Football History

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The Washington Commanders are a centerpiece of professional sports in the Nation's Capitol. Known previously as the Football Team, and the Redskins, the franchise has experienced both highs and lows in the League.

In this edition we explore the rise of the Redskins in the 1960s with historian Jim Johnson.

-Transcript of Washington Football in the 1960s with Jim Johnson


Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome back to the pig pen. We have another great episode where we're gonna talk about some great NFL history. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the East Coast teams and, in particular, the Washington Redskins. Now the last couple of years, they have been the Washington football team, but prior to 2020, they have been the Washington Redskins ever since 1939, I'm sorry, 1937. Today, our guest, Jim Johnson, hails from that area. Jim Johnson, welcome to the pig pen.

Jim Johnson
Thanks a lot for having me.

Darin Hayes
Jim, you have an interesting aspect. You have a nice website. If you could give us the address of your website so people can find it.

Jim Johnson
is Don'tWaveFootballHistory.com.

Darin Hayes
OK, and the Beltway history, from what I'm gathering, is basically the Baltimore and Washington franchises that you're covering the Colts, the Ravens, and the Redskins, Washington football teams. Is that correct? That's correct. OK, so that's that's some great football. There are, you know, a lot of championships between those three teams. That's for sure.

Jim Johnson
There really is. The history of that area is just fantastic. And, you know, we go all the way back. The Redskins won the championship in their first year in Washington at 37. They had this rookie quarterback named Sandy Ball, and that turned out fairly well. And they had, I think, a couple of other ones. And, of course, Joe Gibbs had three championships. And then you look over Baltimore, and the Colts had three championships. The Ravens had two. Just a rich history. But it's interesting because all three franchises also have had their downs. And, you know, obviously, the Washington franchise has been stuck in that cycle for some time. So I think what really makes it interesting is that you look at the ups and downs, what built the team up, and then what took them down. And usually, they get old. But then, you know, how quickly do they rebuild? So, there are some very interesting stories to tell just between those three franchises and 30 miles apart from each other.

Darin Hayes
OK. We're going to put the address of your website in the podcast show notes. Listeners, you can click a link there and go over and check out Jim's work on these three great teams. Now we're going to sort of focus in though on the Washington franchise, and sort of 1964, you pointed out before we started recording here, was sort of a pivotal year for the Redskins. And perhaps you could share with us why that was.

Jim Johnson
Well, yeah, they really had floundered miserably. Since they won the last championship, they played for the NFL championship in 1945 against the Cleveland brand, which I'll tell you how long it would have been, right? Right. And they had to the 50s and pretty much been horrible in the 60s didn't start out any better. Although they didn't get the new stadium in 1961, the state-of-the-art DC Stadium was one of the first circular, geek-cutter, multipurpose stands. But back then, it was an enormous upgrade from Griffith Stadium, where the old senators have played. That park was 57 years old. So they continued to flounder. But in 1964, they made two crucial trades. They picked up Sam Huff, the great New York Giants Hall of Fame linebacker. And he picked up Sonny Jurgensen from the Philadelphia Eagles straight up for Norm Snead. Norm Snead had been the Redskins number one draft pick; I think it was in 61, maybe 62. Exactly. And he struggled. But you know, what was around? Yeah. So both teams were just trying to take quarterbacks who had struggled with the other team, hoping that the new scenery would help them. Jurgensen wound up in the Hall of Fame, but Snead didn't. So you'd see who won that trade. Jurgensen had taken over in Philadelphia in 1961 from Norm Van Brocklin after they won the championship with them in 1960. And he had a good year in 61, and they finished second. But then he had a shoulder injury that lingered. The team fell apart; they kind of got old all at once. It happens so often. And 62, 63, and 64, they were struggling. And you know how well Philadelphia fans do with the team struggling, right? Sonny couldn't get out of there quick enough. He was really happy about the change of cigarette, which is interesting because, by contrast, Sam Huff is still bitter about getting traded by the Giants. And he never left the Washington area. He settled in; he's got business interests. He was a Redskins radio broadcaster for over 30 years. But he still says he will never forgive Ali Sherman, the Giants coach who traded him. Just because he was so settled in and still loves, I don't know if he does it anymore. But for many, many years, he loved to go back to New York, and he still traded him, as you know, one of the guys, one of the parts of the giant franchise. So it was interesting; they came in with such different perspectives, yet they both became people that the team was able to build around. And also, in 64, the Redskins drafted Charlie Taylor. Now, they drafted him as a running back. He was a running back in college at Arizona State. He is not so much a good pro running back, but they saw that he had the ability to run patterns, and they threw to him some sunny love run in front of running backs. And then in 66, when Otto Graham became the coach, he became a full-time flanger at that time, a wide receiver, as we know it now. And he wound up in the Hall of Fame. So, in 1964, they accumulated three Hall of Fame players who finished their careers there and had long careers. And over time, they were able to fill in players around them so that they became competitive, even though it still took them several years to make the playoffs.

