Bill Demory, a quarterback who found himself thrust into the spotlight for the New York Jets during the Joe Namath era, passed away on February 14 at the age of 74. According to an online obituary, Demory battled prostate cancer and Parkinson’s disease before his passing. His story is one of perseverance, seizing opportunity, and making the most of his time in the NFL.
Demory’s path to professional football wasn’t glamorous. Coming out of the University of Arizona, where he threw 28 touchdowns over three seasons, he wasn’t exactly a household name. But fate intervened when legendary Jets head coach Weeb Ewbank happened to see game film of Demory while at a general managers conference in Arizona. Intrigued, Ewbank decided to sign the young quarterback in 1973.
However, making an NFL roster was no easy task. Demory arrived at Jets training camp buried at the bottom of the quarterback depth chart—fifth string, to be exact. By his own admission, he wasn’t a superstar in college. “I was a marginal quarterback at Arizona and ended up being in the right place at the right time with the Jets,” he told the *Observer-Dispatch* in 2012.
But in football, as in life, circumstances change quickly. With inconsistent play from the quarterbacks ahead of him, Demory climbed to third string. Then, when Namath went down with an injury, Al Woodall took over as the starter, and Demory was promoted from the taxi squad to the team’s backup quarterback. When Woodall himself was injured, Demory was suddenly *the guy*.
In his first start, he led the Jets to a 9-7 victory over the New England Patriots. While he only completed one pass, that single throw set up the game-winning field goal. It wasn’t flashy, but he got the job done. Even Namath himself praised Demory’s steady performance. “I thought he did a good job of following the game plan,” Namath said at the time. “He didn’t turn the ball over and, in a game like this, you look for a young quarterback to make a bad handoff or mess up the snap. He did none of that.”
Demory would go on to start additional games against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos. However, his time in the NFL was brief. When the Jets released him in 1975, Ewbank personally reached out to teams around the league to see if anyone would take Demory on as an assistant coach. Unfortunately, no offers came.
But Demory’s journey didn’t end with football. He pursued graduate studies in economics at the University of Iowa and later became a professor at Central Arizona College, shaping young minds in the classroom after spending years in the huddle.
His story is a testament to hard work and resilience—a man who capitalized on his moment in the NFL and then built a meaningful career beyond it. While his time on the field may have been short-lived, his impact stretched far beyond football.
