A Jets quarterback who filled in when Joe Namath went down with an injury died earlier this month.
Bill Demory, 74, passed away on Feb. 14 from prostate cancer and Parkinson’s, according to an online obituary.
He was signed by the Jets in 1973 after playing his college ball at Arizona, where he threw 28 touchdowns in three seasons.
Head coach Weeb Ewbank was given game film of Demory while at a general managers conference in Arizona and signed Demory.
But at training camp, Demory was fifth on the quarterback depth chart.
“I was a marginal quarterback at Arizona, and ended up being in the right place at the right time with the Jets,” he told the Observer-Dispatch in 2012.
With some ineffective play from QBs ahead of him, Demory moved up to third.
An injury to Namath made Al Woodall the starter and Demory was promoted from the taxi squad to backup QB.
And when Woodall was injured, Demory became the very unlikely starter.
He was the winner in a 9-7 victory over the Patriots. Demory completed only one pass but it set up the game-winning field goal.
“I thought he did a good job of following the game plan,” Namath said after the game. “He didn’t turn the ball over and, in a game like this, you look for a young quarterback to make a bad handoff or mess up the snap. He did none of that.”
Demory also made starts against the Steelers and Broncos.
When Demory was released in 1975, Ewbank called around the league to see if any teams would be interested in Demory as an assistant coach but there were no takers.
Demory later went to grad school at Iowa for economics and became a professor at Central Arizona College.
“My students really don’t know about my playing for the Jets and I don’t bring it up on purpose,” he said in 2012. “It would be a distraction, I think, and I don’t want to waste any time in the classroom … If they should do a Google search on me, to get the low down on my class, I would talk to them about my football days.”
Demory is survived by his wife, four children and 14 grandchildren.
