A CHRISTMAS GAME TO REMEMBER

When you snuggle up before a warm hearth to watch this Friday night’s San Diego-Tennessee game, think about this: In the long 90-year history of the National Football League, there has been only one Christmas Day when postseason pro football was played. The figure is an oddity, in that a slew of playoff games once took place on either Christmas Eve or the day after Christmas, especially back in the days of 12- and 14-game regular-season schedules. Necessarily, that one occasion rates special attention. Thirty-eight years ago, two postseason divisional playoff games, one in each conference, were played on December 25, 1971. One of them instantly entered league annals as a classic.

While Dallas methodically defeated Minnesota 20‒12 outdoors in frigid Bloomington, Minn., in an NFC playoff encounter, the AFC Divisional Playoff confrontation that pitted the Kansas City Chiefs against the Miami Dolphins would turn out to be the longest game ever played in pro football history—82 minutes and 40 seconds, extending into two overtime quarters.

The final game ever played at Kansas City’s old Municipal Stadium featured an outstanding performance from Chiefs halfback Ed Podolak, who churned out 350 all-purpose yards—85 rushing, 110 receiving, and 155 on kick returns. The game was tied at the half (10‒10), tied after three quarters (17‒17), and tied after regulation at 24‒24. After the Dolphins knotted the game at 24‒all with 1:36 left in the fourth quarter, Podolak gathered in the ensuing kickoff and rattled off a 78-yard return to the Dolphins 22. But with 31 seconds remaining, Kansas City kicker Jan Stenerud pushed his 31-yard field-goal try to the right, and the game went into just the third sudden-death overtime game in NFL annals.

Both clubs missed field goal chances in the first overtime quarter. Stenerud’s attempt from 42 yards was blocked after a high snap and Miami’s Garo Yepremian failed from 52 yards out. Back then a team took possession at its own 20-yard line after an opponent’s missed field goal, not at the spot where it had been kicked as the rule exists today. Three minutes into the second overtime period, Miami started on its own 30 and ran five straight running plays from their Butch Cassidy (Jim Kiick) and the Sundance Kid (Larry Csonka) backfield, with Csonka’s 29-yard burst the key play. Seven minutes and forty seconds into the sixth quarter, Yepremian made good on a 37-yard field goal, and the longest game ended.

Stenerud could rightly be labeled the game’s goat, with his 31-yard miss near the end of regulation. Ironically, the Norwegian-born booter is the only pure kicker enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame to this day.

Miami went on to make the first of three straight Super Bowl appearances, a fine Christmas gift indeed. To the Chiefs’ future Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson, though, the afternoon felt more like the Grinch his mean old self had stolen Christmas from everyone in Kansas City: “It was a horrifying experience,” he said of playing in sudden death, “because one break is going to be the game.”

Alan Ross is the author of 32 books, including Away from the Ball: The NFL’s Off-the-Field Heroes. © Sportland 2009