Vince had come looking for advice-and he listened to what we had to tell him. What he'd been doing so far hadn't worked. In training camp, Vince had put in the option offense he had used at Army that was so popular at the college level in the fifties. But Charlie obviously was not an option quarterback, nor, at the age of thirty-four, was he going to become one. He was not about to start making a living attempting to do what three other teammates in his huddle were paid to do, and could do infinitely better.
Vince hadn't yet learned how quick, strong, and mean NFL pros were, compared with the kinds of players he'd coached in college. In college, a lot of the linemen filled up space. Up here, they were big, often huge, and really quick. A steady diet of running the ball would have ended Charlie's career, and quickly. And Charlie wasn't buying any of it.
But Vince ran Charlie's option in no-contact practice, over and over again. Charlie went along with Vince's calls-without so much as a word of protest. Then, in our first exhibition game, Charlie just called our old plays. On the sideline, Vince would say to Charlie, 'Okay, let's go to that option, all right?' Charlie would give an affirmative grunt-and never once call it.
Vince wasn't afraid of Charlie, and he knew that the team had universal respect for him: a war veteran, with a lot of cool, and a superb arm. We knew we could win with him. But Vince didn't know how to treat him. To his credit, a lot of coaches would have put themselves in a deep hole. But Vince came to see us in our dorm room to work things out.
The problem with that, though, was that he was on bed check.
He came in and sat down in our room. We were in two-a-day work outs, and Charlie and I had planned to slip out for a couple of cold ones. That was the routine, no matter where we were training Salem, Oregon; Winooski, Vermont; Bear Mountain, New York first the meetings, then practice, then waiting for the after-curfew check, then going out for a few beers. That last step in the routine mattered as much to us as all of the rest of it, giving us a reason to get through the days. In every town a cheap bar would beckon, a place with some privacy, a jukebox, a couple of those locals hanging out. A few after-curfew beers gave us some downtime when we could just be guys again. Those late nights in those dark, jukeboxed bars provided many a highlight to those endless summers.
That night, in our dorm room, Vince knew perfectly well that we were about to slip out. But he wanted our advice, and as usual, he didn't beat around the bush: "What am I doing wrong?" he asked. Right away we recognized that this was a different kind of coach, a pretty big coach: This was a guy who could sit on your bed and ask you to tell him where he was messing up. This was a guy who would become arguably the greatest coach in history-and this was just one reason he would become great.
Charlie had very little to say, as usual. That night, I did the talking. The first thing I told this guy from West Point was that Charlie would be crazy to call that play-he'd get himself killed.
"It worked for you at Army," I said, "but it won't work here. In this league, the difference is that the defensive tackles and ends can put an end to a career with one shot-and a lot of them are trying to do just that."
But my main message didn't concern strategy or personnel. I spoke of the way he was treating my roommate. Vince had ridden all of us, in his way, throughout that camp, and that was okay with the rest of us, as far as I could tell. But Charlie wasn't happy with it-and I told Vince so. "You don't yell at guys like Charlie," I told him. "This is a guy who watched guys die in the South Pacific.
Treating him like some junior at West Point is ridiculous, and it's stupid. Give up the shouting. Give up the stomping. Give Charlie the offense he can run."
We lost the option from the playbook that night. Vince took a long intelligent look at the talent around him-and its most serious limitation: a real lack of speed. He began to assemble the offense based on what we could realistically do. I could throw the ball, and I could catch the ball, as well as run the ball, so he built the offense around me. He put in plays that Kyle could live with-not a lot of slant-ins where he'd get creamed, but square-outs and timing patterns. In other words, he devised a simple, pound-it-out offense that would set up the occasional big play.
The big plays, Vince would come to understand, would be Charlie's department.
The quiet leadership, that would be Charlie's department too.
By the time Vince Lombardi left New York, he had as much respect for Charlie Conerly as the rest of us did. I think Vince Lombardi learned a lot about leadership from Charlie. It comes by example, not noise.
