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On his way to the biggest game of his career and the biggest game in the history of San Diego, Chargers running back Keith Lincoln felt lousy. He felt like he was coming down with the flu, and his legs felt heavy. Considering he was about to play in the 1963 American Football League championship game, this was a rather unfortunate occurrence. It wasn’t just because San Diego would compete for the league title for the third time in four years, but it was also a game—and the team recognized this at the time—that their coach needed like he needed oxygen. It was the game of Sid Gillman’s life, the moment he had prepared for ever since he gave up playing football to coach it.

And here was Lincoln, who would be counted on so heavily to beat the Boston Patriots as one of the most important pieces of San Diego’s outstanding offense, driving his car to the game. And feeling sluggish. And crappy.

“I didn’t feel,” Lincoln said, “like I wanted to feel going into a championship game.”

Gillman had waited 30 years for a moment like this. He had waited three decades to showcase his offense, the evolution of which had made him the foremost expert in the art of the forward pass. He had waited so damn long to prove that his crazy ideas, inspired by a maniacal Ohio State coach from the 1930s named Francis Schmidt and expanded upon by Gillman throughout his career, would work.

The AFL championship game was not quite the biggest platform Gillman could have wanted, though the upstart league finally was seeping into the country’s consciousness and pushing against the NFL’s monopoly. But Gillman thirsted to show a national TV audience, and those who had denied and derided him because of his Jewish heritage, and those who always picked somebody else to coach their team, that his Chargers squad knew how to score. That they knew how to win. That he knew how to win.

After AFL championship game losses in 1960 and 1961, after losing the NFL championship title in 1955 when he coached the Los Angeles Rams, and after a 1962 season in which Gillman presided over his worst year as a coach, Gillman needed this win. He needed this validation. Needed it like he needed food in his belly. He needed Lincoln.

And Lincoln needed an aspirin.

In 1963, San Diego was still new to the pro sports scene. The Chargers had moved from Los Angeles two years earlier, and it’s not like a longtime, historically successful NFL franchise had suddenly burst into town. No, the Chargers left L.A. because they were never going to be more popular than the L.A. Rams. They were never going to be more popular than the Rams because the Rams were a longtime, historically successful NFL franchise that drew crowds of more than 100,000. But the Chargers were as exciting as they were fresh-faced. They were AFL upstarts with a growing fan base and an eclectic group of players and coaches who showcased a different brand of football.

Before the Chargers arrived, the city of San Diego was a curiosity to much of the country. To an outsider who hadn’t ventured that far south before, San Diego was a Navy town, a town in which you stopped briefly before heading to the Mexican playground 20 miles away.

The only athletic teams in town to which anybody paid attention were the minor-league baseball Padres and San Diego High School—the latter of which consistently was the biggest sports story in the area. Hardly anybody cared about San Diego State athletics, and Balboa Stadium, which was built in 1914 and now held low-level car races and prep football games, was crumbling.

Until Chargers owner Barron Hilton left L.A. for San Diego, the town’s sporting events sleepwalked through the city’s consciousness. It was, as San Diego Union sports editor Jack Murphy wrote, “the Rip Van Winkle of American cities.”

Or as the wonderful Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray put it, “There’s always a lot of suspense going to San Diego these days because you never know when President Johnson might order it closed or moth-balled—or transferred to Newport News. But I guess they’re afraid of a serious dislocation of the tattoo industry.”

“San Diego was kind of in the doldrums in this period,” said longtime San Diego sportswriter Jerry Magee. “The period through World War II was a very active one here, because we had people making ships and doing things like that to aid the war effort. After the war ended, San Diego went into the doldrums. San Diego needed a catalyst. It needed something that people could rally around in the community. The Chargers became that entity. It represented San Diego’s ability to really become big league.”

