Say It's So, Joe

On the first pass after Snell's four runs, Namath went to Sauer. Don Shinnick, the linebacker, had dropped back deep in the area. He nearly intercepted the ball. "I was a little off balance and I had to make sure I knocked it down," Shinnick said. "I should have had it."

Namath hit Bill Mathis, in for Snell, on an outlet pass for six yards, then came back to Sauer in the cracks of the zone twice, once for 14 yards and again for 11. The Colts had not expected him to throw much to his running backs, figuring that he would have to keep them at home to protect him from Baltimore's pass rush. But now he hit Snell for 12 yards, down to the Baltimore nine.

From there, Namath calmly went back to the run and Snell carried twice, scoring the second time from four yards out over the vulnerable right side of the Colt line. Again he started inside, veered out and slashed across off a block by Tackle Hill.

"Snell is a great runner," Hill said after the game. "He doesn't ask for much room. The mediocre backs come back to the huddle and cry if they didn't get a hole big enough to back a truck through. I knew we could do it. We ran against the best teams in our league What's so special about the Colts?"

By now five minutes and 57 seconds had elapsed in the second quarter and the Colts began to come apart a bit. A player who preferred to be unidentified said, "We should have had points on the board with the way we moved the ball, and we were behind 7-0. We should have stuck to the game plan, but we began to panic. That's what they were supposed to do, but they played with great poise. We didn't."

Late in the second period, strong Safety Jim Hudson made a good play on a Colt maneuver that might have turned the game around. The Colts had the ball on the New York 41 with 25 seconds to go, and Morrall tried a bit of razzle-dazzle that should have resulted in a touchdown.

He handed the ball to Tom Matte on a sweep to the right—a play on which Matte had been effective—and Matte, in mid-sweep, stopped and threw a long lateral back across the field to Morrall. Far downfield in the corner near the goal line, Jimmy Orr was jumping up and down and waving his arms frantically, completely overlooked by the Jet defense. But Morrall did not see him and threw over the middle deep toward Fullback Jerry Hill. Hudson nipped in ahead of Hill and intercepted the ball.

"I was the primary receiver," Orr said later. "Earl said he just didn't see me. I was open from here to Tampa."

Bill Curry, the Colt center who was in shock for an hour after the game, said, "I'm just a lineman but I looked up and saw Jimmy open. I don't know what happened."

On the first play of the second half, the Jets recovered a Matte fumble and Jim Turner kicked a field goal to make it 10-0. When the Jets stopped Baltimore again, Namath took his team back down the field, where Turner kicked another field goal.