Darin Hayes
OK, now that's interesting that Otto Graham, you know, of course, the great Cleveland Browns quarterback got into coaching and coached in Redskins. Do you feel that maybe having Otto Graham as your coach helped Jurgensen's career to some extent, too?

Jim Johnson
It's hard to tell. I think it probably did. And what also helped it in some ways was not having a running game. In 67, they had the two wide receivers for Charlie Taylor and Bobby Mitchell, who they got from Cleveland in 62. And, of course, Mitchell's in the Hall of Fame. So you've got those guys to throw to an extremely underrated tight end, as well as Jerry Smith. And in 67, Sonny threw the ball more frequently than any quarterback had in NFL history, and he threw for more yardage. I think he had about 3800 yards, which was an astronomic figure in the '60s. His receivers were numbers one, two, and four in the league in receptions. So that's when you know Sonny obviously had good years up to that point. But Graham is pretty well cutting loops with the air game. Now, part of it was as a choice; they had a running back, and they've got even 500 yards in a season. And some people throw the ball. He wasn't a man bomber by any stretch. He was a very surgical thrower and had one of the greatest arms in history. But you know, like a quarterback, Elway and Bradshaw are known for their bombs. Sonny is known for just throwing the ball on a dime in traffic. And he had guys, if it's some kind of catch it, then do something with balls with Bobby Mitchell, who was a converted running back. So he had guys that could; even though they were at the bottom of Mitch, he was a pretty good runner and was much better than Charlie Taylor. But once both of those guys got the ball out there and were in traffic, they could run with it. And a lot of receivers were not at that level, as those two guys were running after the catch or YAC, as they like to call it now, yards after right. They got a lot of them during their career. So yeah, great. I'm obviously let him go. And he was smart enough not to make them. Well, you call it now a mistake, maybe that auto grant or that Paul Brown made when he was coaching on a brand not letting him call the place. You know, I was smart enough not to try to call a place for Sonny Germans, and Sonny did a pretty good job on his own.

Darin Hayes
OK. Now, the 3,800 yards back in that era, they were only playing 12, 14 game seasons. And so you think that in comparison today, now we consider, Hey, 4,000 yards for a quarterback and a 16-game season now 17. That's a pretty good year for him. He's only 200 yards away from that, with fewer games. So that's pretty monumental to have 3,800 yards in a season.

Jim Johnson
Yeah, he had shattered the NFL record at that time. Now, at the same time, Joe Namath, I think it was the same season through before 1000 in the AFL. Now, the AFL had a much more wide-open game. So I would not equate that to Jurgis, and even though Jurgis and through less, you know, the NFL was very, very much a run-oriented league in the 60s and well into the 70s. So I think that was probably one of the greatest passing seasons anybody had, maybe until the marina came along in 84.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And while the AFL at least at first had the advantage, their ball was a little bit shaped more like our more modern ball where it had the points a little bit less girth. So it was more apt to the spiral and the passing game where the NFL at that time, when the AFL first came out, had a little bit bigger ball, you know, wasn't as pass or friendly. So that's even more of a feat for Jurgensen to do, you know, be pretty close to what NamUs numbers were in the same year. So you have to put your hats off to him for that. That's for sure.