That’s why the Chargers’ fans became so entrenched in the team so quickly. It’s why, although the metal seats at Balboa Stadium were awfully uncomfortable, fans suddenly had a new reason to attend games there. It’s why the Chargers knew their decision to leave L.A. for a washed-up Navy hub, which was in the middle of a near-fatal case of sleepy-town blues, was the right one.

Because when the Boston Patriots came to town for the 1963 AFL championship game at Balboa Stadium, the fans were going to experience what Gillman felt. That the Chargers had to win the game.

Before they could get to that title game, San Diego needed a quarterback. Oh, the Chargers already owned a 23-year-old second-year Kansan named John Hadl, but even though he started 10 games in 1962, his reign as a rookie quarterback was disastrous. His passing was inaccurate and inconsistent. He threw 24 interceptions against 15 touchdowns. The team went 1-9 in the games he started. It was clear Hadl wasn’t ready to lead the Chargers anywhere but to the AFL’s basement.

Though Hadl eventually would find his mark, earning six Pro Bowl berths in his 16-year career, Gillman needed a veteran to run the team while Hadl learned how to become a successful pro quarterback. Gillman needed a player who could integrate the team’s passing game into the offense and mesh it together with two of the best running backs in the league. He needed somebody who could inspire.

Gillman found the perfect guy in Canada. He was Tobin Rote, by then a 35-year-old quarterback with not much football left in his body. He already had a long career, winning an NFL championship in 1957 with the Detroit Lions before moving on to the Canadian Football League with the Toronto Argonauts and becoming the best quarterback in that league.

“Tobin Rote is about as great a quarterback as ever took the ball from center,” Gillman said after the 1963 AFL title game, clearly in love and full of hyperbole. “He has a great mind, has all the ability in the world, and is a great leader. As a balanced runner, passer, blocker, leader, field general, he has no superior.”

He also was pretty special when playing with a pounding hangover. For one night game in Toronto, after he had been out until 7 a.m. that day and had slept only three hours, he set a CFL record with 38 completions. He couldn’t stop his hand from shaking a few hours before the game, but still, he managed a feat that would have impressed Mickey Mantle.

The man’s tolerance for booze must have been off the charts, because, even though teammates could smell Rote’s beer breath in the huddle whether it was an 11 a.m. practice or an afternoon workout, he never appeared drunk. In fact, Tobin could down a dozen beers, guzzle a few more while marinating steaks for a barbecue, and then bet anybody that he could drink another dozen Molsons in the span of three minutes. That was a bet Rote would win, and the respect shown by his Argonauts teammates those years was nearly as high as his blood-alcohol level.

Yet, in mid-January of 1963, Rote was available for the Chargers to sign him, and immediately, Rote proved his leadership capabilities. An example: During the 1963 season, Chargers guard Pat Shea was fined $250 by the San Diego police after he went berserk when a traffic officer made what Shea considered rude remarks to Shea’s pregnant wife. The very next day, Rote campaigned to his teammates to get everybody to kick in some money—$5 here, $10 there—to help Shea pay off the fine.

Rote could sit there shirtless in the locker room, a swath of hair on his chest, belly, and arms that made him look like he was wearing a tank top of black fur, and he could make his teammates believe—in him and in themselves.

“He was the greatest guy in the world to be around,” said Tom Bass, then a Chargers assistant coach. “He just brought leadership qualities that were completely unique. Players loved him and would do anything for him.”

Plus, he was tough. On the second play of the Chargers’ first exhibition game of 1963, a defender tore one of Rote’s ribs away from his sternum, an injury that could have kept him out months. Five weeks later, he was starting San Diego’s first regular-season game.

“Tobin Rote had all the stuff,” fullback Keith Lincoln said. “John [Hadl] had a learning curve. Tobin had leadership skills, he could rally the troops around him and his arm still had life. He did a really good job of tying it all together. He taught a lot of people how to be a football player.”

That was what Gillman wanted for his 1963 season. If this was going to be the season his team won it all, Rote was the quarterback that would be in charge. And Rote rewarded Gillman. He would end the season throwing for 2,510 yards, meaning that Rote, during his career, led the NFL and the CFL in passing and, in his final year as a full-time starter, finished third in the AFL.

