Word: namath
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...season's opener against the underdog Buffalo Bills, a team that almost always plays its best against New York, Namath ran a carefully modulated game, passing only 14 times as he set up his running attack. Joe Willie did manage one touchdown strike to Halfback Emerson Boozer as the Jets won, 41-24. Then came the Baltimore Colts -now rivals of the Jets in the Eastern Division of the N.F.L.'s American Conference-who had beaten the Jets four times since the dramatic Super Bowl confrontation. Playing for the first time in Baltimore's cavernous Memorial Stadium...
...following weekend in Houston, Joe let down slightly, and his teammates sagged considerably as the overconfident Jets were defeated by the fired-up Oilers, 26-20. Even so, Namath completed 18 of 39 passes, two of them going for touchdowns, and picked up an impressive 301 yds. in the air. That brought the Jets face guard to face guard with their toughest divisional foe, the Miami Dolphins, who after three weeks of the season had survived as the N.F.L.'s only undefeated team...
...lose, Namath generates more high-voltage excitement than any other player in the game. Indeed he is the sort of thrill producer that the N.F.L. badly needs these days. On the surface (whether it is Mother Nature's or Sudo Turf) the game still appears to be prospering at the brisk pace it set in the 1960s. Baseball may be the national pastime, but pro football has become the national obsession. It is now, according to N.F.L. Commissioner Alvin ("Pete") Rozelle, a $130 million-a-year business. There are 26 teams in the league's two conferences...
Reading Weaknesses. A more important factor than the hashmark change is the slow but discernible evolution of offensive strategy in an increasingly complex defensive environment. As Namath puts it: "Because of the development of the defenses, we've had to compensate and develop even more. When a guy runs out for a pass, he's not just running out for a pass; he reads what the coverage is, and I read what the coverage is, and we try to connect. When I go back to the huddle, I don't know what the pass is going...
That is precisely what Namath did against Baltimore, a game that prospective quarterbacks should have watched with the same solemn intensity that surgical residents devote to watching a kidney transplant. With deadly skill, Namath dissected one of the two or three best defensive units in pro football. At one point in the game, for instance, Running Back John Riggins told Namath in the huddle that the Colts' towering (6 ft. 7 in.) left-side linebacker, Ted Hendricks, was slacking off a bit on his pass coverage. Joe said nothing, threw one incomplete pass, then connected for short yardage...