Best there ever was

Unitas did things his way, and he did them with style

The last time I talked to John Unitas was in the spring of 1998. I was doing a piece on six quarterbacks who had changed the game. I wasn't exactly sure how he, personally, had changed the game, but I knew I wanted to sit down and talk football with him, because he was the greatest I'd ever seen.

A case has been made for Joe Montana as the best ever, and I think you could say that he was the best to play under the new liberalized passing rules that came about half a decade or so after Unitas retired. But Johnny U had to do things the hard way. His receivers could get mugged downfield, the defensive linemen could head-slap their way into the backfield, and when they homed in on a quarterback, they could hit him any way they wanted to. None of today's cellophane-wrapper protection from the officials.

And Unitas got hit plenty. He'd snarl and wipe the blood off his face and lead his team down the field on still another of his great scoring drives, operating in that hump-shouldered way of his, with the herky-jerky set-up and the deadly accuracy of his passes. Eighteen years of that.

"Sometimes I think he holds the ball an extra second," the Rams' great defensive tackle Merlin Olsen once said, "just to give you a shot at him, so he can show you he doesn't care."

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Nothing was ever handed to him. He flunked his first NFL go-round, with the Steelers and wound up playing for $3 a game under the old Bloomfield, Pa., Bridge.

"The oil-soaked Bloomfield Bridge," he said, smiling. "The Bloomfield Rams. I was in the infant stage. Still learning. Chuck Rogers, the guy who owned the team, was the quarterback. I had to battle him for the job. We had two fullbacks named Jacko Cray and Red Salender. One was a heavy-equipment driver; one was a bartender. We had a 5-6 middle linebacker named Fred Zangara, a Nick Buoniconti type. He could play. Lots of those guys could play."

Lots of mill workers and ex-mill workers on disability on those rosters.

"We led the league in disabled mill workers," said Clay Dalrymple, a tackle in the same semi-pro league. "Our starting offensive line -- five guys, seven arms."

Unitas' first contract for the Steelers in 1955 was for $5,000, "and a $10 bus ticket home," he said. The Colts signed him a year later for $7,000. In 1960, after he'd led Baltimore to two NFL championships, he was making $14,000 and he wanted more.

"You'd go in to talk contract with Don Kellett, the general manager," Unitas said. "You'd sit in this chair next to his desk, and it was real soft. You'd sink way down. Kellett would have glasses on the end of his nose, and he'd be looking down at you -- literally. 'Well, kid, waddya want? Remember, this is between you and me.'

"No one knew what anyone else was making. Everyone was scared. If you didn't sign, there was nowhere to go, no free agency, nowhere else you could play. Kellett would always tell me to sit down and I'd tell him, 'I'll stand here.' I wanted to look him in the eye.

"After we'd won the two championships, I asked him for $25,000. He said, 'Oh Jesus Christ, I can't even talk to you.' I said, 'Who am I supposed to talk to?' He said Carroll Rosenbloom, the owner.

"So he set up a meeting in a suite in the Belvedere Hotel. Rosenbloom kind of sang when he talked. He said, 'Don, he wants $25,000.' Kellett said, 'We don't pay that to guys who have been in the league for 10 years.'

"I said, 'Are you paying for time in the league or the ability to win championships?' Silence. I looked at Rosenbloom. He was laughing. He said, 'Don, I think he's got you.' So I got my $25,000, and from then on I became Rosenbloom's project."

And what a project. He had it all, almost from the beginning -- the fine, whiplike delivery, great toughness and courage, athletic ability and the knowledge and instincts that allowed him to read a defense quickly and -- here's what separated him from the modern quarterbacks -- set up that defense the way he wanted to, as he called his own game.

"That's the big change now," Unitas said. "They've taken the quarterback's personality out of the game. All the plays are called for him; everything's sent in. He has his own immediate information on the field, but it doesn't come into play. He can't really work a game."

We were sitting on the porch of his home in Baldwin, Md., on that spring day in 1998. Baldwin, horse country, pastureland. It was a pleasant, sunny afternoon, but you could see Unitas becoming more agitated as he got off on one of his favorite topics, the modern game.

"The rules have made it easier for quarterbacks now," he said. "Radios in the helmets ... I'd get very deaf all of a sudden. My radio would be permanently out of service. And the five-yard bump rule ... hell, you and I could get open. Liberalized pass-blocking rules ... a bunch of big fat guys just grabbing on. But the thing that's really gone is the way a quarterback used to be able to run the game.