Probably first in beer consumption, though.

The Chargers—led by the passing of Rote, the running of Paul Lowe and Lincoln (1,836 yards and 13 touchdowns combined), and the receiving of Lance Alworth (61 catches, 1,205 yards, and 11 touchdowns)—were, suffice it to say, a very good team that season. They were unquestionably the best in the AFL and perhaps the best in the NFL as well (there’s little question they also were tops in the CFL). They were the AFL’s No. 1 in points scored, offensive yards, yards per pass, rushing yards, first downs, touchdowns, defensive scoring, and rushing defense. Sid Gillman’s forte was the pass offense, but that year, his team finished third in that category in the eight-team league, slightly better than average.

But San Diego’s run game was spectacular, and the defense, with Earl Faison (four-time All-Pro) and Ernie Ladd (three-time All-Pro and future World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer) as half of the Fearsome Foursome, was fantastic.

Entering the final regular-season game of the year, San Diego was 10-3 but needed one final victory against the atrocious Broncos—who went 2-11-1 but somehow crushed the Chargers earlier in the year—to win the AFL West and qualify for the title game. Denver’s coach, Jack Faulkner, had known Gillman for 25 years. Faulkner had played for Gillman at Miami (Ohio) in the late 1940s and then had been Gillman’s assistant coach at the University of Cincinnati before moving west with Gillman to the L.A. Rams and south to the Chargers.

He finally had landed his first head coaching job the season before, and after beating the Chargers twice in 1962, he metaphorically slapped Gillman in the face during the fourth game of 1963, calling timeouts in the final minutes to try to score just once more in the 50–34 Denver win. Gillman and his team hadn’t forgotten those slights.

San Diego, after taking a 23–17 lead early in the third quarter of the final game of the year, showed no mercy to remind Denver of its early-season decision. And to insult the Broncos once and for all, San Diego, after scoring again with only seconds left in the game, attempted a two-point conversion, got it thanks to a touchdown catch by Faison, the defensive end, and then attempted an onside kick. It wasn’t a slap in the face. Gillman had metaphorically punched Faulkner in the gut and then slugged him in the jaw.

“How many points did you want to score, Sid?” a furious Faulkner asked as the two met on the field for a post-game handshake. Silence from Gillman. “Sid, how many points did you want to score?” Faulkner asked again. Gillman walked away without a word, his revenge complete.

Added Faulkner, “Thanks a lot, Sid, you son of a bitch.”

Afterward, Faulkner was still too stunned to answer questions from the press. So, he asked questions instead. “How many points did he want to score, anyway?” He never got his answer. But the Chargers weren’t done scoring points yet. Not by a long shot.

In the championship game, the Chargers would face the Boston Patriots, who had performed only slightly better than average in winning the AFL East. Still they would be tough opponents, because the key to the Patriots’ good fortune was a defense that blitzed more than anybody else in the league. The two teams had played twice during the regular season—the Chargers had won 17–13 and 7–6 while being held to 108 rushing yards combined—but San Diego still hadn’t quite figured out Boston’s blitz packages. In reality, nobody in the league had determined how to shut down a defense that, as Gillman said, could stop water.

“Hell, we blitzed a lot because we could get away with it,” said Boston defensive line coach Marion Campbell. “We blitzed our way to the championship game.”

Gillman had to come up with a plan to stop the Patriots from constantly chasing and sacking the middle-aged Rote, who, to make matters worse, was suffering from bursitis and who nearly needed to take a Novocain shot before the game just to get out there and play.

The Chargers, though, had a couple of advantages. The Patriots had to beat the Bills in an extra playoff game in order to qualify for the championship contest, but that additional 60 minutes wasn’t the real problem for Boston. The real problem came in the following days when, after the team flew to San Diego to prepare for the title game, the Patriots partied a little too heartily.

