Tag: Sid Gillman

1963: Transitional Season In The AFL

1963 was a year of transition for the AFL. Before the season even began there were team makeovers, name changes, and an unexpected relocation. There were name worthy personnel changes and noticeable power shifts. And the season ended with an unanswered challenge which could have potentially featured the first ever Super Bowl. In 1963:

The Texans became the Chiefs.

The Titans became the Jets.

The Raiders became the Raiders. (The redundancy will be explained)

And the Chargers became the Champs.

When the 1962 AFL Champion Dallas Texans departed from Dallas a mere few months after they had defeated the two time defending AFL champion Houston Oilers on December 23, 1962 in that season’s AFL Championship Game, the trend was set for the variety of changes that the league was to experience throughout the 1963 season. By abandoning the city of Dallas to the Cowboys, Big D from that time forward became an NFL town. But the departing organization was welcomed by a city that was enthusiastic for a professional football franchise, and so began the era of the Kansas City Chiefs. The relocation of the defending AFL Champions was but one of many changes to come within the league.

Two teams experienced makeovers intended to distance each respective organization from their early years of ineptness both on the field and at the highest level of team management. The Titans of New York; aka the New York Titans, initially enjoyed moderate success on the field of play, posting a  7-7 record in each of the league’s first two seasons of play in 1960 and again in 1961. But in 1962, as their record slipped to 5-9, the Titans’ lack of gridiron success was further surpassed by the financial woes of the ownership. Struggling to even cover payroll, responsibility for the team was assumed by the league itself before the completion of the 1962 season. When a new ownership took over after that fiasco, the primary owner Sonny Werblin changed the name of the team and the color of the uniforms. And so beginning in 1963 the Titans of New York became the Kelly green clad New York Jets. Although the new look did not net immediate results on the field, the hiring of NFL Champion Weeb Ewbank as the new Head Coach laid the groundwork for the historic success that the revamped AFL New York franchise would experience in the years to come.

The origin of the Oakland Raiders was a haphazard affair through no fault of their own. The Oakland franchise had replaced the Minneapolis organization which sold out to the NFL shortly after the initial AFL Draft, and so the Raiders originated as a group of players who were still available after the league Draft secured the best talent that had been available in the Autumn of 1959. The effects of their humble beginnings bottomed out when they were 1-13 in 1962. But in early 1963, the Raiders hired a young Chargers Assistant, Al Davis to be their new Head Coach. Davis immediately changed the atmosphere of the Raiders organization, and the positive results were instant. In their new silver and black clad uniforms, and with the addition of Titans receiver Art Powell, the remade Oakland Raiders utilized Sid Gillman’s vertical game that Davis had learned while on the Chargers coaching staff. Subsequently, the revamped Raiders immediately became one of the most lethal and productive Offenses in the AFL, and actually finished second in the West, with a record of 10-4.  The entire attitude of the team was recreated in the image of their new brash Head Coach, who was recognized as the Coach of the Year due to the team’s turnaround. In essence, the Oakland Raiders “commitment to excellence” and “just win baby” attitude originated in 1963, the year the Raiders as they have been known ever since initially came to be.

In 1963, there was a notable power shift within the AFL. Whereas all three of the league champions to date had been from Texas, the 1963 AFL Championship Game was the first ever without a representative of the Lone Star State. The Texans had relocated to Kansas City, and finished third in the West to the revamped Oakland Raiders and the three time West Champion San Diego Chargers. Meanwhile the aging Houston Oilers relinquished their three peat East Title as they likewise descended to a third place finish. In fact, the two best teams of 1963 were the Chargers and the Raiders, as the power within the league shifted from the Lone Star State to the West Coast.

The 1963 AFL Championship Game pitted the West Division Champion San Diego Chargers against the  Boston Patriots, who won the East Title in spite of posting their worst record since 1960. The Patriots were only 7-6-1 for the season, but they did boast an aggressive and stingy defense that specialized in brutalizing opponents with Red Dog blitzes. The game turned out to be a mismatch as Gillman’s game plan to confuse the blitzing Boston Defense with pre snap backfield in motion maneuvers was executed flawlessly and to perfection. From the outset, the Chargers seemingly scored at will. Keith Lincoln’s 329 all purpose yards performance is the most ever accumulated in a regulation professional football game. The versatile Lincoln in fact had over 100 yards receiving to complement his 206 yards rushing. In addition, Chargers tail back Paul Lowe gained 94 yards on the ground, including a 58 yard touchdown run in the first quarter. The Sid Gillman game plan to stretch the field and utilize every available space in order to advance the football was realized in its most effective manner that day as the Chargers crushed the Patriots by the score of 51-10 and claimed the AFL Title.

