BALTIMORE (REUTERS) — Johnny Unitas, the Hall of Fame quarterback who broke nearly every NFL passing record and won three championships with the Baltimore Colts in an 18-year career, died Wednesday at age 69.
Unitas had a heart attack while working out at a physical-therapy center in the Baltimore suburb of Timonium, said Vivienne Stearns-Elliott, a spokeswoman for St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson. Doctors and nurses at the scene could not resuscitate him, she said.
Unitas underwent emergency triple-bypass surgery in March 1993 after a heart attack.
“Johnny U,” with his trademark crew cut and black high-tops, was the first NFL quarterback to throw for 40,000 yards and now ranks seventh, surpassed by a group of quarterbacks who played after him with rules that make passing easier.
Unitas retired after the 1973 season with 22 NFL records, among them marks for most passes attempted and completed, most yards gained passing, most touchdown passes and most seasons leading the league in TD passes.
“Johnny Unitas will always be a legendary name in NFL history,” league commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. “One of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, he epitomized the position with his leadership skills and his ability to perform under pressure.”
Unitas completed 2,830 of 5,186 passes for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns. He completed at least one touchdown pass in 47 straight games, a record not challenged since it was set from 1956-60.
Unitas was named most valuable player three times and played in 10 Pro Bowls. He led Baltimore to the NFL championship in 1958 and 1959 and to the Super Bowl in 1970.
On the NFL’s 50th anniversary in 1969, Unitas was voted the greatest quarterback of all time.
“Johnny Unitas is the greatest quarterback ever to play the game, better than I was, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone,” Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback of the 1940s, once said.
Unitas was one of the few quarterbacks who called his own plays, an ability traced to his knack for reading an opponent’s defense and spotting a weakness, then calling a play to take advantage.
John Mackey, the Colts’ tight end during the Unitas years, once said of his teammate, “It’s like being in a huddle with God.”
Unitas was never flamboyant or boastful — yet No. 19 always seemed to get the job done thoroughly and quietly.
“A man never gets to this station in life without being helped, aided, shoved, pushed and prodded to do better,” Unitas said at his induction into the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1979. “I want to be honest with you: The players I played with and the coaches I had . . . they are directly responsible for my being here. I want you all to remember that. I always will.”
The long list of accomplishments was quite a reversal of fortune for a player who hitchhiked home from his first NFL training camp after the Pittsburgh Steelers cut him in 1955. He spent that season playing semi-pro football on rock- and glass-covered fields in Pittsburgh for $6 a game and working as a pile driver at a construction site.
The Colts signed him the following season after getting tipped to his ability in a most unusual way.
“Unitas was signed after we received a letter from a fan telling us there was a player in Bloomfield deserving a chance,” former Colts coach Weeb Ewbank recalled a few years later. “I always accused Johnny of writing it.”
Unitas didn’t really look like a football player. At 6-foot-1, just under 200 pounds, his body was that of an everyday person — except for the scars, bumps and bruises.
“What made him the greatest quarterback of all time wasn’t his arm or his size; it was what was inside his stomach,” said Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi, who worked with the Colts in Unitas’s final years on the team. “I’ve always said the purest definition of leadership was watching Johnny Unitas get off the team bus.”
His influence on the game lasted long after his retirement. He served as a tutor to Louisville quarterback Chris Redman, who received his first NFL start last week with the Ravens.
“I believe he’s one of the main reasons I’m an NFL starting quarterback,” Redman said. “He had such an impact on me. I’ll miss him so much.”