Jim Johnson
And he got him competitive. You know, he had a belief, and he was the quarterback when they started selling out the games. Now, of course, for many, many years, it was a given that you couldn't buy a ticket at the game. They were all season tickets. But that didn't start until, I think, 1965. They weren't winners yet, but they were winning. And that's when their rivalry started with the Cowboys because the Cowboys got good, and the Redskins were able most days to play with them and sometimes beat them. And they had the early games they had in that rivalry, Sonny against Don Meredith. They had some incredible games, which were, again, kind of unusual, you know, both teams in the 30s. You didn't get a lot of those games back in the day. And just the fact that the Redskins matched up well with them and kind of punching above their weight were the early seeds of the, you know, the Cowboy Redskins rivalry. Let me throw in a story you may be aware of. Well, I ran across it recently, and that just tickled me. The first volley in the Redskins Cowboys rivalry was before the Cowboys even had a team. George Preston Marshall was the owner of the Redskins up until he passed away in 69, 68, 69. He had his; he was the first one to get the band at the games. And his wife wrote the lyrics to Hail to the Redskins. Well, apparently, they had a bitter divorce because he liked to play around. After the divorce, she still had the right to the song. So Clint Murchison, who was the original owner of the Cowboys, was lobbying for expansion at that time. This was 1958, 59. George Preston Marshall was a visionary in many areas, but he was dead set against expansion because he had just seen the pie getting cut into smaller slices. He was not envisioning the bigger pie. So, he and the vote at that time had to be unanimous. So you could not even get one no-run. So what happened was Murchison saw a weakness, and he approached a fairly bitter ex-wife and blocked the rights to Hail to the Redskins.

Darin Hayes
No kidding.

Jim Johnson
And he leveraged Marshall's vote because he said, I own a song, and you can't play it unless you change your mind about that expansion.

Darin Hayes
Wow. So, there is a little bit of blackmail to get big D in the NFL.

Jim Johnson
Black male, legal black male.

Darin Hayes
Right, right. That's kind of brilliant. We just had a nice discussion on that. We had an author of Ten Gallon Wars, which is the sort of story of Dallas football. You know, the second version of the Dallas Texans, which turned into Kansas City Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys, sort of coming up at the same time. You know, one in the NFL, one in the AFL. And that was an interesting book. I had not heard that story, though, about the Redskins and George Preston Marshall.

Jim Johnson
follows that one away. That is one of the classics.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, thank you for sharing. That's that's great. Now, if I got a question, OK, you said, like in the mid-60s, the Redskins got their stadium; I believe you called it the Washington, the D .C. Stadium or D .C. Stadium. Now, is that what evolved into RFK, or was that a different stadium?

Jim Johnson
same stadium. They re-named it shortly after Senator Kennedy was assassinated.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Jim Johnson
So, for the 1969 season, we became known as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium War, as everybody called it, an RFJ.

Darin Hayes
OK. So it's the same stadium that I sort of grew up watching Washington play in during those years of the seventies and early eighties, OK?

Jim Johnson
And it still stands, although nobody plays there now. The last team was a soccer team, and they got their own stadium probably about three, four years ago. So it's just a matter of, like, they're probably waiting for it to fall down because that stadium is now over 60 years old.

Darin Hayes
Wow. That's got to be a prime piece of real estate there, too. Do you think somebody would be trying to grab that?

Jim Johnson
It is federally owned. And that's what the leverage is; you may be familiar with the story of how George Preston Marshall was finally forced to integrate. He was the last team, the last major sports team to integrate, not just in the NFL. And he was just steadfast, hey, you know, we like, I'm not gonna say exactly what he said, but you know, they let black players play against it. So what does it matter? I'm not telling anybody they can't play or they can't come to the games. But then, when the Kennedy administration was in place in 61, which is when the stadium was getting ready to open, in order to sign the lease with the Department of Interior, which had, and I believe still has, domain over that land, he had to sign a nondiscrimination clause, which had just been made standard in federal contracts. And he got leveraged, threatened, whatever, that they would void his lease. If he was in breach of contract, then you would have nowhere to play. So he never admitted that's why he did that. But in 61, the draft was in December back then. He drafted his first black player and made the trade for Bobby Mitchell, who came over in 62. And because of that clause and what we were finally pushing over without that, who knows,

Darin Hayes
Hmm. Now, I guess the perception I always get of George Preston Marshall, even going back to the thirties when he started the Boston Braves and changed that name to the Redskins in Boston and moved the team. And in some stories like this, I always get he's somewhat of a villainous character. Is that the way he was perceived in the Beltway area?

