Just Good Old Jaws

Super Bowl quarterbacks have always fit into one of two groups: The Cerebral or The Charismatic. The Charismatic group is headed by the likes of "Broadway" Joe Namath, "Hollywood" Joe Kapp, "Don't Go, Jo Jo" Bradshaw and Snake Stabler. The Cerebral contingent is led by Bart Starr, Len Dawson, Bob Griese, Roger Staubach and Francis Asbury Tarkenton. All of them had, or have, a certain mystique, an aura that is uniquely a quarterback's. Cold-blooded devils, who called to mind gunfighters. But now comes Ron Jaworski, who calls to mind the kid watching from behind the water trough, eyes like two cherries in a bowl of milk. Wow! The Super Bowl! There isn't an ounce of mystique in Ron Jaworski. But this Sunday in New Orleans, while the rest of those guys are watching, announcing or splashing themselves with after shave, Jaworski will be the one quarterbacking the Philadelphia Eagles.

Jaworski is a breath of fresh air, a clown bearing gifts, a man-child of 29 who walks around grinning like a kid who has just won the Punt, Pass and Kick contest. His nickname is Jaws, but he is about as terrifying as a guppy. To his Eagle teammates he is a leader, but he leads by exuberance as much as example. The day after the Eagles beat Dallas 20-7 in the NFC championship game, while the Philadelphia veterans were still trying to figure out how to react to their striking success after so many years of failure, Jaworski set the tone in the locker room by ostentatiously whipping out a cigar, lighting it with a $100 bill that he had heisted from his 4-year-old daughter's Monopoly game and singing, "We're in the money." Slowly his teammates began to smile. By gum, that was the way to feel about going to the Super Bowl. Jaworski went over to a record player and put on music he could polka to, then around the room he went, one-two-three, one-two-three. "Yeah! We're going to the Super Bowl!" he shouted. His teammates began to shout it, too. It was as if they'd won the lottery or something, and Jaworski had brought the news.

It's not that Ron Jaworski's life has been totally unchanged by success. He has become a partner in a country club and has started a hot-tub business called "Ron Jaworski's Nature Tubs." There is also a Ron Jaworski's Sports Enterprises, which handles contracts and endorsements for about a dozen NFL players. But he still lacks his first ounce of mystique and carries himself as if his first pretentious word will send him packing back to the steel mill in his hometown of Lackawanna, N.Y. And in 10 years don't expect to see him doing the color commentary on Monday Night Football. Among other things, Monday's his bowling night. He bowls in a league for Vic's Deli, a team captained by Vic Morris, who is the caterer for the Eagle locker room. Jaworski doesn't even bowl very well for Vic's Deli. His average is 164.

On a football field, however, Jaworski is way above average. "All things considered, if I were to start a new franchise, I'd take Ron first," says Sid Gillman, the Eagle quarterback coach. "I think he's the best passer in the NFL, week in and week out. He makes less mistakes over the course of a year. And his next three or four years should be his best."

Ron Jaworski? The best passer in the NFL? It's not as implausible as it sounds. During the past three years he has started and won more games than any quarterback in pro football except Terry Bradshaw. More than Dan Fouts. More than Brian Sipe or Stabler. This season, his best, he completed 57% of his passes for 27 touchdowns and an average of 7.82 yards per attempt, statistics that ranked him second among NFL quarterbacks. He was selected to his first Pro Bowl. Most important, for the second season in a row he threw only 12 interceptions. It's no small coincidence that the Eagles allowed the fewest points in the NFL.

Stats aside, Jaworski simply throws a football as well as anyone. The Eagles' coach, Dick Vermeil, talks about the tightness of his spiral. Gillman says there are windy days when you would need a gun to get the ball in there any better. A rifle. Jaworski was known as the Polish Rifle earlier in his career, when he was with the Los Angeles Rams. That was back when he believed his arm was so gifted he could actually throw the ball through a defender. And at times he could. Through the defender, through the receiver, bruising fingers and landing incomplete. His receivers ran patterns with the fear of God in their eyes, afraid that if they looked around a split second too late the ball would tear their heads off. The result was that until this year, Jaworski's career completion average was below 50%. "The only thing keeping you from becoming All-Pro," Vermeil told him at the start of this season, "is not completing 57% to 59% of your passes." And he was right.

Vermeil, who came to the Eagles in 1976, when they were at the bottom of the NFC East, had first worked with Jaworski in 1973, which was his rookie year with the Rams. Vermeil was the Rams' offensive backfield coach at the time, and the thing that most impressed him about Jaworski wasn't the arm but the temperament. "You could see the raw talent and the eagerness to learn," Vermeil recalls. "He had a freshness, almost a naiveté about him. He wasn't a real worldly guy like players from Notre Dame or USC, and his kind of guy tends to be less selfish."

The naiveté that so attracted Vermeil was Jaworski's undoing in Los Angeles. "I'm a shot-and-beer guy, and that was a martini town," Jaworski says. He had grown up in Lackawanna, a town of about 23,000, where the biggest employer is Bethlehem Steel. About all he'd ever wanted out of life was not to have to work in the steel mill. His father showed him what that life was like one high school summer by getting him a job there straightening rods. Pull out a crooked rod, straighten it in the straightening machine. Pull out another, straighten it. Etc. After a week Jaworski wanted out. His father made him stay two more weeks to make sure the lesson stuck.

Although he was offered scholarships at a dozen better-known schools, including Georgia Tech, Jaworski picked Youngstown State University. At the time he was 6'2" but weighed just 160 pounds (he's now up to 196), so he had no real aspirations to play pro football. 'The coach told me if I went there they'd throw the ball 30 times a game," says Jaworski. "As soon as I heard that I asked, 'Where do I sign?' "

Youngstown State's program was low-key, to say the least. The coach, the late Dike Beede, used to stop practice when a flock of Canadian geese flew overhead. He talked about why a cluster of mushrooms that appeared overnight on the field grew in the pattern it did. He also was the last collegiate proponent of the sidesaddle T. The sidesaddle T is a bizarre formation that is something of a cockeyed wing T. Jaworski would line up a yard behind the left guard to receive the snap from center. A tailback and a fullback lined up five yards deep, as they would in a pro set, and on every play a wingback would go in motion, pausing briefly behind the center as if to receive the snap. The wingback would then continue toward the sideline as if he had the ball, and the center would hike it sideways to Jaworski.