Joe Walton’s Jets Could Have Been the Best Team in the N.F.L.

The former Jets Coach Joe Walton has a stadium named after him, but not in the New York area. A sportswriter recalls the coach’s up-and-down pro tenure and how he found glory, and peace, elsewhere.

Joe Walton, who died on Sunday at age 85, presided over what I think of as “The Jets Era That Never Was.” He led the team from 1983 through 1989. There were moments when they looked like pro football’s best team. And there were the doldrums when fans bellowed “Joe Must Go!” In some ways, I believe, his career is a cautionary sports tale, an arc of an American dream.