Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008

Jimmy Orr: The touchdown that wasn’t

Orr’s career best known for being wide open in the Super Bowl and not being thrown the ball

In an NFL career spanning 13 years, two teams and two Super Bowls, Jimmy Orr caught 400 passes. He was regarded as a “sure thing’ — a receiver who never failed to make the catch.

So it is ironic — and still somewhat painful nearly 40 years later — that the Seneca native is perhaps best remembered for a pass that wasn’t thrown his way.

“Yeah,” Orr, who turns 73 in October, said with a laugh from his home in Brunswick, Ga. “That’s terrible (to be known) for something that didn’t happen.”

The moment occurred during Super Bowl III in Miami, Orr’s Baltimore Colts vs. the upstart AFL champion New York Jets. With 43 seconds to go in the first half, quarterback Joe Namath’s underdog crew held a 7-0 lead, but Baltimore had possession at New York’s 42-yard line.

The call was a flea-flicker, quarterback Earl Morrall handing off to back Tom Matte, who would flip the ball back to Morrall. Orr? He was standing near the end zone, wide open, waiting ... waiting ...

“It would’ve been 7-7 at the half,” Orr said. “We had used that play in the second game of the season, Earl’s second game with us, and we scored a touchdown in Atlanta. We hadn’t run it since then.”

When the Jets’ zone defense rolled toward him, Orr changed routes, going straight downfield. Safety Randy Beverly went for the run fake, and “I was 37, 38 yards open,” Orr said.

Then Morrall threw the ball — toward Jerry Hill, in the middle of the field. Jets defender Jim Hudson intercepted, and the Colts’ chances were, for all purposes, gone. Final score: Jets, 16-7.

Colts linebacker Mike Curtis told Sports Illustrated in 1971, “Everyone could see Orr out there by himself. Everyone but Earl.” Frustrated, Curtis chased down Morrall, screaming and shaking his fist.

Orr? His chance at immortality gone, he did ... nothing. For a long time.

“(He and Morrall) discussed it 20 years later in Greensboro, Ga., where Mickey Mantle had a golf tournament,” he said. “That was the first time we talked about it; he just said, ‘I didn’t see you.’ What are you going to say? Earl was such a nice guy.”

Orr eventually got his Super Bowl ring in 1971, his final NFL season, when the Colts beat Dallas 16-13. Then he retired “because I couldn’t run anymore” and headed off to the rest of what he calls “a wonderful life.”

Some men might have been scarred by Super Bowl III. Not Jimmy Orr. He never complained because, after all, who ever thought he would get this far? No one back home, for sure.

No one except him.

FROM FIFTH STRING TO STANDOUT

The two old NFL warriors met at Alex Hawkins’ home near Denmark a couple of years ago to sit on the patio, share a drink and reminisce. An NFL game was on the TV.

“We’re working on maybe the third drink,” said Hawkins, the former USC star, laughing. “Jimmy, with that ‘old man’s back’ he’s got, looks at me and says, seriously, ‘Alex, I could play today.’ I told him, ‘Jimmy, they got defensive tackles who could cover you now.’”

In his prime, though? “Yeah, he could play now,” Hawkins said. “He was smart, knew how to get open and had hands as good as anyone this side of Raymond Berry,” the Colts’ Hall of Fame receiver and Unitas’ favorite target.

Orr also had a reputation for toughness. In a game vs. Philadelphia, he sustained a separated shoulder and was taken to a hospital five blocks from the Colts’ stadium. After X-rays, Orr put his uniform back on, ran the five blocks to the stadium and into the Colts’ huddle — and caught a 22-yard touchdown pass from Unitas on his first play.

For the longest time growing up, though, few realized what Orr could do. He played mostly sandlot football with his pals and did not go out for the Seneca High team until his junior year.

“I wound up being the quarterback,” Orr said. “We didn’t do a lot of passing, ran some single-wing plays, finished 6-5 both (his junior and senior) years.”

Even so, Clemson offered Orr a scholarship. His father, a doctor, wanted him to go there “so he could watch me. But I wanted to play basketball.” That didn’t pan out, so he transferred to Wake Forest, “more of a basketball school,” he said.

