This past Sunday’s Super Bowl LV was a disappointment. Not only because my beloved Kansas City Chiefs lost, but because they played so poorly.
However, my Chiefs ended the 2020 season with a record of 16 wins and three losses. The best record in the NFL.
Certainly, it’s no comparison to last year’s championship run. And the February 7, 2021 game will never hold the vivid memories of another Chiefs loss from nearly 50 years ago. The heartbreak of Kansas City heartbreaks.
In a New York Times feature story penned by Robert Weintraub on Christmas Eve, 2012, Weintraub wrote the following:
Ed Podolak loves this time of year. Invariably, he is asked about his momentous game on Dec. 25, 1971, when he amassed 350 total yards, even though his Kansas City Chiefs lost in double overtime to the Miami Dolphins, 27-24, in the longest contest in N.F.L. history — 82 minutes and 40 seconds.
“I never get tired of talking about it,” Podolak told the New York Times.
For another former Chief, the Hall of Fame kicker Jan Stenerud, the 1971 divisional playoff game is not a cherished memory.
“Do you want to talk about my mother’s funeral, too?” Stenerud said when asked about the defeat. He hung up the phone, ending a brief interview. Stenerud missed two field goals that Christmas Day, and had another blocked, which probably cost the Chiefs a victory.
The game postponed Christmas dinners around the country as fans watched on television while the Chiefs and the Dolphins battled through the afternoon and into the evening.
“Everyone I knew in Miami told me they had to shut off their ovens to avoid ruining their Christmas turkeys,” said the former Dolphins linebacker Nick Buoniconti, who had 20 tackles that day.
Though they were hardly aware of it as the game went on and on (and on), the two teams, including a dozen future Hall of Famers, were involved in a contest of historical significance that went beyond its length. It was a game pitting a great team seeking a permanent place among the league’s elite against an up-and-coming squad eager for the same status. And it was perhaps the worst game of Stenerud’s career.
The game took place on an unseasonably warm day, with the temperature in the high 60s. It was also the last Chiefs contest at Municipal Stadium, a converted baseball park, which the team was leaving for Arrowhead Stadium the next season.
Nearly 46,000 fans were in attendance. The rest of the city had to make do listening on the radio or imagining the action; blackout rules at the time meant that the local NBC affiliate showed reruns of “Hee Haw” instead of the first home playoff game in Chiefs history.
The level of play turned as sloppy as the field, which was a quagmire in the unseasonable warmth. At one point, Buoniconti took his frustration out on Podolak. After a tackle, Buoniconti shoved Podolak’s face deep into the mud, hoping to get a rise, and perhaps a penalty, out of him.
“The only thing he said to me was, ‘Do you think this game will ever end?’” Buoniconti recalled.
Podolak said, “I was so tired I was operating totally on instinct.”
“I think that game had a lot of effect on our legacy,” Podolak said. “The 1971 team was better than the one that won the Super Bowl two years earlier. If we had beaten Miami, I think we would have won the Super Bowl, and then we’d be mentioned with the great teams of all time.”
Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium closed and was later demolished. The Chiefs new home, Arrowhead Stadium, opened in August, 1972. The Chiefs would not win an AFC West title again until 1993.
The Kansas City Chiefs. Synonymous with heartbreak. And wonderful memories!