DAWsOn dOes iT
The countdown continues as we look back at Len and the Chiefs in super Bowl iv
Joe Belock,
Len Dawson had something to prove in Super Bowl IV. The quarterback was an NFL reject, a former No. 1 draft pick who failed to make an impact in five seasons with the Steelers and Browns before being released. Dawson found stardom in the new American Football League and got his revenge, leading the Kansas City Chiefs to a 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the final game before the two leagues merged for the 1970 season.
Dawson went 12-for-17 for 142 yards and one TD to become the fourth straight quarterback to win Super Bowl MVP.
As Pat Summerall put it in the 1969 NFL highlight film, “Dawson represents the AFL’s climb to football equality, a fitting symbol for the merging of the two leagues.”
The Chiefs, who had knocked out the defending champion Jets at Shea in the divisional round then beat the Raiders for the final AFL title, came in as a 12-point underdog despite the AFL’s stunning victory by the Jets the year before. It was fitting that Chiefs owner and AFL founder Lamar Hunt, also an NFL reject who was denied a franchise, won the last AFL game.
The Chiefs had taken a beating in the first Super Bowl. But Hank Stram was ready this time in the first of 10 Super Bowls to be played in New Orleans. The innovative coach designed a short passing game that Dawson used to pick apart the Purple People Eaters en route to 16-0 halftime lead.
Like their mascot’s disastrous hot air balloon act before the game, the Vikings’ offense never got off the ground. Stram shifted Buck Buchanan to line up over Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff, and the bigger Buchanan dominated the five-time All-Pro. With the Viking running game stuffed for just 67 yards, Joe Kapp, the gritty Canadian football refugee who stepped in after Fran Tarkenton was traded to the Giants in 1967, was held to 183 yards with two interceptions.
Stram became the first coach to wear a wireless mike in the big game, and the highlight film of Super Bowl IV made his sideline routine more legendary than his Super Bowl game plan. Stram cajoled his team to “just keep matriculatin’ the ball down the field, boys!” He told everyone on the Chiefs sideline they were about to run the “65 toss power trap” before Mike Garrett took it into the end zone in the second quarter to make it 16-0.
Stram was constantly laughing, and yukking it up with the refs.
“I knew Hank was funny,” NFL Films’ Steve Sabol told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “But I never expected him to be that loose during a championship game. It was like having Henny Youngman coach a football team. Everything was a one-liner.”
Years later, Stram’s performance drew raves, as he said in 1986: “People still come up to me in airports and say ‘Hey, Coach, how about that 65 toss power trap play!’”