Jim Johnson
Well, he was a complicated guy because he, by every count, was an absolute racist man. That doesn't mean that he didn't do good things for the league. You know, he was very much a promoter. He built a network basically, and this was all connected. They were the southernmost team in the NFL until the Atlanta Falcons came in in 1966. So before they had the national TV contracts, he had his own little syndicated network all the way through the south. So North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and all that was Redskin territory. OK, and at one point in the late 50s, he had even he didn't have the copyright law to do this, but he had even changed the words in Hail to the Redskins. Instead of fighting for old DC, he changed the fight for Dixie.

Darin Hayes
Really?

Jim Johnson
really was kind of pandering to his southern fans, his southern base, as it were. And I read that in his last will and testament, he had bequeathed money for charity but no charity that practiced integration.

Darin Hayes
Hoorah!

Jim Johnson
His family challenged it, and they got that clause thrown out in court. So, his money was widespread. If you could imagine it in D. C., that would have been very challenging.

Darin Hayes
Great, yeah, that's...

Jim Johnson
right? So they were able to get that thrown out of court, but that was like his last; his last will was still. So, so he was, he was kind of complicated because he was, he was very gregarious. There were people who really liked him, even though they knew he was a bigot because he was one of those guys. When you're around him, of course, you're a white guy; you're around him. It was hard not to like him. And he did, you know, a lot; he was very much an innovator in the marketing and entertainment aspect of football; he's way ahead of his time. But yeah, at the core, he really had some bitter issues. And they never went away; he wasn't going to fight.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's that's sad. That's sad, huh? Well, let's go. Let's go back into the team, I guess. So the 1960s, you know, Jurgensen Taylor and Mitchell, you know, are sort of the core players that are bringing this franchise along. You know, they're winning some games, having some good seasons, thirty-eight hundred yards by Jurgensen. How does that take them through the rest of that decade? How do they do?

Jim Johnson
Well, they were floating with 500, but they couldn't get over 500 because they didn't have a running game and their defense, even with Sam Huff, but Sam Huff was at the back end of his career; the defense wasn't very good either. So, you know, Sonny was put on a good show and kept it competitive, but, you know, we didn't have the help around it. So, Autogram only lasted three years as coach. And then, in '68, Sonny missed some time, injured. And of course, you know, the back of, he had a better backup gym than now, so he came in, but he wasn't such a jerk, without such a jerk as a butt kick. So that opened up the job. In 69, Edward Bennett Williams had taken over as president of the team as George Preston Marshall had been incapacitated, although Edward Bennett Williams only owned about five percent of the team. But he was voted in as president. Jack Kent Cook had not arrived on the scene. He was still out on the West Coast with the Lakers. So he had voted his shares, his voting rights to his shares, to Edward Bennett Williams. So Edward Bennett Williams made the coup by hiring Vince Lombardi. In the city of Washington in 1969, Vince Lombardi was the head football coach, and Ted Williams was the manager of the Washington Sanders.

Darin Hayes
How do you

Jim Johnson
10-year-old kid, seeing those guys on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which was like the number one honor we did sports at that time, right? Right. And within a few months of each other, like, oh my gosh, because I, you know, I hadn't been watching sports at all. But I had already learned that, you know, teams of Washington lost; that's what they did. And then, you know, the senators get a winning record. And then the Redskins got a winning record; they were seven, five, and two; I think it was in Lombardi's first year. And you could tell they still needed more players. But Lombardi took basically the same team they had in 68 and served a few guys here or there. But they were; they got outclassed three or four times. But in every game, they had a chance to win, and they pretty much won. And you just see that this, I don't want to say the sky was a limit. But everybody figured the next year, it was the same thing he did in Green Bay. In his first year in Green Bay, they were competitive. The next year, they played in the championship game, and the third year, they won the championship, and you know, you know, the rest of that story. So he was on the same projector when, of course, tragically, he died because he hadn't taken care of himself. You know, he was the way he is as much reason as any one person that you get a colonoscopy.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's true. He was only he was only like 58 years old, I believe when when he passed.

Jim Johnson
that. Yeah, he was still a very young man, but he had just he had felt horrible for months. And finally, people around him and nag him and nag him. Just imagine a nagging mental body, right? But eventually, he felt bad enough that he gave in. And by then, it was way too late. So they did what they couldn't with medicine, which was not the same 50 years ago as it is now. And they have the physical body way that Georgetown Medical Center, the cancer way, we did a lot of development, he did a lot of fundraising in his name. So, you know, even in passing, you know, he did good things. And he was always very community-oriented; of course, unfortunately, that was a memorial. But that set them back a year; they were six and eight the year after that, and they played several games; they could have won, but they didn't; it was not a huge difference, but it was enough for the difference.