Though Patriots defensive end Larry Eisenhauer was in the middle of three straight All-Pro seasons, he couldn’t escape his reputation as a wild man. In an attempt to save himself from himself, Eisenhauer had his dad room with him at the Stardust Inn in San Diego in the days before the championship game. Still, Eisenhauer couldn’t help himself around dusk one evening. The two sat in the pool, and as the sun was about to knock off work for the night and the air began to cool, Eisenhauer confided to his father, “They’ve got another pool that’s heated. It’s private. I think you’ll like it.”

What his dad didn’t know was that this was the pool where girls in skimpy swimwear—mermaids—performed underwater ballet for the patrons who watched them through the glass tank in the hotel bar. The audience enjoying refreshments that night included some of his teammates, and they watched aghast as Eisenhauer appeared in the tank and then pulled down his shorts to give the customers the first full moon they’d see that evening.

Boston backup quarterback and punter Tom Yewcic and starting quarterback Babe Parilli were eating at the bar. Out of nowhere, Eisenhauer’s smiling mug appeared next to them behind the glass, almost assuredly disrupting the mood of the meal and, assuming he turned around with shorts at his knees, positively ruining their appetites. Eventually somebody called the police and Eisenhauer hustled out of the pool.

Another problem for the Patriots: coach Mike Holovak was considered a sweetheart of a guy, but he was also naive and gullible. The week before the game, Holovak received a phone call from Gillman. “I’ve got it all set up for you,” Gillman said. “You’re going to train at a Navy base. They’re going to have everybody ready to help you.”

Holovak was touched by Gillman’s sporting gesture, especially since it came just before the two teams were to play for the title. What Holovak didn’t realize was that several of the men in Navy uniforms who observed practice were not Navy men. They actually were Chargers personnel. Another advantage for Gillman.

But the biggest obstacle against the Patriots in claiming a championship was the mind of Gillman. He wanted this game badly, and he spent countless hours with his assistants trying to work his mind through Boston’s blitz packages and personnel. Eventually, Gillman finalized the game plan. He thought it was a good plan, maybe even a work of art.

He had no idea how right he would be. He had no idea everything was going to go perfectly for the only time in his career.

Once Gillman finalized his team’s game plan for the AFL title game, he gave it a name. “Feast or Famine,” he called it, because he knew either the Chargers were going to eat Boston’s lunch or San Diego was going to starve. Boiled down, the key to the game was the Chargers’ offense beating the Patriots’ blitz. Make those rushing defenders irrelevant, and San Diego was going to celebrate a championship.

What Gillman accomplished was brilliant. He took the Patriots’ biggest strength and made it their biggest weakness. And what he did was quite simple. He put a man in motion. That was the big revelation. Starting a man in the backfield and then having him to run to a wide receiver position. That was it.

Suddenly, the game for the Patriots was no longer familiar. Suddenly, it was confusion and hell blended together in a chaotic mess that smothered Boston’s chance to win. Suddenly, the Patriots had no idea how to play defense.

“What one man in motion does to this defense is changing the responsibility of practically all the linebackers and all the secondary men,” Gillman said many years later. “By putting one guy in motion, with this (blitz) setup, it disrupted their entire system of coverage. We hit them lucky at the beginning of the ball game, and we went on and on and on.”

Lincoln could see how effective the game plan could be the week before, sitting at his locker and listening to Gillman work himself into a frenzy. “Look,” Gillman said to his team, “if you get in this formation and he gets that goddamn read, you’re going to be there and I promise you it’s going to be a touchdown. This is going to happen. Then, if they continue to show this, we’re going to give them a false read. It’s going to work.”

Gillman was absolutely right. It worked, and it worked better than he could have imagined.

