Head Coach
"It was an incongruous setting, but there was Weeb Ewbank sitting at the head table at last winter's New York Baseball Writers' dinner. Comedian Phil Foster got up to make a few cracks, and spotting Ewbank on the dais, got off his best shot of the night when he said, 'Last year nobody knew you. You wouldn't even have been invited here.' It broke up the entire room, and nobody laughed harder than Ewbank did. He could afford to laugh. There he was, the head coach of the Super Bowl winning New York Jets, the first AFL team to beat the NFL for the professional football championship.
He is also the first coach to have won a championship in both the NFL and AFL (Weeb did it with the Colts back in 1958 and '59). But funnyman Foster had a point. A year earlier, Weeb had been an object of some sympathy and humor. He'd never really been able to handle his star quarterback, Joe Namath, and there were rumors that he might turn over the coaching reins to someone else. But he survived the rumors and a front office shakeup to enjoy what was his most rewarding season ever as a coach.
His coaching dossier goes back to his alma mater, Miami of Ohio, where he spent 14 years as an assistant. He later served under Paul Brown at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, then, after a few more college stints, rejoined Brown when he started the Cleveland Browns in the old All-America Conference. Weeb stayed on through the transitional years into the NFL, then in 1954 got his first head coaching job in the pros when he was asked to take over the foundering Baltimore Colts. He thought those years were his most rewarding ones.
But then, how could he anticipate Joe Namath coming into his life?"
-Jack Zanger, Pro Football 1969
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