Charlie's service in the war earned incredible respect on our team. He served as a corporal in the Third Marine Division as it worked its way up through the South Pacific toward Japan-all the way to Iwo Jima: just another leatherneck. He seldom talked about the war to me, unless he'd had a few beers, and even then, he wouldn't say much. The old marine axiom about that war says that the only people who talked about it afterward were the men who didn't have a rough war. Charlie epitomized that saying. Charlie had a rough one. His survival relied on luck-and a matter of a few inches.
"It was tough fighting, for Charlie," Perian Conerly tells me now. "One time, on Guam, on patrol, he was a lead man. He had a rifle shot out of his hands. I still have the rifle clip with the bullet hole in it. I also have the telegram that the Navy Department sent home to tell his parents about the incident. On the outside it said 'News Material,' so they wouldn't think it was a death notice."
Andy Robustelli, our other quiet leader, on defense, had been in the thick of the fighting in the Pacific too. Andy never talked about it either. He served as a 20-millimeter antiaircraft gunner and a water-tender on a destroyer escort-a very fragile little ship-off the coast of Okinawa. He'd be belowdecks, manning pumps in the fire room, when the general-quarters alarm would blare, and up he'd hustle to his station to shoot at Japanese dive-bombers.
When I asked him about his war experience over lunch at his restaurant in Stamford recently, Andy-graying; a little slower in gait; philosophical, as always, in conversation-just shrugged: "You don't think much about it-you just do it. We all did it."
In his own book, Once a Giant, Always . . . , Andy devotes exactly one paragraph to his war service.
As I researched this book, I discovered that, on the other side of the line, the Colts' own two true leaders, Marchetti and Donovan, had done their own tough time, Gino as a machine gunner with the Army in the Battle of the Bulge, and Artie as a marine-in the same battalion as Charlie.
"Yeah, I ended up on Okinawa," Artie says now, "but all I did was handle the ammunition. In twenty-three months in the Pacific, I never fired a gun. Conerly was in the same outfit, but I never knew it until years after [a battalion was a thousand marines, divided into companies]. We were playing in a golf tournament, and I said to him, 'Charlie, you're the oldest guy in the league. He says, 'I'm a month younger than you.' We trade stories-and it turned out we were in the same battalion in the Third Division."
Tom Landry flew B-17s. In fact, he flew thirty missions-five more than he had to. Charlie Winner, the Colts' assistant coach, was a POW.
In the younger generation, we had a lot of guys who'd served in every branch of the services in Korea, although most of them played football during their service time. Livingston and Heinrich played for a legendary team, with Ollie Matson, at Fort Ord. That team often scrimmaged against the pros- the 49ers and the Rams-and more than held its own.
Looking back now, through the shadows of so many wars, I think we lose sight of how much the Second World War was still part of our country that day of December 28, 1958-and part of the National Football League. The war had ended only thirteen years earlier. There was a visceral tie between the 1958 NFL and the postwar United States and its values. Average guys playing in a multiethnic league mirrored the makeup of the nation, where the philosophy of "team first" had roots, perhaps, in the foxhole ethic.
Five minutes. Let's be ready." That was the head coach, giving his halftime talk as if we were l
ittle kids in grade school, instead of professionals who'd been doing it for years. ("He had to be the last person ever to carry a pocket watch," Pat says now. "No matter what happened, on the field or off it, he'd go to the pocket watch.")
Most of my teammates didn't find Jim Lee as annoying as I did, just kind of laughable. But then, I felt I had a reason to dislike him. He'd singled me out in '57, embarrassing me in front of my team. And I never forgave him.
It was preseason, 1957. I'd just come off my MVP year, and we'd won the title. We were having a mediocre preseason, as we often did. I wasn't playing all that well, but I never saw much point in leaving it out on the field in August. So one day we were practicing at Fordham, and Jim Lee took off on me. After yelling at everyone else, he turned to me: "And then there's Mister Hollywood, Number Sixteen, the Most Valuable Player in the National Football League. Right now he is the worst player on this football team. He hunkers up when he's supposed to be running with the ball." . . . and on and on he went.
I didn't say anything. Sam swears now that he saw tears in my eyes. "I was so embarrassed for you. How in the hell could a football coach say this about Frank Gifford? That might have been the last time I spoke to him."