In the first series, San Diego exploited New England safety Ron Hall and made him cover a speedy receiver as opposed to the slower tight ends he usually shadowed. Gillman did this by lining up tight end Dave Kocourek next to left tackle Ernie Wright on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage where receivers Lance Alworth and Don Norton positioned themselves. Hall had to shift over to help on Alworth and Norton. Meanwhile, Paul Lowe, the halfback, and Keith Lincoln, the fullback, were split in the backfield. On the first play of the series, Rote could see that a blitz was coming, and while the Patriots came hard after Rote, he faked a toss to Lincoln and faked an inside trap to Lowe. Two Patriots weren’t fooled by the first fake but went for Lowe on the second fake. Instead, Lincoln slipped away and found himself open for an easy 12-yard catch (early in the second quarter, the Chargers ran the exact same play and gained 24 yards).

Twelve yards was a great way to start the game, but Gillman wanted the big play. He wanted the Patriots to overreact and overpursue—exactly what they did in blitzing and trying to tackle Lowe, who did not have the ball.

On the second play, the Patriots brought Hall closer to the line of scrimmage and made the defense an eight-man front (four linemen, three linebackers, and Hall, the safety). With Alworth and Norton still split right of the line of scrimmage, Lowe went in motion toward the right side to overload it. This was a huge problem for the Patriots, who were not ready for the extra movement. Rote then handed the ball to Lincoln on an inside trap that went to the left side, where there were no linebackers or defensive backs. They all had been shadowing Alworth and Norton and, then, Lowe in motion. Lincoln ran for 56 yards.

During the course of their two meetings in the regular season, Gillman had used his running backs mostly as blockers to stave off Boston’s blitzers, but the motion and the fake handoffs upset the equilibrium of the Patriots.

“The whole game plan was [centered] around [eventual Hall of Famer Nick] Buoniconti and blitzing,” Alworth said. “When he moved one way or the other, it was wrong. It wasn’t his fault. It was strictly Sid’s design.”

Said Lincoln: “We showed them motion. That’s a half-step we had on their linebackers, but it was enough. How brilliant is that? Sid saved that. He could have used it earlier in the year.”

But he didn’t. Instead, Gillman waited for the perfect time to spring his brilliance. And four minutes into the title game, Lincoln had 123 rushing yards on two carries, and the Chargers led 14–0. It’s a good thing Lincoln’s legs had felt heavy beforehand. If he felt completely healthy, he could have really hurt the Patriots.

Two years earlier, Lincoln wasn’t sure he would be in this position in the first place, because after finishing his college ball at Washington State, he was a man headed to defense. “I’m just about convinced the boy is a pro misfit,” Gillman had said. “I don’t believe he runs good enough to play halfback, he’s not big enough for a fullback.”

Those comments came before he actually watched Lincoln in person at Chargers practice. Before, Gillman’s scouting report was based on his filmwork of Lincoln in a Washington State uniform and what he saw of Lincoln in the College All-Star game in Chicago where Lincoln played as a defensive specialist and didn’t receive especially good reports from coach Otto Graham. But what Gillman witnessed firsthand changed his mind.

Then, suddenly, Lincoln was “a tremendous prospect” who could “run against the wind.” Lincoln even got Gillman to admit, “I was completely wrong.”

The Patriots didn’t have to look at Lincoln on film to know how effective he could play. The ass-kicking they were receiving at the hands and feet of Lincoln in the title game was proof enough.

On the third series of the game, the Patriots finally got the Chargers into a third-and-long. Boston knew Gillman was going to call for a pass because that’s what Gillman always did on third and long (and first and 10, on second and short, and on and on). This was why the Patriots had game-planned the way they had—to stop the ability of Rote to pass. The Patriots blitzed but kept four men in the secondary. Lowe went in motion and one of the defensive backs had to follow. Lincoln ran an inside trap, and he hit the hole right where that defensive back had been stationed. It went for 11 yards and a first down.

