Complementing that brawn with brains, Davis stayed on the cutting edge of football tactics as the
esteemed Dave Anderson detailed in 2000:
When the Jets went to Oakland in 1968, that photo on the Raiders’ wall symbolized the rivalry as well as Coach Weeb Ewbank‘s distrust of Davis. Whenever a helicopter flew anywhere near a Jets practice the week before a game against the Raiders, Ewbank would look up and shake his fist. He just knew Davis had somebody spying on the Jets. On a trip to Oakland, he once suspected a spy as the Jets practiced near a junior college’s high-rise dorm.
”Weeb thought he saw the shape of a person’s head looking down at our practice from one of the windows high in the dorm,” recalled Frank Ramos, then as now the Jets’ public-relations director. ”Weeb sent somebody up there to check, and it turned out that what he thought was a person was really a lamp.”
Spying on practices? Employing the
dirtiest player in the NFL? Taking chances on players who
were trouble elsewhere? Earning criticism for
arrogance? Right down to the sartorial choices of sportswear, Bill Belichick has studied Al Davis and found a lot to emulate.