Darin Hayes
Now, who took over after coach Lombardi had passed? Who took over the Redskins as the coach.

Jim Johnson
It was an unsuccessful tenure with the Steelers, as everybody else did back in those days. He was an assistant with Lombardi in Green Bay when he got the Steelers job. And Lombardi hired him in Washington; I think he was on the offensive line on it. The main thing he coached, I'm not sure when he coached in 69. So, with him passing away in August before the season started, it wasn't like they could do a search. So, he basically worked the interim for the year. Yeah. So it was just...

Darin Hayes
just a couple of weeks before the next season was starting.

Jim Johnson
I think he had coached a little bit in camp. He had had surgery, and he got out, and he coached a little bit, and he watched one of the exhibition games, but then they did a recheck, and they found more cancer, and he did not last very long after that. So yeah, it was, I think, late August before he passed away, and I see it started later back then, but still, it was less than a month before kickoff.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. How could any team recover from that? If you lose your leader like that. Wow.

Jim Johnson
And especially that region. And I know, in particular, Sonny Jurgensen got a lot of sympathy from him. So, he had a taste of success. Sonny Jurgensen was like, smelt. He was in great shape. And you know, it's not what he was known for in his career. He had a belly he carried around, but he was already literally whipped in the shape, and he loved it. He loved being coached by LaBarge. So yeah, it was like the air just got let out of the plant. And it's a credit to what he had built. They managed to win six games after and did not completely fall apart because they were a competitive team. But then, you know, less than two years after getting LaBarge, Edward Bennett, Edward Bennett Williams struck again and got George out. And he was able to, you know, be a wheeler-dealer. In 1971, they called his first team the Rams teams because he got, I think, somewhere between 10 to 12 players from the Rams team that he had just gotten fired from.

Darin Hayes
Hmph.

Jim Johnson
And he never met a draft choice he liked. So, he was always trading draft choices. In fact, they caught him trading the same graph choice a couple of times. And I think they got a penalty, but I think the penalty was that they lost with a draft choice, so they didn't want to bother him, so they probably got fined. And he largely remade that team in his image. But I think what also remade his image was Sonny Jerns getting injured in exhibition season 71. And, of course, he was going to be starting a quarterback. But they had traded for Billy Kellner, backup quarterback, which is like, hey, that's a great idea. You never know, right? Sonny was getting up there. He was in his mid-thirties. And then I think it was the last exhibition game or next to last; I remember they played six exhibition games. I know, can you believe that? And in the starters,

Darin Hayes
The starters actually played all six of those, too. Oh, they don't really play. Yeah.

Jim Johnson
games. Yeah, it wasn't just a dress rehearsal. He studied through an interception, and he made an attack when he broke his left arm. But he was still out for weeks. Billy goes in, and they win their first five games. And the town goes nuts. Even in the sixth game, they lost, which really turned around their season because not only did they lose, they lost Charlie Taylor, who broke his ankle. By that time, Bobby Mitchell was retired. So their wide receiver court was kind of thin. I think they had Roy Jefferson at that point. But beyond that, they were they were really kind of thinner. So they'll never forget that when we came home from that game, 1000s greeted them at the National Airport. They were just outgoing, and the town was berserk with red-skin fever. It's like, my god, five, and oh, we got to make the playoffs, and they did. Although they had to get the wild card because the rest of the season they kind of staggered, you know, they beat Dallas in Dallas. In that five-game stretch, Dallas came into our pain and beat the Reds because 13 to not just couldn't generate. Even though, you know, Larry Brown was starting to emerge as a big running back, he had his big year the next year. However, for the defense and special teams that George Allen kept, he had the first full-time special teams coach, Marv Levy. I'm sure you've heard of him. Right? That's where he got his. I don't know if it was his start, but that's where he got some attention as a special teams coach. And, you know, they had good return teams, and they had great kick-blocking teams. You return multiple games around, of course; the only touchdown he scored in the Super Bowl against Miami was on a black kick. And, you know, thanks to Gary, doing whatever he was doing. Almost got back

Darin Hayes
They almost got back in that game, too, after they got the ball back, right?

