Team History: Hunt was a pivotal figure in the founding of the AFL and the Chiefs

Team History: Hunt was a pivotal figure in the founding of the AFL and the Chiefs

Although the American Football League lasted only 10 seasons, the league impressed the NFL enough to merge their franchises together in 1970. The main proponent of that union was also the man who was responsible for starting the AFL, along with one of its most successful teams.

 Lamar Hunt was the son of H. L. Hunt, who owned the rights to most of the East Texas Oil Field, which has been the highest yielding oil property in the United States since its discovery in 1930.

Instead of following his father into the oil business, Hunt followed his love of sports. He was a bench player with the Southern Methodist University football team, and his interest grew after watching the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Giants and Colts that was called “The Greatest Game Ever Played.”

Hunt tried to buy the Chicago Cardinals but owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner only agreed to sell him a 20 percent share. From there, Hunt’s thoughts turned to starting a rival league. He found others, like Houston-based oil tycoon Bud Adams, Denver baseball team owner Bob Howsam and Max Winter, who owned the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers and was interested starting a football team.

The new league expanded to eight cities and began to play in 1960. Oakland replaced the Minnesota entry because Winter and his partners had been given a franchise in the NFL. Hunt’s team played in his hometown and was called the Dallas Texans. After being turned down by Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson and New York Giants assistant coach Tom Landry, the Texans hired Hank Stram, a little-known assistant at the University of Miami, who had been a coach at SMU when Hunt was there.

Despite going head-to-head for fan support in Dallas with the NFL’s expansion team the Cowboys, the Texans went 8-6 in the AFL’s 1960 inaugural season. The team was led by wide receiver Chris Burford and Abner Haynes, an All-Pro running back who led the AFL in rushing with 875 yards and nine touchdowns.

Dallas fell to 6-8 in its second season, but the team had started to amass some talented players. The Texans brought in tight end Fred Arbanas, tackle Jim Tyrer and linebacker Jerry Mays, as well as E.J. Holub, a 1961 draft pick who was both a center and a linebacker and who chose the Texans over the NFL’s Colts.

In 1962, the team drafted running back Curtis McClinton, who would go on to become the AFL’s Rookie of the Year and create a formidable running attack with Haynes. However, the move that proved the most crucial to Dallas ’ success was the signing of quarterback Len Dawson, who became expendable in Cleveland after the Browns brought in Milt Plum. Dawson was reunited with Stram, who was an assistant coach at Purdue before his time in Miami.

The Texans went 11-3, won the West and gained a spot in the AFL Championship Game. Hunt’s team faced off against the Houston Oilers, owned by fellow oil tycoon Adams, and winners of the league’s first two championships.

Dallas jumped out to a 17-0 halftime lead behind two Haynes touchdowns, one on a run and another on a pass from Dawson. The Texans started playing conservatively and Houston chipped away, eventually tying the score on a Charlie Tolar run. Dallas blocked a late field goal attempt by George Blanda to send the game to overtime.

The first overtime ended when Texans defensive end Bill Hull intercepted Blanda near midfield. Jack Spikes, the third man in the talented backfield, did most of the work for his team to set up Tommy Brooker’s 25-yard field to give Dallas its first championship.

Despite the success, it was evident Dallas could not support two professional football franchises. Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City and a name the team contest produced the Chiefs nickname.

After problems arose from the AFL actively trying to recruit players off NFL rosters in 1966, Hunt started working with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to broker the AFL-NFL merger, which would create one league. Under the agreement, there would be a combined draft for both leagues, the two champions would play a title game at the end of the season, and the AFL agreed to pay the NFL $18 million in indemnities over the next 20 years. This last concession bothered Raiders owner Al Davis so much, he resigned as AFL Commissioner after only three months.  

Behind Dawson, running backs McClinton and Mike Garrett and receivers Burford and Otis Taylor, the Chiefs went 11-2-1 in 1966. Dawson threw two touchdown passes and Garrett ran for two scores in a 30-7 win over the Bills in the AFL Championship Game.

Hunt was the first to use the term “Super Bowl” to describe the AFL-NFL Championship Game at the merger meetings. He claimed it was because he was thinking about his children playing with a Super Ball, a popular toy of the time. Although the AFL-NFL Championship Game was contest’s official name, reporters liked Hunt’s phrase instead, and within two years, the name stuck.

The Chiefs and the NFL’s best, the Green Bay Packers squared off on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The teams traded early touchdown passes, and a Jim Taylor rushing score gave the Packers a 14-10 halftime lead. Green Bay controlled the second half, with game MVP Bart Starr throwing his second touchdown pass and Elijah Pitts adding two more on the ground in the 35-10 victory.

Kansas City wouldn’t take long to get back to the Super Bowl. A 12-2 mark in 1968 ended with a 41-6 thrashing by the Raiders, but the Chiefs got their revenge the following season. They went 11-3, edged the previous Super Bowl champion Jets in the Division round, then toppled Oakland 17-7 in the final AFL Championship game.

