Jets head coach Joe Walton running off the field at the end of a game at Giants Stadium, Jets vs. San Franciso on Oct. 29, 1989. Credit: NEWSDAY/PAUL J. BERESWILL
By the end of the 1987 season, the chant had begun: "Joe must go!"
After his Jets finished 4-12 in 1989, Joe Walton eventually did just that.
But history has treated his term as the team’s head coach better than it might have appeared in real time, given the long stretches of losing that have marked the franchise’s history before and since.
Walton, who died on Sunday at 85, was the only coach in the Jets’ first five decades in the NFL to manage consecutive seasons with double-digit victory totals, going 11-5 in 1985 and 10-6 in ’86.