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Joe Walton, who died On Sunday, at age 85, he presided over what I think of as “The Era of Jets That Never Happened.”
He led the team from 1983 to 1989. There were moments when they looked like the best team in professional football. And the fans shouted, “Joe Must Go!” There was stillness when he shouted.
In some ways, I believe his career was a cautionary tale of sports, an arc of the American dream.
He was from Beaver Falls, Pa. – yes, the same town as Joe Namath. And at the University of Pittsburgh, he was cast as a receiver-tight end, a position he played after turning pro.
Walton wasn’t very big, but he worked very hard. And he was smart, not only did he know the game. He joined the Jets in 1981 as the offensive coordinator for Coach Walt Michaels. When the team won Super Bowl III as an 18-point underdog at the end of the 1968 season, it was in a constant struggle to get back to its heyday. Since then, the club has often struggled, with their low ratings growing as the media’s epicenter plays in New York City. No coach had ever left him with a winning career record.
Walton joined a team that broke a 4-12 record in 1980. But he built a complex offensive system, and quarterback Richard Todd, running back Freeman McNeil, and one of his wide receivers, Wesley Walker, gave a terrific performance. seasons.
The defense roared among his opponents, the defensive line was marked by the title of “New York Sack Exchange” – Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau, Marty Lyons, Abdul Salaam. The Jets went 10-5-1.
They gained national attention and Gastineau later became a media celebrity for his romance with actress Brigitte Nielsen. The team even went to the American Conference championship the following year, losing to the Miami Dolphins in a strike-shortened season.
However, Michaels was fired by management after quitting that game in Miami after going into a frenzied tirade on a charter flight home. The home team claimed the Dolphins deliberately kept the field wet during a rainstorm to prevent the Jets from holding up their lauded running game.
And so, Joe Walton took over as head coach in 1983. Their training was grueling and I noticed that the players were barely leaving the field as if they were playing a game. Just before the season started, I learned that one of its key players, corner player Jerry Holmes, would be making the jump to the newly formed United States Soccer League.
I had Walton’s house number. I had called him there several times. Back then, most reporters had the head coach’s house number. But it was late at night – actually midnight. When he heard my voice and my question, he said, “Jerry, I’m going to do two things – hang up and change my phone number in the morning.” The next day at Jets practice, I greeted Walton’s secretary, Elsie Cohen, and said, “What’s new?” I asked.
“Very strange,” he said. The first thing Joe told me this morning was to change his home phone number.
Years later, while I was writing a book about the (mostly) failures of the Jets, “Gang Green,” I called Walton and asked him about the call.
“When you become a coach,” he explained, “you have a lot of different pressures. There’s not only the pressure to win, but the pressure to hold a team together, and you have to deal with over 40 guys and a whole team.”
Walton’s first two years as Jets head coach produced a record 7-9, but later the club bounced back with a double-winning season. They had their ups and downs after that, and then they got into the 1989 campaign.
When teams lose, often the head coach is blamed for doing what he did while winning. In Walton’s case, it was his obsession with perfection for training spent when the actual game started that often dragged players down. Injuries piled on injuries.
Walton was sad when he spoke of 1989. “If it wasn’t for last year, I would still have a winning record.”
Last year was 1989 when the Jets went 4-12. It was over for Walton. But he eventually wound up at Robert Morris University outside of Pittsburgh where he formed the football programs and had a 20-year career. He was so popular there that he named the school stadium after him. Walton remains a legend there, not least because Robert Morris led the freshman team to a 7-1-1 record in his first year of football in 1994.
When I was in college, I talked to him about fame and winning. There are some cities where nothing less than a championship would do. He pondered this thought from his small-town college home.
“If you stay long enough and don’t win the Super Bowl, you’re fired,” he said. “And sometimes you get fired when you win the Super Bowl.”
At Robert Morris University, Joe had no worries. It could be him. I’ve often wondered how his tenure at the Jets would have ended if he had allowed himself that luxury.
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