The Chiefs helped Hunt bring professional football full circle. He started a league that the NFL took for granted in its early days, but his team won the fourth and final championship game before the merger, giving each league two titles. Dawson earned MVP honors with 142 yards and a touchdown, and the Kansas City defense held Minnesota to 67 yards rushing in a 23-7 victory.

After the merger, the Chiefs had some early success. The 1971 squad sent 11 players to the Pro Bowl, including Taylor, who had a league-leading 1,110 receiving yards. However, the 10-3-1 season ended in disappointment. Despite a playoff game record 350 yards from Ed Podolak (85 rushing, 110 receiving and 155 in returns), Kansas City lost. Garo Yepremian kicked a 37-yard field goal 7:40 into the second overtime to give Miami a 27-24 win in the longest game in NFL history.

The Chiefs went into a freefall after the loss, making the playoffs just once over the next 18 seasons. Most of the players who had made the team successful began to retire in the mid-1970s, and Stram was let go in 1975 after a 124-76-10 record in 15 seasons.

Paul Wiggin, a defensive line coach with the 49ers who had been a star defensive end with the Browns, struggled following Stram. The team found moderate success under Marv Levy, the former coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League, but did not make the postseason. John Mackovic, a Cowboys quarterback coach who took over after Levy was fired in 1983, led the Chiefs to the playoffs three years later.

Despite a 10-6 mark behind quarterback Bill Kenney and a receiving corps that included Stephone Paige, Henry Marshall, and Carlos Carson, Kansas City fell 35-15 to the New York Jets in the Wild Card game, and Mackovic was fired a few days later, with Hunt citing a lack of chemistry. 

Two failed seasons under Frank Gansz led to new team president and general manager Carl Peterson hiring Marty Schottenheimer as head coach. Schottenheimer led the Browns to the AFC Championship Game twice in five seasons before moving on to Kansas City in 1989. The Chiefs also drafted linebacker Derrick Thomas and paired him with defensive end Neil Smith to create one of the NFL’s best pass-rushing tandems.

The Chiefs had a winning record in nine out of 10 seasons under Schottenheimer, and the club reached the postseason seven times in that span. The team used “MartyBall,” an offensive system which focused on the run and short passing. Running backs Christian Okoye, Barry Word and Marcus Allen set the pace and took pressure off aging quarterbacks Steve DeBerg, Dave Krieg and Joe Montana.

While “MartyBall” led to plenty of regular season success, the Chiefs failed to get far in the playoffs. The team went just 3-7 in the postseason under Schottenheimer, including Division round losses in 1995 and ’97 after going 13-3 and earning the top seed in the AFC. Kansas City’s best season came in 1993 when an overtime win over Pittsburgh and a road win over Houston resulted in a trip to the AFC Championship Game. Jim Kelly and Buffalo proved too much, winning 30-13 to go to their fourth straight Super Bowl.

Schottenheimer resigned after a 7-9 record in 1998, and the team was inconsistent in two seasons under his replacement, former defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham. On top of that, Thomas got in an automobile accident in a snowstorm on the way to the airport in early 2000 and later died from his injuries.

Kansas City turned to 64-year-old Dick Vermeil for its next head coach. Vermeil retired after leading the “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams to a win over the Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV but came back after one year off.

The Chiefs made the playoffs just three times in 15 seasons after Schottenheimer left, including once under Vermeil. In 2003, the team matched its best record at 13-3 behind 4,000-yard passer Trent Green, an all-time great tight end in Tony Gonzalez, one of the league’s best kick returners in Dante Hall, as well as Priest Holmes, who set a single-season record (since broken) with 27 rushing touchdowns. Holmes and Hall both scored twice, but Kansas City fell to Indianapolis, 38-31, in the Division round.

The team lost its innovative and influential owner when Lamar Hunt died of complications from prostate cancer in December 2006. His wife and four children share ownership of the Chiefs, but son Clark is CEO and team representative at NFL meetings.

After coaching stints by Herman Edwards, Todd Haley, and Romeo Crennel, the Chiefs hired former Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid in 2013. Behind quarterback Alex Smith, running backs Jamaal Charles and Kareem Hunt, wide receiver Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce, Kansas City has been to the postseason five times under Reid.

Smith was sent to the Redskins before the 2018 season, but the trade allowed for the emergence of Patrick Mahomes, a former first-round pick and the son of major league pitcher Pat Mahomes. The younger Mahomes threw for 5,097 yards and a league-leading 50 touchdowns. Hunt was released in November after the video surfaced of an altercation with a woman in a hotel, but the Chiefs went 12-4 and made it all the way to the AFC Championship Game, where they fell at home to the Patriots in overtime. Before the 2019 season, Hill was investigated for domestic and child abuse-related issues and suspended indefinitely by the team.

Mahomes, Kelce and Sammy Watkins return this season, and they will be joined by running back Carlos Hyde. Cornerback Bashaud Breeland and safety Tyrann Mathieu will try and help a defense that was 31st against the pass. Kansas City also made a trade with Seattle before the draft to acquire defensive end Frank Clark, who had 13 sacks last year.

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-By: Kevin Rakas