EWBANK, Wilbur Charles ("Weeb")

(b. 6 May 1907 in Richmond, Indiana; d. 18 November 1998 in Oxford, Ohio), football coach noted for coaching three championship teams, two in the National Football League (NFL) and one in the American Football League (AFL), and for coaching teams in two of the most memorable football games in history.

Ewbank was born to a family of grocers in Richmond, Indiana. By 1916, at age nine, he was doing what many sons of grocers did in that era: driving a horse-drawn wagon to deliver groceries. That year he managed to find a ride to Dayton, Ohio, to watch Jim Thorpe and the Canton Bulldogs football team. He eventually attended the Oliver P. Morton High School, where he excelled in sports. There, he met his future wife, Lucy, and married her; they remained married for the rest of his life.

Ewbank played for the football and baseball teams of his college, Miami University of Ohio in Oxford. He became the captain of the baseball team and was a quarterback for the football team, backing up Paul Brown, who would later give Ewbank his chance to coach professional football.

After graduating from college in 1928, Ewbank took a coaching job at Van Wert High School in Ohio, earning $2,000 per year. In 1930 he returned to Oxford to coach McGuffey High School. Oxford became his family's permanent home. His McGuffey teams won seventy-one games and lost twenty-one during his thirteen-year tenure. In 1936, in the middle of a winning streak that lasted a total of twenty-one games, his team was both undefeated and unscored upon.

In 1943 Ewbank joined the U.S. Navy and was stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, thirty miles northeast of Chicago in Great Lakes, Illinois, where his old friend Brown was coaching the base's football team. Ewbank became an assistant coach for Brown. In 1946, after leaving the navy, he joined the coaching staff of the Brown University football team and became the coach of the school's basketball team. In 1947 he went to St. Louis's Washington University, where he was head football coach for two years, winning fourteen games and losing four.

Meanwhile, Brown had become head coach of the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). He hired his friend Ewbank to coach the kickers and the linemen. Ewbank emphasized protecting the passer—the sort of protection he as a quarterback would have liked to have had. Cleveland won the All-America conference title in 1949. Then, in 1950, the Browns and other All-America teams were absorbed into the NFL. The first game of the season was a matchup between the Browns and the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles, in which the Eagles were favored to defeat the Browns by at least three touchdowns. However, the Browns won, establishing the validity of the former All-America teams.

Ewbank coached for the Browns through 1953. In 1954 he took the head coaching job for the Baltimore Colts. At that time the Colts were a terrible team. Ewbank created a system of offense that kept the basics simple, making it easy to learn. Hall of Fame lineman Jim Parker remembered that Ewbank made pass blocking "a science."

The team needed a quarterback who could pass well, and in 1955 Ewbank found one in Johnny Unitas. Unitas, who had tried out for the Pittsburgh Steelers and had been cut from that team's roster, was playing semiprofessional football when he was brought to Ewbank's attention by a letter from someone who had seen him play. Ewbank gave Unitas a tryout and liked his toughness. He signed Unitas to the Colts and then redesigned his offense to emphasize Unitas's strengths: his sharp arm movements when passing, his quick movements from side to side, and his intelligence. It was typical of Ewbank to bring out in his players what others had given up on; Unitas became the most celebrated quarterback of his time.

In 1958 the Colts and the New York Giants played for the NFL championship. The hard-fought game was nationally telecast, and it electrified its audience. It is often called "The Greatest Game in History" because it marked the emergence of professional football as a major television sport. The Colts won the game and captured the NFL championship again in 1959.

Ewbank was fired by the Colts in 1962, as team owner Carroll Rosenbloom was impatient with the team's 7–7 won-lost record of that year. In 1963 Ewbank became the head coach and general manager of a dismal team that had just escaped bankruptcy, the New York Jets of the AFL. He did for the Jets what he had done for the Colts, finding players for them that others had given up on, such as Johnny Sample, a defensive back cut by the Colts in 1966 who would become the captain of the defense for the Jets.

By 1967 the Jets were becoming a respectable team. The team's owner shelled out $400,000 to sign brash, difficult quarterback Joe Namath, and Ewbank designed an offense that emphasized Namath's fluid motion and quick passing release. In 1969 the Jets met the Colts in Super Bowl III. The Colts were expected to demolish the Jets, but Ewbank had designed a plan that took advantage of weaknesses in the Colts' defensive line, and his team executed the plan almost to perfection. This was the second of Ewbank's two most memorable games, because the Jets' victory ushered in the merger of the rival leagues by establishing that AFL teams could play on a par with the best the NFL had.

In 1973 Ewbank retired from coaching, and in 1974 he retired as general manager for the Jets. In 1978 he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He never lost interest in football or in his former players and staff. He died at his home in Oxford at age ninety-one and is buried in Oxford Cemetery. Hundreds of people attended his funeral. He had three children, eight grandchildren, and seventeen great-grandchildren, but many of his former players said that he and his wife had been father and mother to them as well.

Ewbank stood five feet, seven inches tall and weighed 180 pounds while he was with the Baltimore Colts. His walk was usually described as a waddle. During games he seemed sometimes frantic on the sidelines and sometimes not there at all. His career professional football record as a head coach for regular season games was 130 wins and 129 losses, with seven ties, for a .502 winning percentage. Despite these unremarkable statistics, he was one of football's greatest coaches.

Goal to Go: The Greatest Football Games I Have Coached (1972), by Ewbank and Neil Roiter, offers a firsthand look at how Ewbank coached his teams. Paul Zimmerman, The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank (1974), offers an intimate behind-the-scenes look at Ewbank. Larry Fox, Broadway Joe and His Super Jets (1969), offers a history of the New York Jets franchise and how it was transformed from bankruptcy into a championship team. The Game That Changed Pro Football (1989), by Stephen Hanks, focuses on the Jets' Super Bowl victory.

Kirk H. Beetz