More than 48 years later, the game still stands as the longest ever played in the NFL.
Looking back, it is surprising to see that when Miami Dolphins placekicker Garo Yepremian made the winning field goal 7:40 into the second overtime period, the actual time when gloom engulfed Kansas City was 6:21 p.m., less than 3½ hours after the game had kicked off. It was an era of fewer passes and fewer commercials.
That Christmas Day in 1971 was the beginning of almost a half-century of heartache for me and all the other Chiefs fans in Kansas City.
Little did we know that awful day — most remembered by Chiefs placekicker Jan Stenerud missing a potentially game-winning chip shot in regulation — would deliver a sports curse to rival those of baseball’s Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs.
Time and again after that year, the Chiefs would see their seasons end with the kinds of defeats that left me replaying the game over and over in my head.
Because the 1971 playoff contest was blacked out on local TV stations, my father took me that Christmas afternoon to a relative’s house located far enough outside of Kansas City and with a tall enough aerial antenna that it picked up the game, though fuzzy, from another city.
Kansas City had arguably an even better team in 1971 than the one that took home the Super Bowl trophy two seasons earlier. Miami, though, was also on the cusp of greatness, and a year later would post still the only undefeated, untied season in NFL history.
A cruel joke made the rounds in Kansas City after that crushing loss to the Dolphins:
“Did you hear Jan Stenerud had tried to kill himself but failed?”
“No, what happened?”
“He missed when he tried to kick the stool out from under his feet.”
Stenerud, a Norwegian ski jumper and one of the first soccer-style kickers, had one of the worst games of his otherwise Hall of Fame career that day. He missed one other field goal in regulation and had one blocked in the first overtime.
Decades later, he still did not like to talk about the defeat. When he was contacted in 2012 by a New York Times reporter doing a retrospective on the game, Stenerud said, “Do you want to talk about my mother’s funeral, too?” before hanging up.
It would be 15 years before the Chiefs made the playoffs again, but even as they started to have renewed success in the regular season, they would get knocked out of the playoffs in the most bizarre ways.
In 1996, they entered the playoffs as the top seed but lost 10-7 at home to heavily underdog Indianapolis on a miserably cold day that iced kicker Lin Elliott’s foot. Elliott, who had won a Super Bowl with Dallas three seasons earlier, missed three field goals against the Colts. He would never play for the Chiefs again, and a Kansas City sports columnist to this day still calls him “the Kicker Who Shall Not Be Named.”
The crazy playoff losses continued under head coach Andy Reid following his arrival in 2012. One season ended with the Chiefs blowing a 28-point second-half lead on the road; the opposition’s comeback was jump-started when its quarterback scored a touchdown after recovering in midair his own fumble. Another year, the opposing quarterback threw a touchdown pass to himself to upset the Chiefs at home.
The jinx reached its climax last year when a game-clinching interception that would have sent the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl since 1970 was nullified because a Chiefs defender lined up a fingernail offside in the overtime loss to New England.
Three weeks ago, when Kansas City fell behind 24-0 to Houston, it seemed certain that another year of high expectations would be painfully dashed in the postseason — until the script flipped completely.
There have been bigger comebacks in NFL history, but none so fast and so overwhelming. In less than a quarter, the Chiefs overtook the Texans and eventually won by 20. The next week’s rally from 10 points down against Tennessee to advance Kansas City to Sunday’s Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers was anticlimactic by comparison.
Most teams don’t win a championship without a lot of skill and a few breaks.
The Chiefs have an other-worldly quarterback in Patrick Mahomes, who hopefully won’t be ruined by all the adulation he is receiving. The defense, a sieve the previous couple of years, is playing well enough so that the offense doesn’t have to score every time it has the ball.
And a franchise that has been luckless for so long has finally caught some. A dislocated kneecap at midseason that could have sidelined Mahomes for the rest of the year popped back just right so that he only missed a couple of games. The hapless Miami Dolphins upset New England on the final weekend of the regular season, sparing Kansas City from having to travel to unfriendly Foxborough, Massachusetts. And Tennessee ousted from the playoffs the Baltimore Ravens, the team that would have given the Chiefs the most trouble, especially on the road.
It feels, after 50 years of frustration, this is finally Kansas City’s season to win it all. If it’s not, though, I’ll be OK with it.
I may never forget that historic defeat in 1971 to Miami. But now I’ll also never forget that historic comeback in 2020 against Houston.
The football gods have finally evened the scales. Everything else is gravy.
• Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