But for the innovative and competitive Gillman, the claim to the AFL Title was only a step to the ultimate quest. For the day after his Chargers had conquered the Patriots, Gillman sent a telegram to Pete Rozelle, challenging the NFL Commissioner to authorize a game between the NFL Champion Chicago Bears and his AFL Champion San Diego Chargers. In essence, Gillman was suggesting an AFL-NFL Championship Game before the fact. With minimal explanation, Rozelle declined the challenge. Not to be outdone, the irrepressible Gillman had the AFL championship ring of each member of the Chargers team inscribed “1963 AFL and World Champions.” Gillman went on to explain “If anyone wants to dispute that claim, just let them play us.”

1963 was indeed a transitional season for the AFL, with notable implications that directly affected the duration of the history of the league itself. The decision to relocate the AFL’s charter team, the Dallas Texans, to Kansas City may very well have salvaged the very existence of the franchise itself. The Chiefs would subsequently represent the AFL in two Super Bowls, including a victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the last game ever played by an AFL team. Likewise the purchase of the New York Titans by Sonny Werblin probably salvaged the existence of the renamed Jets franchise, and the subsequent hiring of Head Coach Weeb Ewbank paved the way for their historic victory over the NFL’s Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III after the 1968 season. The hiring of Head Coach Al Davis by the Oakland Raiders not only led to instant respectability for the AFL’s Bay Area team, but also to his selection as  AFL Commissioner in 1966, which indirectly resulted in the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. And Sid Gillman’s unanswered challenge to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to play a postseason inter league Championship Game put the NFL on notice that the AFL would no longer accept the role of inferior league. 

Ironically enough, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” was recorded in 1963, and then released a week after Sid Gillman’s unanswered challenge to the NFL to put up or shut up. For the AFL, 1963 was a transitional season, and in the world of professional football, the times were indeed a-Changin’.

Long live the memory of the AFL

AFL History: The Sid Gillman Offensive Game Plan

The Sid Gillman Offensive game plan was basic and straightforward. Utilize every inch of the field from sideline to sideline to advance the football from the line of scrimmage to the end zone. Advancing the ball across the goal line being the ultimate objective of the sport of football; Gillman maintained that the quickest and most effective means to that end was by the properly executed forward pass. He further realized that the most effective way to execute the passing game was to stretch the defense and force them to cover every inch of ground available. And so Gillman split receivers as wide as possible on each side of the field; utilized backs as downfield receivers, confused the defense by putting players in motion prior to the snap, divided the field into zones for the purpose of running precise routes, and attacked the opposition vertically with dump passes which were designed for “catch and run” advancement, along with deep passes downfield from sideline to sideline. This is not to imply that he did not recognize the value of the running game as a necessary element of the strategy of advancing the football, but Gillman’s theory was that the passing game creates space for the running game rather than the other way around. 

For today’s football fan, these strategies are fundamental at most every level of the game. The modern game in fact validates Gillman’s theory of football, for the sport itself is now played in accord with Gillman’s game plan. But such was not always the case.

In 1959, Sid Gillman was seriously pondering leaving the profession of football after a disappointing conclusion of his five year tenure as the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams. Granted,Gillman had led the Rams to the NFL Championship Game in his first season of 1955, but his final two seasons in particular had been dismal disappointments. When he left the Rams, Gillman is believed to have seriously considered entering the business world after more than 20 years as an assistant and head coach on the collegiate and professional levels. The implications of the state of professional football after 1959 without the influence of Sid Gillman are simply unimaginable. For beginning in 1960, Sid Gillman stamped the image of his game plan indelibly on the sport, and fortunately football has never been the same since. 

In January, 1960 Sid Gillman accepted an offer to become the head coach for the AFL’s Los Angeles Chargers. Both the AFL and the Chargers themselves were teams without a history, which allowed the innovator Gillman to create a team in his image. The result was an entertaining and effective style of football that functioned in accord with Gillman’s game plan. 

The 1960’s was a time for change. The entire decade was an era of social change, rebellion, rejection and adaptation of conventional ideology. There may have been no time more naturally prepared for the changes in the sport of football that were entailed in Gillman’s game plan. The fact is that the sport of professional football came into its own during the era of the American Football League, and no person was more responsible for the adaptations to its style of play from that decade onward than Sid Gillman himself. 

