10/23 — This is the 10th in a series of Radar entries on the 16 games of the Jets' 1968 Super Bowl III season:    

Sunday, Nov. 17, 1968    

Oakland Coliseum, Oakland, Calif. (53,318)

The Raiders tallied two touchdowns in a nine-second span in the game's final minute to turn back the Jets in a fiercely fought encounter before another capacity Oakland crowd. But this game became famous because NBC left the game after Jim Turner's field goal gave the Jets a 32-29 lead with 1:05 left to air the children's movie 'Heidi" as scheduled at 7 p.m. ET. Don Maynard caught 10 passes, including a 50-yarder from Joe Namath, in setting a club yardage record of 228 yards. Daryle Lamonica connected with TD passes to four receivers, the last to rookie RB Charlie Smith for the go-ahead score with 42 seconds left. (Rookie in CAPS below.)

Game Trivia

■ Maynard had his second 200-yard receiving game of the season. Of the franchise's five 200-yard games, Maynard had three of them, topped by this game's 228 yards.

■ Namath's 381 passing yards were his most on the year and he snapped his six-game, 27-quarter streak without a TD pass when he found Maynard early in the fourth period.

■ Ridlehuber, who picked up Earl Christy's fumbled kickoff at the Jets 2 and scored the clinching TD, was the Jets' 19th-round choice (168th overall) in the 1966 AFL draft.

Quotes Now

CB Randy Beverly: “We all thought the game was over. Then all of a sudden a couple things happen — a fumble, a punt return — and the next thing you know the game was over. We didn’t know anything about Heidi at the time, but we came home and everyone started asking, ‘What happened? What happened?’ ”

RB Emerson Boozer: “I didn’t hate the Raiders — I liked playing against them. They were physical. You knew the game was going to be very physical and you’ve got to be physical, you bring all you got. If not, they’re going to bring it to you. That was their style of play. Playing rough, tough and nasty if necessary is the kind of ball they played, so you’ve got to match them. If you don’t, you lose. And we matched them. We matched them out there, but we just had some unlucky breaks.”

C John Schmitt: "That was probably the lowest point in my whole career as far as a loss goes. We saw 40 guys going 40 different directions after that game. We didn’t even know if there was going to be a team coming back next week to camp because we stayed out on the coast to play San Diego, so we had a three-day layover.”

Quote Then

Unidentified NBC spokesman: “NBC made a mistake. It regrets it deeply.”