The Sinking of the Titanic: The Vikings Repeat A Historic Cycle That Began in Belfast and Ended in the Ocean Depths
The Minnesota Vikings made sure that the New York Jets, formerly the New York Titans, relived the roots established by their homonymic tribute to arrogance in Belfast 80 years ago.
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, there is a commemoration of hubris, memorializing and celebrating the culmination of the city's 150-year history as one of the world's greatest shipyards. There, you can visit the Titanic Museum, showcasing the building and subsequent destruction of an unsinkable monument to Titans – the progenitors to the Greek Gods of yore.
That facade was pierced by an iceberg flowing in from the north, putting to rest any notion of the Titanic's infallibility.
Three hundred miles away from the Titanic’s birthplace, the New York Titans – now the New York Jets – saw their quarterback falter in the same way, victims of icy warriors from the North.
Amidst the glamor of London, a luxury destination, the Jets engineered an almost-comeback more threatening than anything the Packers or 49ers could in their nominal one-score wins and fell short on the heels of a Stephon Gilmore interception — perhaps the most decorated defensive back in that backfield, but the last starter among them to get a pick.
That 23-17 victory for the Vikings represents more in the way of good fortune for them and bad fortune for their opponents than anything they’ve manufactured so far.
The Titanic and the Titans were fated never to meet despite their shared destination in New York City. The Chelsea Piers are a mere seven miles away from the Polo Grounds, where the Titans set up shop.
So, with the Titanic unable to make it to the New York Titans, the Titans instead made their way to the United Kingdom, where the historic ship had been built and set sail. Their closest distance, 75 miles from Tottenham to Southampton – the final English port for the majestic ship – is much closer.
A long-dead rivalry between the Vikings and Titans – owners Max Winter and Harry Wismer – would re-emerge in London. Like with the rivalry between a famous White Star Liner and a wayward block of ice, the Titans would fall.
A Shared History Of Impact and Failure
The Titans and the Titanic share something else. Both, in their astounding failures, provided the blueprint of success in their industries.
Wismer pioneered the revenue-sharing arrangement that now characterizes the NFL, boosted by Wismer's unique idea to negotiate for broadcasting rights at the league level, rather than the franchise level.
The primary job for a modern-day NFL commissioner is to lead negotiations between various broadcast networks, but Wismer did so as an owner and leader of their television committee. Securing the first leaguewide broadcast deal in the United States, ABC paid the AFL just over $2 million a year to broadcast the AFL's games.
Not only that, the Titans were part of the wide-open AFL, with more committed to the passing game. Some of this was by the design of the game – a narrower ball was used to ease passing – but much of it was in how the league prioritized finding talent; they would sign quarterbacks and receivers before they went after cornerbacks and defensive linemen.
It might boggle the mind to think that a league whose passing leaders would struggle to crack 250 yards would be the more wide-open league, but it at least follows that one of the most prolific quarterbacks in history couldn’t best that mark either, having hit 244 yards against the Vikings.
That AFL’s emphasis on passing would become part of the DNA of the NFL, and the Titans’ own Joe Namath (playing for the then-named Jets) set the stage for the AFL-NFL merger after winning Super Bowl III against the Baltimore Colts.
The Titans were a rudderless AFL franchise, desperately in need of a quarterback. In the hopes of attracting one, they signed legendary Slingin’ Sammy Baugh to be their coach. All AFL teams went star-hunting, but owner Harry Wismer was particularly enamored with adding star power.
This hasn’t changed. The Jets, in their 64-year history, have had half a franchise quarterback, at best. Namath was a truly elite player whose injury history derailed his legacy and gave his career the kind of numbers that make one wonder what he’s doing in the Hall of Fame.
Before injuries, Namath was an incredible quarterback, gifted in the ability to create big downfield passing plays without taking sacks. From 1966 to 1969 his role in taking on more of the offense than any other quarterback – he led both leagues in attempts by significant margins – meant he placed second among passers in total adjusted net yards over average.
He led all of those passers in interceptions, but that’s in part because he threw the ball more than anyone else. His interception rate was average for passers of his time but his deep-ball ability was astounding. An EPA metric from that time would have looked upon him far more favorably given that most of his picks happened downfield. That’s one reason he led both leagues in fourth-quarter comebacks (10) over that span.
This lone bright spot, bolstered by a love of the spotlight in the spirit of Wismer himself, was not enough to sustain the Jets’ relevance into the future, especially as injuries demolished his career.
After playing in all 56 of his games from 1966 to 1969, he would only play in half the games on his schedule over the next four years. His lone healthy year saw him lead the (now merged) league in adjusted net yards per attempt, net yards per attempt, adjusted yards per attempt and raw yards per attempt.
At one point, courted by another startup football league, Namath asked for 15 percent of that new league’s television revenue. They refused, and subsequently folded. Instead, Namath earned the largest contract in the history of football that year, signing for $900,000 with the Jets before getting cut by them two years later.
The Jets owe Aaron Rodgers $112,500,000 over the lifetime of his contract, a three-year deal extended with seven false years to keep the accounting cleaner. Barring another renegotiation, they will be liable for $63 million against the cap for Rodgers without him on the roster.
The genesis of the idea was the Jets’ strong defensive performance and strong skill corps, spearheaded by rookie-contract phenoms Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson. The Jets were the perfect package for a new quarterback, just waiting for the final piece to assemble their juggernaut. Their Titan.
