Hall of Famer Spotlight: Weeb Ewbank
HEAD COACH (1963-73)
GENERAL MANAGER
(1963-74) Weeb Ewbank is the only head coach in professional football history to build two teams from their inception into world champions and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on July 29, 1978, the 11th coach to be enshrined in Canton. Upon his retirement from coaching in 1973, Ewbank's 130 wins ranked him fifth on the all-time coaching wins list only behind other greats George Halas, Curly Lambeau, Steve Owen and Paul Brown. He is the only coach ever to win World Championships in both the NFL (Baltimore Colts 1958-59) and AFL (New York Jets 1968). Ewbank was on the sidelines for two of the most important games in NFL history, the sudden death victory in the 1958 championship and Super Bowl III, won by the Jets.
Ewbank was a college QB at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and was a teammate of fellow coaching legend Paul Brown. Brown gave him his first professional football job as an assistant coach of the Cleveland Browns from 1949-53. His first head coaching job came with the Colts, where he won championships in the fifth and sixth of his nine seasons in Baltimore. Ewbank joined the Jets in 1963 as head coach and general manager. The New Yorkers shocked the world by defeating Ewbank's former team, the Colts, 16-7 (the first victory for the AFL in the Super Bowl). Ewbank coached the Jets for 11 seasons through 1973 and stayed on as general manager for the 1974 season. He developed two of the greatest quarterbacks in league history, Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas, as well as other greats Don Maynard and Raymond Berry. NFL Hall of Fame coaches Bud Grant, Chuck Noll, Don Shula, and Chuck Knox came out of Weeb's influence.