"One of the greatest compliments I ever received came from Henry Jordan, the Packers' defensive tackle. We had a fourth-and-1, and I was checking with the ref to see where the ball was spotted, and I heard one of their defensive guys say to Henry, 'What's he gonna do?' And Henry said, 'Damned if I know. I've been playing against him for six years and I haven't figured his ass out yet.' That's what the kids who play quarterback are missing today."

Unitas had the good fortune to play for one of the game's great teachers of quarterback play, Weeb Ewbank, himself a QB in college. Weeb knew enough not to mess too much with this kid who came into the league with a great thirst for knowledge of the position, who watched more film than anyone else, who worked out a complete set of audibles with his go-to receiver, Raymond Berry, and became a complete master of the game's complexities -- to go with his obvious physical talent.

They were on the same page, Ewbank and Unitas, but they'd have their disagreements, too, and I reminded Unitas about a famous quote of his, one that stuck with me for many years: "You don't become a real quarterback until you can tell the coach to go to hell."

"Oh, sure, I remember that," Unitas said, laughing. "I loved playing for Weeb, but sometimes I'd just ignore what he told me, and sometimes I'd talk him out of something.

"It took Weeb a while to figure out that I was a stubborn kind of guy who wanted to run things. I never asked for much help from the coach in the press box. I just wanted him to let me know about the other team's blitz tendencies; otherwise, just leave me alone. At the beginning of my career, Weeb tried to limit where I could throw against certain people.

"He always had tremendous respect for "Night Train" Lane of the Rams. He'd tell me, 'Don't throw the ball in his area.' Well, hell, I wasn't going to give him the day off. So I'd throw at him, and maybe he'd pick one off, but we could do things against him, too.

"We played Pittsburgh in an exhibition game in Buffalo, and Weeb had deep respect for Jack Butler and told me to stay away from him. Lenny Moore said, 'Weeb, I can get open in the deep middle.' Weeb said, 'There's no way you'll get behind him.' So next time we're in the huddle, I tell Lenny, 'Damn, let's do it.' We hit the deep post for six points two times. It proved one point to me. I could do what I wanted to out there. After the game, Weeb came over to me and said, 'John, I'm never going to tell you what to do again.'

"Another time, we're playing a preseason game against the Redskins and Weeb knew they were going to cut this cornerback, and Weeb told me, 'Run a stair-step with Raymond, and if he can cover Raymond on that pattern, we'll pick the guy up.'

"The stair-step was something Raymond Berry and I had perfected between us, and when I had enough time, we'd get a lot of touchdowns out of it. It was a down and out, then back upfield and out again at 18 yards.

"So I called the play in the huddle, and Ray said, 'Absolutely not.' He hadn't worked on it in practice. He didn't have his footwork down. Raymond had great pride and he didn't want to be embarrassed. So I didn't call the play and Weeb signaled timeout, and he was out on the field chewing me out. I said, 'Coach, I called the play but Raymond's not gonna run it because he doesn't have his footwork down and he doesn't want to be embarrassed.'

"Weeb said, 'Oh, that's different,' and went back to the sideline. I said to myself, 'Now I know who's got the pull around here.'"

So we talked football all afternoon, and it was like hearing Picasso describing how he'd prime his canvas and plot his composition. Unitas talked about the two championships, including the sudden-death victory over the Giants, getting a little hot when he recalled that people described him as gambling at times in that one.

"A gambler," he said, snorting. "That's one thing I never was. Everything I did was carefully thought out. It was all based on tendencies, on all the work required in setting up a defense for a particular play. It wasn't just grab-ass out there."

I didn't want the afternoon to end, but when we finally said goodbye, the hand he extended was crippled and twisted.

"Carpal tunnel," he said. "When they operated on it, they cut a nerve. Now I can't rotate the thumb to pick up anything."

"How many more things like that?" my wife, Linda, asked him.

"In '68 I tore muscles in my arm," he said. "Two nerves were dead. Two ligaments reattached themselves to the elbow, not where they were supposed to. I lost feeling in my fingers, and I haven't completely regained it. Let's see, two knee transplants, and then there was the open-heart surgery, the triple bypass."

And that's what finally got him. The heart, that once had been the biggest and most spirited in the game.

 

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