They are 9-13 in the Rodgers era thus far.
The 40-year-old quarterback is near the end of his career and may retire at the end of that contract. Without a turnaround, the Jets may end up having gotten more out of Namath than they will get out of Rodgers – their most recent attempt at finding a quarterback. These contracts are not too big to fail.
Like with their successes, the failures of the Titans would put their mark on NFL history. The AFL’s experience with Wismer is also one reason we have the NFL “funding rule,” which requires that NFL teams put any guaranteed money in an independent escrow account – the NFL conducts an audit of every guaranteed contract on March 31 and any payments towards guaranteed money not already paid out must be placed in escrow up to 75 percent of the total contract value.
The Titans would often see their players race each other to the bank on payday to get access to their salary before the bank account dried up – something we saw repeated when the USFL popped onto the scene in the 1980s.
The Titanic, too, advanced shipbuilding with its successes and its failures. Its state-of-the-art communications system was replicated for decades after its construction as were the watertight doors used to separate the compartments in the bulkheads. Its primary innovation, however, was the use of coordinated steam turbines to power the ship.
Steam turbines were relatively new to shipbuilding over more common reciprocating engines and coordinating them across three propellers was an even greater feat. The turbines were more efficient, powerful and reliable.
Of course, the Titanic is more remembered for how its failures established new safety guidance. No longer were ships allowed to roster fewer lifeboat spaces than the number of passengers they had aboard and ships could not leave their communications unmanned, as was the case for the nearest liner near the sinking Titanic, the California.
Ships were also required to make sure their compartments were watertight in all four dimensions, not just the bottom and the sides. Water sloshed in over the top of the impressive compartment doors, nullifying this otherwise innovative feature.
The overwhelming responsibility of owning the Titans sunk Wismer. The Titans were among the league leaders in one key category: expenses. Behind only the Chargers in net financial losses, the Titans finished their first year spending $450,000 more than they had.
While losses were expected in the AFL’s first year, being a league leader in the category while being the least financially solvent of the owners was a big problem. Wismer came into the league having made his fortune as a broadcaster, covering Notre Dame, Michigan State and the Detroit Lions. He became the sports director for ABC, a comfortable living but not quite the same as the oil barons in Texas who would own the Dallas Texans and Houston Oilers.
He had partial ownership of the Lions through his father-in-law and genuine partial ownership of Washington’s football team, now the Commanders. At the time, and throughout most of pro football’s history, ownership was not itself a path to profitability. Wismer’s reliance on it put him behind other owners.
Wismer was, in the strictest definition of the term, a millionaire – an impressive feat in the 1960s. But other owners, like Lamar Hunt, were a different class of millionaire with over a hundred times the estimated net worth of Wismer. On top of that, Hunt’s father was a billionaire. As the book Crash of Titans by William J. Ryczek details:
An oft-repeated and probably apocryphal story had someone exclaiming to H.L. Hunt before the season started, “Your boy will lose a million dollars on his football team this year!” “Well,” the senior Hunt drawled, “I reckon at that rate he’ll be broke in another hundred and fifty years.”
In 1962, Wismer was forced by Pete Rozelle to sell his stake in Washington, which earned him $350,000 (and therefore valued the team at $1.4 million). That cash wasn’t enough, however. Halfway through the year, he attempted to sell a 49 percent stake in the Titans. There were no buyers, so he secured a $200,000 loan that forfeited a portion of New York’s share of ABC revenues.
That money ran out halfway through the season. The league took over the financial operations of the team to make sure the players remained solvent. They also resolved to pay out the bad check fees for the bounced checks ($1.50).
Like the NFL, the AFL eventually forced Wismer to sell the team. The team with the strongest market in the league and the bona fide star as a head coach was not unsinkable.
Losing both on the field and in the balance sheet, Wismer fired Sammy Baugh for Clyde Turner ahead of the 1962 season. The problem was that Baugh had a guaranteed contract that would only stop paying out in 1962 if Baugh quit.
Wismer attempted to engineer around this by refusing to tell Baugh where training camp was being held that year, allowing him to void the contract after Baugh didn’t show up. Baugh had earned the loyalty of his players, however, and they let him know where it would be.
Turner, feeling awkward about this arrangement, didn’t do anything to prevent Baugh from showing up to do little else but make an appearance. This pressure was enough for Wismer to eventually pay out. But it put more stress on his finances.
Today’s New York Jets don’t have financial problems, owned now by billionaire heirs to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. But they nevertheless do not seem particularly enamored with the thought of signing pass rusher Haason Reddick to a new contract, an understanding that was evidently communicated when they traded for him from the Philadelphia Eagles. Instead of “holding in” and showing up to camp like Baugh did 62 years ago, Reddick held out.
They could have used his pass rush against the Vikings, if only to punctuate an already pressure-laden day. When under pressure, Darnold could only manage 0.6 yards per attempt — a number that becomes negative when including sacks and sack yardage. But the pressures weren’t as numerous as they needed to be.
Pressured on about 35 percent of his snaps, Darnold thrived in a clean pocket — when kept clean, he generated 7.8 yards per attempt and completed 59.1 percent of his passes. Not great, but better than the 12.5 percent he managed when under duress.
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