“But I got there and they had two really good freshman guards. And (coach) Bones McKinney kept saying, ‘This guy looks more like a football player.’”

So Orr transferred again, to Georgia, and walked on with the football team. “I was on the squad that gets beat up pretty bad,” he said, laughing. He was fifth-string right halfback when Georgia traveled to Mississippi, where injuries and substitution rules at the time forced coach Wally Butts to use Orr.

Mississippi won handily, but Orr caught a 50-yard touchdown pass. The following week vs. Vanderbilt, he caught two more long passes. By the next week — against, of all teams, Clemson — he was a starter.

Orr twice led the SEC in receiving, with 24 catches for 443 yards and three touchdowns in 1955 and 16 catches for 237 yards and two scores in 1957. The Los Angeles Rams drafted Orr in the 25th round — but as a defensive back.

“I went to training camp and told them, ‘I’m not a defensive back,’” he said. He was moved to receiver and caught a 75-yard touchdown vs. Pittsburgh in a preseason game. The next week, the Steelers traded for Orr.

How did that work out? Orr caught 33 passes for 910 yards and seven touchdowns and was NFL rookie of the year.

“We didn’t have much talent, but we wound up a half-game out of the (NFL) East Championship,” Orr said. “Bobby Layne came about the fourth game, and we won a bunch of them, finished behind Cleveland and New York.”

But Orr’s career with the Steelers, and with Layne, couldn’t survive Orr’s first marriage, Hawkins said.

“The years he spent with Bobby, Jimmy was a heavy partier, staying out late and drinking, which was perfect with Layne,” he said. “But if you didn’t stay out late with him, he wouldn’t throw to you.

“One time Bobby asked him about going out drinking, and Jimmy, who was married then, said, ‘Nah, I don’t feel like it.’ He went from 59 catches to 29 the next year.”

Pittsburgh’s loss was Baltimore’s gain. Orr arrived in 1961, and he and Hawkins quickly became running mates — on and off the field.

“We had a lot in common,” Orr said. “Hawk was a good football man, knew all the positions and would’ve made a (great) coach. He paid attention to everything going on.”

Hawkins and Orr spent many hours studying defenses together. But Hawkins, also a noted party animal then, said the relationship was more about a mutual disdain for curfews.

Orr, in turn, tells how that approach served as motivation in one game.

“We were playing Minnesota before going to California for 10 days, and if we won, we wouldn’t have any curfew,” he said. “I caught a pass over the middle, in traffic, and Hawk was hollering for me to lateral.

“I did, and he fumbled, but luckily he recovered it and we went on to score — and had our free time in California.”

LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL

The week of Super Bowl III, the Colts had trouble taking the Jets seriously. That changed for Orr and Hawkins, though.

“The Jets had four (defensive) starters who were guys we had released,” he said. “Jimmy and I laughed and told (Colts defender) Bobby Boyd, ‘We might score 50 against them.’ And Bobby said, ‘You might have to; Namath can flat throw the football.’

“Before the game, Jimmy and I watched, and he said, ‘Bobby’s right, the SOB can throw.’”

That insight served Orr well after his retirement from football. He followed Hawkins into the Atlanta Falcons’ radio booth, doing color commentary for three years before coaching the Falcons’ receivers for three years. “Then we all got fired, and I decided to change courses,” Orr said.

Dan Chandler found Orr a job in Las Vegas, dealing blackjack at Caesar’s Palace. He later parlayed that experience and his football name into jobs in Atlantic City and, when casinos moved there, in Mississippi.

In 1999, he moved back to Georgia, where he lives with wife Lyneath. A highlight of his retirement years has been a trip in May to Augusta National, where he made a hole-in-one at the famed par-3 12th hole.

“A 7-iron, one-hopper in the cup,” Orr said, laughing. “We went over on a Monday, played, had dinner, stayed in the Butler Cabin and got in another 18 the next day.”

He sighed. “Quite a delightful experience,” he said.

Of course, for Orr, that always was a sure thing.

Reach senior writer Bob Gillespie at (803) 771-8304.

Get The State newspaper delivered to your home. Click here to subscribe.