Jim Johnson
back down seven, of course, each day has had no chance against Miami's defense, but yeah, it's like, you know, 14, nothing here. They're going to kick the field; we're going to be 17, nothing turns off the TV right then they block it ball goes up near Mike Bass catches it runs like hell down the field 14 seven defense holds gets the ball right back, and then he just continued to knock this down that ability color, and Larry Brown and that was that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. I don't, I don't think a lot of people realize that, that that undefeated season for the dolphins, even though they, they dominated the statistics at Superbowl. Yeah. It was, it was a one score game late in the game in Washington, Washington gets a break. They, they could pull it off at least get to the tie.

Jim Johnson
Well, and here's another thing people get. The Redskins were favored going into that game by a couple of points.

Darin Hayes
Oh, they were. I didn't realize that.

Jim Johnson
Yeah, because they had gone 11 and one and then clinched the division. So they just kind of threw it in the neutral. They lost down in Dallas, and then they lost the last game; I think it was the Buffalo. But they were considered, you know, the dolphins really weren't much to look at that year. They just beat you, you know, they had a stifling defense, and they ran the ball and greasy through it every now and then just to stay away. And, you know, what a waste of them. Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield, right? He's out there doing, I don't know, playing with his neighbor or something. You know, he's, but they never threw them all. During several games Miami had that year, they threw fewer than ten passes.

Darin Hayes
Well, with the three running backs that they had, they probably didn't have to throw the ball that much.

Jim Johnson
And, of course, the defense was, no name defense was nasty.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. They were pretty good. Pretty good. That's what builds an undefeated team, an undefeated championship team, I guess. Yeah. That's for sure. All right. So, OK. So the Redskins, you know, they have George Allen; they're a veteran team because Allen doesn't really like the, the Rooks and a, you know, have a tight, tight game, but, you know, just miss out on, on winning a Superbowl, their first Superbowl appearance. What will the team do next season?

Jim Johnson
Uh, the next, actually the next three seasons, they won the wild card.

Darin Hayes
OK

Jim Johnson
They never won the division, and they never won another playoff game because they were always playing the wild card game on the road. There were four playoff games in each conference at that time, so the Wild Card team never got a home game, and they got beat by the Vikings pretty well a couple of times and got a good speed on, but you know Dallas was near the height of their powers. The Redskins have the advantage over them in 72, but the Cowboys were just a little more consistent over time, and actually, in that stretch, the St. Louis Cardinals had a bit of a run, and they won the division one year. They were, you know, in the Redskins and had some great games. Jim Hart, Mel Gray, and Terry Metcalf had very explosive Don Coryell teams, the birth of Air Coryell before he got to San Diego. So that was a really tough division. The Giants were legal for much, but those three teams really knocked heads pretty hard, and 75 was the first year that the Redskins missed the playoffs and won 86. They got back in the next year, we missed it in 77, and everybody wins done, but then we said, OK, you know George, this is as good as we're going to get, and now all of a sudden, nine and five, ten and four wasn't quite good enough. The bar had been raised thoracically where. He was like a hero the year that they went nine, four, and one and got in the wild card in 71. They didn't quite have a parade, you know, it was just the excitement, all you know, crowd at the airport and all that, and now it was in 77 they finished nine and five a year before they finished ten and four, and it was like, well, you know we're kind of in we need to make a coaching time. So that's one thing that George did during his seven years. He raised the bar drastically, and the bar stayed up there for a good while. So, I don't want to say that the culture was totally changed because George Allen built a unique, non-applicable culture of guys who were really old but still had nothing in the tank, and George used them. He knew how to use them, at least on defense. He didn't really pull much off that. He's often the coordinator most of that time Ted Marchebroa, who later had great success with the cults rebuilding the cults from the mid-seventies. But yeah, he was, you know, just a very conservative who ran the ball, which runs the ball, and you can imagine George Allen's son of Jordan's son really never quite hit it off. But one of the great stories about those Redskins is that Sonny and Billy Kilmer became the best of friends and still are. I saw a picture of him recently. I think it was a game this year. Billy came up to town, and they hung out. They were playing a nationalist game and having a beer.