There was no reason for Jim Lee to speak those words. I'd already lived through the Hollywood thing with my teammates, and earned their respect by now. No one had given me grief about USC or California or movies for years. They'd seen me leave it all on the field, game after game.
After that, I never considered Jim Lee Howell to be my coach again.
In the long run, Howell's profile in NFL history is remarkably low. In his years in New York, he won a championship, and took us to another title game. That's a pretty fair record. But he suffered by comparison when put next to Landry and Lombardi, both of whom were able to immediately command respect without insisting we give it.
Jim Lee's way of trying to get us to take him seriously is epitomized by the way our backup lineman M. L. Brackett remembers Howell now: "He'd try and stand tall, throw his shoulders back, speak like some sort of senator. He went on to the Arkansas State Legislature later on, you know, and maybe that worked down there, in politics. But it didn't with us. He just wasn't very impressive."
When I asked the rest of my teammates about the man with the pants pulled up above his stomach, most of their answers made it sound as if I were asking for remembrances of a distant uncle of whom they hadn't thought in years.
"I think Jim Lee was a CEO, you know what I mean?" Al Barry says now. "He was head guy, and he said, 'You handle this, you handle that.' He never had a meeting. All I remember was him sticking his head into the locker room and saying, 'Five minutes, five minutes. Be ready.' What I remember about being coached on the Giants was pretty much just sitting next to Pat Summerall on the bench. Pat would analyze every play, tell me, 'Watch this guy do this, do that,' and that was how I was coached."
Cliff Livingston's memories of the man are limited to a booming voice saying nothing but "All right-settle down." Lindon Crow laughs about Howell's role as the travel agent: "He'd drill us, but not about football. 'Okay, what time does the bus leave? What time does the train leave?' And everybody had to repeat it." Harland Svare recalls Howell's chief responsibility as making sure the balls were pumped up.
On the other hand, Jim Lee's counterpart, right down the hallway, evoked enough memories and anecdotes for the Colts to fill their own book. One thing that no student of professional football history can ever dispute is that Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank must stand as one of the best coaches the game has ever seen, or ever will.
If one figure on the field that day-a field crowded with greats: future Hall of Famers, immortal coaches-has been slighted by history, it's Weeb Ewbank.
Weeb won three championships-'58, '59, and Super Bowl III in January 1969-and two of those games are universally considered to be the two most memorable games in league history. Or, as Weeb himself put it in an interview many years later, "I won a world championship every six and two-thirds years, and that's not a bad average." Not that he was doing the math or anything.
But Ewbank's name is seldom, if ever, mentioned alongside the names of Halas, Brown, Lombardi, Landry, and Shula. Unlike his peers, he wasn't imposing enough-physically, verbally. His strengths were more mental than emotional: "My crew-cut IBM machine," Carroll Rosenbloom once called him. His personality could be abrasive, to some; "Weeb was a weasel," Artie says now, with a laugh. "If he told you something-if he told you that black was white-you'd better believe him."
The true voice of reason on that team has nothing but praise for his coach; and when Raymond Berry talks, you have to listen: "See, you can ask me if Weeb belongs up there with the likes of the greats, even if he isn't widely known that way-with Lombardi, Landry, Shula. Me, I'd put it differently. I'd say, 'Maybe you have to get those other guys up there with Weeb.' Weeb Ewbank had the ability to bring in a system that was totally sound, and keep it simple. And he could recognize talent. You can't always find someone who can bring both of those things together."
To my way of thinking, recognizing talent-seeing a man's strengths and weaknesses, and playing to them, as Lombardi learned to-makes a good coach into a great coach. Weeb took a quarterback off a Pittsburgh sandlot; a lot of people took credit for that pickup, but Lenny Moore, among others, swears that it was Weeb's tutelage that turned a castoff into a king. Then again, Weeb always knew quarterbacks; he'd been one himself, at Miami of Ohio.
Weeb's draft picks built the heart of the team, from Parker and Sandusky on the offensive line to Moore and Dupre in the backfield. And he took Big Daddy off the waiver wire.