Perhaps that’s when Gillman knew there was no chance the Patriots could stop his team. On the next play, the Chargers called for a “Toss 78 Y-Man 0,” a pitch to Lowe running behind tackle Ron Mix. Patriots cornerback Bob Suci was the unfortunate soul who was blocked by Mix twice on the play—10 yards apart, mind you—and Lowe went around the end for a 58-yard touchdown. For San Diego, it was the third score in 10 plays, only three of which were passes.

The man in motion addition was only part of the game plan’s genius. It was also the way Gillman and his longtime line coach Joe Madro had devised at least three different ways to attack every hole at the line of scrimmage, meaning the team could run its base plays over and over again without any of them looking the same.

“Let’s say we were going to run off tackle with Mix leading,” assistant coach Tom Bass told Ron Jaworski for his 2010 book The Games That Changed the Games. “We could double-team block it and kick out with the fullback. That’s one way. Another would be for Ron to block down along with the tight end, then pull for the kick out with a guard. Or we could block down with the tight end and pull Mix for the kick out. It’s all the same play, going to the same area, but with three totally different looks. It was confusing as hell for the defense.”

After the game, Larry Eisenhauer admitted the Chargers had embarrassed the Patriots defense—and Eisenhauer clearly was not a man who embarrassed easily. What was even worse was that Boston had no idea what was coming and no idea how to stop it. The offense didn’t fare any better against San Diego’s defense, meaning the Patriots defense kept taking the field without getting any rest.

Still, Boston never abandoned their game plan. According to the calculations of Jaworski and his co-author, Greg Cosell of NFL Films, the Patriots blitzed on 14 of San Diego’s first 26 plays. On those 14 plays, San Diego averaged 14.6 yards gained. Still, the Patriots couldn’t stop themselves. They kept blitzing and blitzing and blitzing.

Though Gillman never let up on Boston—in fact, he tried two on-side kicks in the final minute of the game with his team leading by 41 points—he didn’t mind cutting his halftime speech short. At that point, he knew Boston had been flambéed, and since the always-entertaining Grambling marching band was playing halftime, Gillman stopped talking, walked out the door to the field and muttered, “I want to watch the band.”

In the second half, the Chargers continued stomping the Patriots all over the field, finishing with 51 points and 610 total yards. Lincoln carried the ball 13 times for 206 yards, caught seven passes for 123 yards, and scored two touchdowns (a performance that inspired the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray to write, “alone, it almost equaled the two-year rushing total of the German army in 1939–40.”).

“The 1963 AFL championship is a game any coach or fan should study to see what perfection is on a football field,” Bass said.

As the embarrassed Patriots trudged off the field following the destruction, linebacker Tommy Addison, the team captain, looked at Boston Globe reporter Will McDonough and said, “I’ve never been on my knees so much in my life. I got knocked down on every goddamn play.” Holovak—who had been dominated by Gillman’s wile at his Navy base practices and then by his coaching in the game—was reminded of the day 21 years earlier when, he, as Boston College captain, had been decimated by Holy Cross 55–12. After this latest embarrassment, there was nothing for Holovak to do but smile, shrug his shoulders and say, “We just got the hell beat out of us by a real fine football team.”

Nearly 40 years later, Mix thinks back to that day. He remembers the immense thrill he felt by how perfectly the game plan and the execution had come together. He marvels at something he never experienced before or since.

“Everything we did was perfect,” Mix said. “It was unusual. Sometimes some players—two or three or four players—have great games that result in the team victory. But in this instance, it was freakish in that everybody on the team had their greatest game ever up to that point. It was just amazing how we ran up the score.”

It also gave Gillman a pretty good idea.

George Halas had finished watching the Chargers dominant the Patriots 51–10 in the AFL championship game, and soon after the Chargers celebration had begun, he received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a La Jolla, California, businessman named Bob Smith, who introduced himself and said he was a Chargers fan. Smith asked Halas, by then in his 41st season coaching the Chicago Bears and coming off the 1963 NFL title-winning game, if he had seen the game (apparently, in those days, it wasn’t all that difficult to ring up a Hall of Famer and get him on the line).