Gillman had already established himself as an innovator in the realm of coaching. He was the first coach to study film as a means to better understand the sport and in preparation for a gridiron contest. His background in the movie theater business inspired Gillman to utilize film in his efforts to be a more informed and prepared football coach. The utility of studying film was but a single area of the game of football wherein he proved to be an effective innovator. There are several routine norms in the world of coaching that originated from the mind of Sid Gillman. He was the first to maintain a taxi squad; that is a reserve of players who could be called into action in case of injury or lack of adequate performance by active roster players. Gillman was the first to hire a strength coach. He was even the first to seriously suggest an AFL-NFL Championship Game. But there is no doubt that Gillman’s primary contribution was the aerial assault game plan that he successfully implemented in full force during the 1960’s as the Head Coach and General Manager of the AFL Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers. 

Al Davis, who was an assistant under Gillman in the early ‘60s, once compared the experience of being on the mastermind’s coaching staff to being in a laboratory studying the science of football. When Davis took over as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders in 1963, he implemented Gillman’s game plan there and turned the worst team in the AFL into an exciting competitive team in his first season. Utilizing what he termed “the vertical game” to strike deep and early in an effort to gain an immediate advantage, Davis was simply implementing the Gillman game plan. In explaining the vertical game, he emphasized that a team had to have the players with the speed and skills to make plays downfield in order to effectively execute the vertical game. Davis was speaking from personal experience, for while he was a Chargers  assistant he himself had recruited and signed the player whose speed and skills would so effectively execute the Gillman game plan that by the end of the decade the game of football was never the same again.

When Al Davis signed Arkansas Razorback star Lance Alworth to a professional contract with the San Diego Chargers in 1962, the speedy running back was best known for his effective kick return skills. However; in what would have to be considered one of the most historic personnel decisions of all time, Gillman decided to move Alworth out of the backfield in order to add him to the Chargers receiving corps. The result was history in the making. Lance Alworth was perhaps the greatest receiver in all professional football throughout the decade of the 1960’s. In fact, he is arguably one of the greatest receivers of all time. Alworth gained over 1,000 yards annually for seven consecutive seasons (1963-1969). Keep in mind that those were 14 game schedules. He had an unprecedented five career 200 reception yard games. On the receiving end of passes from Tobin Rote early on, and from John Hadl for the majority of his illustrious career, Lance Alworth’s accomplishments legitimized the Gillman game plan. And in the process ushered in the modern era of offensive football strategy.

Although the Gillman game plan emphasized the forward pass as the primary means for advancement of the football; consistent to his theory that the passing game clears space for the running game, Chargers backs Paul Lowe, Keith Lincoln, and Dickey Post boasted a ground attack that produced rushing titles, 1,000 yard seasons, and even 200 yard games. Lincoln’s 329 all purpose yards performance in the 1963 AFL Championship game, which is the most ever accumulated in a regulation professional football game, showcased the benefits of clearing space for the running game by the utility of the passing game. Lincoln in fact had over 100 yards receiving to complement his 206 yards rushing. The Gillman game plan was realized in its most effective manner as the Chargers claimed the AFL Title over the Patriots that afternoon.

The Gillman game plan was utilized and successfully executed by both the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders throughout the ‘60s. The Al Davis vertical game that was demonstrated by bombs and outs from Raiders quarterbacks Flores and Lamonica to receivers Powell and Biletnikoff, was admittedly a variant of the Gillman game plan. In fact the Houston Oilers aerial assault style of play that led to the first two AFL Titles, as well as which produced George Blanda’s season and single game records for TD passes, utilized the field for vertical advancement in accord with the theory of Gillman’s game plan. As did Joe Namath a few years later when the New York Jets young star became the first ever 4,000 yard passer. Again, a feat accomplished in a 14 game schedule.

In essence, the aerial attack style of the AFL revolutionized the game of football and at the same time legitimized the fundamentals of the Gillman game plan. Over the course of time the sport itself has adopted the principle that the field should be used from sideline to sideline in order to advance the ball from the line of scrimmage to the end zone, and that the forward pass is the quickest and most effective means to achieve that goal. The traditionally rushing game oriented NFL initially seemed skeptical to adopt an offensive strategy based upon opening up the running game with the passing attack, yet in time even NFL Super Bowl head coaches Tom Landry and Dick Vermeil hired the aging Gillman as a consultant for their Offensive coaching staff. The value of the passing attack as a means to open up the field for the running game and for the vertical advancement of the ball is now routine and regarded as rudimentary at all levels of modern football. In essence, the sport of football now follows the once radical concepts of the Sid Gillman Offensive game plan.

Long the memory of Sid Gillman, the father of the modern passing game.

Long live the memory of the AFL.