"Believe it, man-Weeb had an ability to see our capabilities; he really could recognize talent," Moore told me. "He could see down the road. I'll give you a great example: We had Fuzzy Thurston that year. The season after this game, we went into the meeting room at training camp, and Fuzzy's seat is empty. Weeb said, 'Fellas, I got bad news for you. Fuzzy isn't here. Someday, Fuzzy is going to be an all-pro. But we couldn't wait on him.' Turned out to be true."
(Maybe Lombardi had something to do with that, because Fuzzy became a key figure and leader on Green Bay's offensive line during the Packers' championship years.)
"And Jim Parker? Listen to this; here's where Weeb comes in again. He had films of Rosey Brown. He sat Parker down, and said, 'Watch Rosey Brown. Rosey Brown is the best offensive tackle in the game. Parker, you learn from Rosey Brown.'
"And Johnny? George Shaw was our quarterback in '56. Weeb picked him in the first round in '55, and he was good. George was a running and passing quarterback, and there were very few of those guys in the league. George Shaw was the man. Nobody paid Johnny any attention. Weeb took a shot. It paid off. But you know what Weeb told us about that? 'I could see down the road,' he said.
'I knew it would take time. I knew it all along.' "
Even Artie gives Weeb credit for his football savvy. "I thought he was a terrific coach, I really did-when he wasn't screaming or yelling. Whatever success I had was due to him. He made me into a defensive tackle. He taught me how to use my peripheral vision: 'Get a yard and a half off the line,' he said to me, 'and you can see everything right and left.' It's true. Then he taught me to use my instincts-that most of the time, the way the blocking went, the blocking pressure would almost always take you right to the ball.
He had a saying: 'Take a stance, deliver a blow, find the ball, and get in the flow.' That was his theory in a nutshell, and it worked."
(Once again, I disagree with Artie: that's a good way to get your ass knocked off with trap-blocking.)
"He didn't have much of a sense of humor, though," Artie continues. "We used to kid around, older guys, we had a lot of fun we'd throw cold water on each other. So Lenny Lyles is a number-one draft pick, he's in a whirlpool, he never played much . . .
they threw a bucket of water on him, he jumped out, broke his ankle on a radiator. So Weeb sends our defensive line coach, John Sandusky, to talk to us
. He says, 'Weeb says it's a thousand-dollar fine if he catches anyone throwing water.' So Gino says to Gaucho (Carl Taseff ), 'When Alan the Horse comes around the corner, you throw the water on him. I'll nod to you to let you know he's coming.' Gaucho says, 'Okay.' Here comes Weeb out of his office, all dressed up for his TV show. Gino nods. Gaucho throws. Soon as he sees what he's done, he tries to put the water back in the bucket.
Too late. Two weeks later, Gaucho was gone, to Philadelphia. No sense of humor."
Well, Weeb had to have a sense of humor to put up with Artie.
Anytime anyone new came to camp, Weeb had a rule: If you can't beat Artie in the 40, you're gone-just keep running, out of the stadium. As far as Artie can recall, he never beat anyone.
Weeb's motivational style did not earn every Colt's admiration; he could use the needle, and not gently. "Weeb and I didn't get along too well," Jack Call, the backup Colt running back, remembers. "I'm going to tell you something: This team won in spite of, and not because of, Weeb. He was the boss, but that's about it.
I looked up to Unitas more than to Weeb."
Artie wasn't the only Colt who didn't trust Ewbank. "Ray Berry gave me some good advice," safety Ray Brown told me. "He said, 'Ray, never let Weeb get you to comment upon a player, because if he cuts him, and someone criticizes him, he'll blame it on you.' He'd tell you things, but never follow through on them. That was part of his image with the guys."
Ewbank seems to have been a football version of a Billy Martin-type guy. He could take a losing team to the top, but never keep it there for long. "I think his problem was that he was too easy," Gino told me. "In the long run a team would die on him. We did.
Same thing with the Jets. He took a team up-and then the team dies. Basically, he was a guy who, the longer you stay with him, the longer you take advantage of him. Everyone could pretty much do what they wanted."
On that day, they'd been doing exactly what Weeb wanted.
And they seemed to want it more than we did. That's not coaching; it's desire, on the part of the players.
The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever Page 16
