Len Dawson has passed - RIP

[Al Bundy]

https://kmbc.com/article/len-dawson-...at-87/40943140

"He loved Kansas City and no matter where his travels took him, he could not wait to return home."

Rest well, Len. ❤️

Len Dawson has died at the age of 87: https://t.co/rRdEugmMD9 pic.twitter.com/cJfMwKtpon

— KMBC (@kmbc) August 24, 2022

https://www.chiefs.com/news/chiefs-m...4l3P21ZulRpgwc

Chiefs Mourn the Passing of Franchise Legend Len Dawson
Aug 24, 2022 at 07:47 AM

The Kansas City Chiefs are saddened to share the passing of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, Chiefs legend and Kansas City icon, Len Dawson.

"My family and I are heartbroken. Len Dawson is synonymous with the Kansas City Chiefs. Len embraced and came to embody Kansas City and the people that call it home. You would be hard-pressed to find a player who had a bigger impact in shaping the organization as we know it today than Len Dawson did," Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt said. "I admired Len my entire life – first as a Hall of Fame player on the field, and later as he transitioned into a successful broadcasting career. Throughout his remarkable career, Len made it a priority to give back to the community that he loved. The franchise has lost a true legend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Linda and his family."

Dawson was the heart and soul of the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs franchise during his illustrious14-year Chiefs career, helping make the franchise one of professional football's premier teams while becoming one of the game's elite passers.

Under the leadership of PFHOF Head Coach Hank Stram, who brought Dawson to the Texans/Chiefs franchise in 1962, Dawson's Chiefs were perennial contenders and won American Football League Championships in 1962, 1966 and 1969. He earned the Most Valuable Player award for Super Bowl IV when he directed Kansas City to a 23-7 win over the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings. Dawson won the AFL passing title four times and still holds the franchise's career records for pass attempts (3,696), completions (2,115), passing yards (28,507) and touchdowns (237).

He was named to six AFL All-Star teams and one Pro Bowl squad, and also earned AFL Player of the Year honors for the 1962 season. Dawson started 158 regular season games for Kansas City, the most of any quarterback in franchise history. He led the AFL in passing four different seasons (1962, 1964, 1966 and 1968), pacing the AFL in completion percentage eight times, including a string of six-straight seasons from 1964-69.

Dawson was recognized as the 1973 NFL Man of the Year, one of five Chiefs players to ever earn the honor. He retired from professional football on May 1, 1976. He was enshrined into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1979 and was immortalized at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1987. He was also enshrined in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996.

Dawson enjoyed an equally legendary broadcasting career that began during his playing days. In 1966 he served as a sports anchor with KMBC Radio and as sports director for KMBC-TV while serving as the club's signal caller. Following his retirement from professional football after the 1975 season, Dawson joined NBC and served as a color analyst on NFL games until 1982. He then joined the Chiefs Radio Network as a color commentator in 1984, serving on the team's radio crew for 35 years. While working NFL games for NBC, Dawson embarked on what would become a 24-year run that spanned four decades (1977-2001) as the host of HBO's popular "Inside the NFL," cable television's longest-running series and the first NFL-related program to air on cable.

For his contributions to broadcasting, Dawson was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the recipient of the Hall's Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award in 2012. He became just the third individual in professional football history to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a broadcaster, joining Dan Dierdorf and Frank Gifford.

In 2014, Dawson was honored with the Lamar Hunt Award for Professional Football at the 44th Annual NFL 101 Awards, recognizing his contributions both on and off the field that helped shape the National Football League into the preeminent professional sports league in America. In 2017, the club renamed the television broadcast booth inside GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium the Len Dawson Broadcast Booth in honor of Dawson's accomplishments both on the field and as a broadcaster.

Dawson began his professional career as a first-round draft pick of the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers in 1957. He went on to land with Cleveland in 1960 but was cut by the Browns prior to the 1962 season, at which point he was signed by the Dallas Texans as a free agent on July 2, 1962. In total he spent 19 years as a quarterback in the NFL/AFL.

The Alliance, Ohio, native attended Purdue University where he was a three-year starter at quarterback for the Boilermakers (1954-56) and ended his career as the university's leader in career passing yards and touchdown passes.

