According to The (Newark) Star-Ledger, the quarterback of that Super Bowl winning team, none other than Jets icon Joe "Willie" Namath, sees the same confidence in Rex Ryan’s bunch as he saw in the team he led to one of the biggest upsets in football history.
"The team has bought into it," Namath told The Star-Ledger about Ryan calling his team the Super Bowl favorites. "Whether [Ryan] said it in jest or whether he was sincere, we all listen and enjoy. Some people want to see him fall flat, but the bottom line is winning and losing, and right now he has those guys in the [AFC] championship game."
It may no longer be a Super Bowl matchup, but the underdog alert is up when the Jets face the Colts, the same team Namath and Co. beat in that historic tilt in January of 1969. This weekend’s AFC title game may be in Lucas Oil Stadium instead of the Orange Bowl and the opponent may now be from Indianapolis, not Baltimore, but Namath realizes it’s still Colts-Jets, and the stakes are almost as high as they can get.
"Hell yeah, it's interesting," Namath told The Star-Ledger. "It's a whole lot of history with the Jets and Colts. [Former Jets coach] Weeb Ewbank was their coach before coming to the Jets and we beat the Colts.”
The history doesn’t end there. More recently, back in 2002, the Jets knocked the Colts from the playoffs with a convincing 41-0 win. That game and Namath’s victory in Super Bowl III are the only previous postseason meetings between the two sides. And like 1969, the Jets may again be big underdogs on Sunday, but as Namath will tell you, that doesn’t mean much.
The scripts are remarkably similar. The Colts are heavy favorites (the line has gotten as high as eight points for those of you reading from near Las Vegas, where, you know, gambling is legal) and feature an all-time great at quarterback. The Jets are the brash team that arguably shouldn’t even be there, featuring a young upstart leader at the helm, a guy whose stats are sometimes overhyped because of his charisma.
Peyton Manning may already be at Johnny Unitas’ level, but the Jets are still searching for the next Namath. Every quarterback wannabe to come through the Meadowlands wearing green short of Bubby Brister and Quincy Carter has been called the “next Broadway Joe.” Ken O’Brien heard it. Chad Pennington heard it. And you better believe that’s all Mark Sanchez has heard since he was drafted.
Ryan and Sanchez are hoping to follow a long line of New York heroes who have called their shots. Babe Ruth did it. Namath did it. Even Mark Messier famously guaranteed victory in the 1994 Eastern Conference finals down 3-2 in the series to the Devils. The Rangers erased a two-goal deficit as Messier scored a hat trick in the third period, and they eventually went on the win the series and defeat the Canucks in the finals, ending the Rangers’ 54-year Stanley Cup drought.
It may have only been 40 years, but Namath understands what a win like that would mean to the Gang Green diehards this weekend.
“It really is a wonderful feeling. It’s been a long time since the Jets and their fans have been on this stage. It’s a joy seeing so much happiness and enjoyment among Jets fans,” Namath told The Star-Ledger. “I just want to thank Rex and those players for making a lot of us so very happy to this point, and we’re not going to give up on them no matter what happens."