Darin Hayes
No kidding. I mean, that's amazing when you have two guys who are vying for the same position and a gigantic payday. I mean, it's not as big back then, but it was still substantial back then to be the starting quarterback over being the backup. And you see here that a lot of them become such close friends and lifelong friends. That's kind of a great thing about football.

Jim Johnson
Well, I think one of the ways they say it now is to game those games. The two of them have a very strong mutual respect for each other. You know, they like hanging out. You know, they said they really enjoyed the new Redskins weight room. It was a nice weight bench, a nice place for them to sit quietly and have lunch. You know, and but just they, and then when five of them showed up in 74, I think it was a very rookie; after he played sometimes in Canada, the two of them had the common cause of one of them staying healthy enough to play. So Tyson got to play a whole lot of him early on. I know Sonny made amends with them later on. And they got to be, I don't know if they got to be real friends, but they definitely were cordial instead of Sonny calling broadcast. But yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. And they were marketing, actually the competition between the two of them. I'll never forget; I think this was 72. They were selling bumper stickers, and I had one of the bumper stickers. I'm a Skins fan. And I like Billy. I'm a Skins fan. And I like Sunday. Do one of the worst things you can. It was always Sunday. He was my favorite race game of all time. I just love sunny germs. I don't think he was good as a Unitas. But, you know, he was a great, great quarterback. But he and Kilmer were able to plow through that and just turn out the noise. They focused on playing football, supporting each other, and encouraging each other even when something was so frustrating with injuries. You know, 72 got the starting quarterback job back and played a couple of great games; what a great win against Dallas. And then he tore his Achilles. And that famous picture of him walking off the field, Billy walking on looking at his foot like, you know, what's wrong, and probably want to give her a hug, but he had to get in. Somebody had a quarterback. So he had to get in and call the next play. But yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. And that's the kind of guy that George got, you know, give him credit for that. He got team-oriented guys that you like being around, and all of them were out in the community. You know, I was becoming a teenager and would go to all the events. I remember sitting with Dancing Bear, Robin Dole; he was doing a thing at a tire dealership. He was just sitting and shooting the bowl for an hour and telling a story. He was great. You know, I met Ken Houston signing an autograph and said something nice to him. And he looked up and like, gee, thanks. I can really mean something that this dumb kid said. It gave him a compliment. That's the sky. I love that team. I love the over-the-hill guy. They were, I think, very level. They weren't white championships. I wish they had. We love it. Seeing that, you know, most of those guys ever won a championship. This is their last shot, especially the ones that came to the Rams; they never won one back in those days. I would love to have seen them get one. But boy, they were just so much fun to root for in my four years of, you know, picking a team, and, you know, it was the local team; I always gravitate to the local team. But boy, they were just so much fun.

Darin Hayes
You know, that's what's interesting that you say that because I've heard so many people say that about, you know, the other team that you supported as a kid, the Baltimore Colts of the '60s, in the same way that they were out in the community. The fans loved them. They loved each other. We've had Upton Bell on, who was the player personnel at the time during the 60s with those great runs as a Super Bowl three and Super Bowl five. And he just adored those Colts teams. And so, you know, being from the Beltway, writing about the Beltway teams, who, who as a teenager, you're really impressionable years where you're really getting into watching these pro players. What happened when the Baltimore Colts of that era were playing the Washington Redskins in your household?

Jim Johnson
My household at that time was a redskin household.

Darin Hayes
Was it? OK.