Indeed, he had, Halas said. And he had been impressed.

Smith then asked how he would like to play the Chargers to determine which team was the best in pro football.

“A fine idea,” Halas said before disconnecting the call. “I’d very much like to play Sid’s team.”

Easy for Halas to say, of course, because it couldn’t ever happen. The AFL and the NFL wouldn’t merge for another three years, and the first Super Bowl—a title game between the best AFL team and the best NFL team—wouldn’t occur until January 1967. Safe and sound at home, Halas could say whatever he wanted about playing Gillman’s squad, as he knew he would never have to back up his statement.

But Gillman really wanted the game. Even though Gillman must have known it was an impossibility, he sent NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle a telegram the day after the victory, asking for Rozelle to schedule an immediate contest between the Bears and the Chargers. Gillman, in essence, wanted a Super Bowl before anybody knew what a Super Bowl was.

In the note, Gillman referenced the recent decision by Pope John XXIII to declare that Jews should not be presented to the world as rejected by God. Gillman, himself a Jew, pointed out to Rozelle, “Pope John was a great man because he recognized the ‘other league.’” Responded Rozelle soon after: “Yes. But it took 2,000 years.”

So, no Halas. No Bears. No worldwide acclaim for the Chargers. Instead, they had to be content with the $2,498.89 extra they received for the win and an AFL championship ring on which Gillman inscribed: “1963 AFL and World Champions.”

Said Gillman: “If anyone wants to dispute that claim, just let them play us.”

So many decades later, there’s only this reality. January 5, 1964 was Gillman’s day, and nothing—not the Patriots’ blitzers, not Lincoln’s immune system, and certainly not Halas—could take away his biggest triumph. The game was the culmination of Gillman and his offensive genius (the 610 yards was the most any of Gillman’s teams ever amassed). He needed this championship. He needed it so bad that he was willing to take a huge risk in making the passing game a secondary thought and temporarily reinventing his team in the process. He would do whatever it took to win, because that’s the kind of coach—and the kind of man—he was.

People think of Gillman as a passing guru—and there’s no question that he was—but the 1963 championship game raises interesting questions. Here was a game where the Chargers killed the Patriots with the run, mostly because the Patriots were expecting the pass.

Many years later, when Gillman was an assistant coach to Dick Vermeil with the Philadelphia Eagles, he used to tell Ron Jaworski during Eagles quarterback meetings, “You’ve got to be able to pass to be able to run. When a coach says he’s got to establish the run first, he’s full of shit.” And while the Eagles’ offensive line coaches went through the base running plays for that week, Gillman would wait until they left the room and exclaim, “I don’t know why we waste all that goddamn time trying to gain three yards.”

But in reality, without the rushing attack of Lincoln and without the man in motion by Lowe, decoying as a receiver, there’s no telling how the AFL championship game would have changed. Maybe the Patriots, who blitzed 47 percent of the time in that game, would have knocked out Tobin Rote. Maybe John Hadl wouldn’t have had the experience to run such a new offense in such a short period of time. Without Gillman’s reinvention, the Chargers wouldn’t have gained 352 yards and scored four touchdowns on those 28 Boston blitzes.

But Gillman had made the changes, and in the process, he had captured his elusive championship.

“I think it meant the world to him,” Lincoln said. “It had to have, because that stuff isn’t guaranteed. For him to make that commitment for all those years and all those things he brought to the table, it meant an awful lot to Sid.”

Gillman took immense pride in that game for the rest of his life. He needed to win on this day, in this game, and his team had performed spectacularly. His only son, Tom Gillman, remembers a magical day and a showcase of what his father was all about.

“That was the game,” Tom Gillman said, “that opened the eyes of other people.”

Fifty-two years after he took his first breath, Gillman, for the only time in his career, stood high atop the world of football and looked down at those who would worship at his feet in the years to come. He was a guru with a championship. And by God, he had earned every bit of it.