Happy birthday Joe. And don't forget the #2 and #3 best Jets - Quincy Enunwawawa is 25 today. Bryce Thirdstring is 26.
Yeah. Even though my family were fans since the very beginning of the franchise, it was the acquisition of Namath who turned me into one. I hate it when so called Jet fans refuse to give him his due. 99% of such "fans" didn't live through the Namath era. If they had they'd understand what he meant for the team...and for the NFL itself.
He won the most important Super Bowl. Without Namath there is no Raiders, Patriots, Bills, Chiefs. He made the merger possible by giving the AFL credibility. That league was going broke.
One of a kind. I hear people say about Joe. Oh he doesn't have the stats. He was a prima donna. BS. He imitated NOBODY in football. Whatever he had was IT. It's the combination of factors that make for something that is more than the sum of it's parts. It is very rare that you can say that about any person and not just an athlete.
Would have loved to see what his career would have been like on healthy legs, even a couple of years but he came into the league already so bad that today players with that injury would never even be drafted and they didn't have the procedures to fix them they do today. For Bear Bryant to call him the greatest athlete he ever coached says a lot.
