be an accomplished coach. “I’d save anything connected to football,” Weeb said, “if I thought it would help in any way. I was a nut on everything connected with the game.”

Zimmerman, having witnessed a man end his career on an uninspiring note, left Weeb’s house seeing a man that regardless of his success and failure, regardless of his supporters and critics, for all of his strengths and weaknesses, was in the end a simple man that dedicated his life to the game of football.