Jim Johnson
And I remember one of the greatest games I ever went to see was a Monday night game in 1978 in Baltimore when the Redskins were playing. And it was probably Burke Jones's last great moment as a Colt quarterback. 78 was the year Burke got hurt. He tried a couple of times to come in and play but wasn't able to get very far. And he kept going in and out. He was holding his shoulder and limp a couple of times, and he didn't really touch down pass. And the Colts wound up winning that game late, 21 -17. And it turned out it was the last game Billy Kilmer ever started. And he was awful. Just terrible. I think it was like 2 for 11. I just couldn't hit anything. And Fisman came in and always pulled the game out. And I was sitting next to a Fisman fan. It really took me a long time to warm up to him. And that hadn't happened yet. And I had my best friend, who was a diehard Colts fan on the other side. I'm like, I got nowhere to go. But it was a great game. I always respected the Colts. Even before, you know, he was a Redskins fan. And, you know, in Washington and Baltimore, some people try to lump them into one area. Don't. The two areas really, in most ways, have very little interest in anything to do with each other. Baltimore folks think Washington looks down their nose at them. There's some truth to that. And Washington people think I couldn't, which is why I looked down the nose at them. But I've always been drawn to Baltimore because Baltimore, in my finding fault with Washington, Baltimore always had that greater sense of community. Washington, at least, you know, back in the day, Washington was very much more of a transient area. In fact, I remember going back to Sports Illustrated, again, an article, sometime in the 70s, calling something about the problem of being the home team and nobody's hometown, talking about Washington sports. OK, whereas, you know, Baltimore grew up, your Orioles fan, your Colts fan, and if you're not here, keep your mouth shut. Whereas in DC, sure, DC was not a sports town back then, as it was a great skin town. Even when the bullets moved over, they had a capital center. They got more support for a lot of years, even after they won the championship. And the capitals were kind of the same way. It took many, many years for them. But the Redskins were, and I hate saying that in the past tense, but they were the passion of that town. It was incredible. Even when they were terrible, they were supported at a reasonable level. But, you know, as I said, it took them in the start again, 50 - 55,000 a week. So yeah, they're just two completely different areas.

Darin Hayes
What's the distance between the two cities?

Jim Johnson
I think from downtown to downtown is about 35 miles.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Jim Johnson
And there's a Baltimore, Washington Parkway that connects them. So you can get there in a reasonable amount of time. It's like a federal National Park Service route or something like that. And there's, you know, a lot of back and forth between the cities, but when it gets down to the sports teams, currently, Baltimore is gravitating a little bit toward the Capitals and hockey because they don't have hockey. But one of the things when after the Colts lap, and it was never public, but a lot of suspicion that Jack Kent Cook, who had taken charge of the Redskins, was fighting against Baltimore getting a team back because he was thinking, I'll just get the Baltimore market. And that was never going to happen. In fact, my best friend, the Colts fan, never became a Red Skin fan, never was interesting, as big a Red Skin fan as I was. I'm like, come on, come on. We watched the 82 Super Bowl together. He was rooting against Miami. I still have scars from the Colts in Miami. And, you know, I'm just, I'm rooting for the Red Skins. He couldn't make it something for the Red Skins. So that, you know, that's pretty deeply ingrained. So Washington was never going to get that market. Now, the Orioles were able to get a lot of the Washington market after the Senators left. But Washington is never going to get the Baltimore market. It's just not going to happen. That's just the way they're wired. Baltimore's got a team, that's their team, but they're not going to pay any part of Washington's business. So when Jack Kent Cook tried to build a stadium out in Laurel, Maryland, which is about halfway, thinking he was going to get the, you know, get more of the Baltimore traffic, that's going nowhere fast. And the state of Maryland did not support that. They eventually supported it because they do play in Maryland now. The FedEx field is in Prince George's County, Maryland. The Maryland technically has two teams, but it's only just a hop, skip, and a jump from the DC line. So it's very much a DC area.

Darin Hayes
I guess I never really thought about it like that. So, Maryland actually has the same amount of professional NFL teams playing at the Pennsylvania desk. Yes. And you wouldn't think of that.

Jim Johnson
But Maryland only claims one.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I understand that. Very interesting. OK, well, I definitely appreciate you coming on sharing stories of growing up with the Redskins, their 1960s 1970s era teams. And we're going to have to have you on again to talk maybe about the Colts or some more of the Redskins. But we appreciate your time, sir, in your knowledge and the stories that you shared.

Jim Johnson
Oh, it's a lot of fun talking to you. You know, I could go all night. So, yeah, anytime you want to do it, let's let's do it again.

Darin Hayes
OK, and once again, maybe you could give us the website address and we'll also have it in the show notes.

Jim Johnson
you insist. Don't wait .footballhistory .com is still building it up. Most of what I have up there is the Baltimore writing. I'm just now getting into the Asheville, Washington writing, but you know, if you bookmark it, you'll see more and more and more stuff coming up about all three teams. Baltimore Colts, or we see Baltimore Colts, the Ravens, and the Redskins.

Darin Hayes
OK, well, be sure to check that out. Thank you once again, sir. Thank you.

Jim Johnson
Thanks.

Want to learn more about Washington Redskins history? We have the author for you in our friend Mike Richman, who currently has four books on the franchise and its coaches and players.