[siberian khatru]

Joe Posnanski on Lenny the Cool:

Spoiler!

A FEW WORDS

Lenny the Cool
6 hr ago

Here, in the moments after losing my friend, I could tell you a hundred stories about Len Dawson. I could tell you about the time he got locked in a stadium with Howard Cosell. I could tell you about the time in college, at Purdue, when he was playing defensive back, and he tried to tackle Ohio State’s bruising running back Bobby Watkins, and he woke up a little while later thinking that defense wasn’t for him.

I could tell you they called him Lenny the Cool, but they called him the Golden Boy back at Purdue, before anyone gave that nickname to Paul Hornung. I could tell you about the time in 1948 when he stood outside a bar in Alliance, Ohio, and watched Cleveland’s Satchel Paige pitch in the World Series on the only black-and-white television in town, and how he cherished that memory as much as he cherished the victory in Super Bowl IV. I could tell you about the psychic who said his stars were aligned before Super Bowl IV. And they were.

I could tell you that he was the seventh son of a seventh son, and he took that seriously. “It all comes down to that,” he would say. “I’ve been blessed.”

I could tell you that he wanted to be a baseball player, not a football player; he loved talking about how he might have been a major league second baseman if things had played out differently. I could tell you that he was the first-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers and was, for a time, a backup to a very old Bobby Layne.

“He had to be at least 73,” Lenny said. “I didn’t learn much about football from Bobby. But I picked up every one of his bad habits.”

I could tell you that the Steelers gave up on him, and he went to Cleveland to play for his hero, Paul Brown. Well, no, he didn’t actually play. In his first five seasons with Pittsburgh and Cleveland, he started two games. The Browns released him. I could tell you that the odds of a 27-year-old NFL washout becoming a Hall of Famer and a football icon are much closer to none than slim.

“Ah,” Lenny would say then, “but I’m the seventh son of a seventh son.”

I could tell you how he joined the Dallas Texans of the brand-new American Football League — he only got the chance because the Texans’ coach was Hank Stram, Dawson’s favorite assistant coach at Purdue — and how over the next few years Dawson and Stram helped reinvent the quarterback position.

In a time of mad bombers, Dawson played quarterback with the precision of a watchmaker. He led the AFL in completion percentage pretty much every year. He led the AFL in touchdown percentage pretty much every year. He led the AFL in quarterback rating pretty much every year. He led the Chiefs to Super Bowls I and IV, with them winning IV when his stars were aligned.

For much of that time, he was also a sports broadcaster in Kansas City. On Dec. 25, 1971, the Kansas City Chiefs lost a soul-crushing, double-overtime playoff game to the Miami Dolphins — it remains the longest game in NFL history. Dawson was the Chiefs’ quarterback in that game. And when it ended, he put on a suit and did the sports report for KMBC television in Kansas City. “One of the toughest things I’ve ever done,” he said. “But I didn’t stutter.”

Yes, I could tell you about Lenny’s football pet peeves — quarterbacks who throw into double-coverage, teams that waste timeouts, quarterbacks who take a sack rather than throwing the ball away. And I could tell you about football things that impressed him — running backs who fearlessly hit the hole, quarterbacks who look off the safety and, mostly, players who so clearly love playing the game.

Most of all I could tell you how cool he was, always, the coolest guy in the room. It’s a coolness that crosses the years. I mean, just look at this photograph:



Dawson lines up the Chiefs in the choir huddle during Super Bowl IV. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

Has there ever been a cooler huddle than the Chiefs’ choir huddle? Has there ever been a cooler quarterback in the middle of it, all eyes on him? He just had that something, that aura, that flair, that spirit …

“Seventh son of a seventh son,” he’d remind you.

But, if you’ll permit me, on this sad day as we remember the great Len Dawson, who died today at 87, I’d like to tell a personal story.

As a rule, I am firmly against April Fools’ Day gags. They are mostly terrible, often cruel, and frankly it feels like every day is April Fools’ in our current world. But I did come up with one April Fools’ Day column that I really wanted to write. It was 2001 in Kansas City. The Chiefs were coming off a dismal season. They fired the coach. Their quarterback, Elvis Grbac, had a 20 percent approval rating in town at best, and soon he left for Baltimore. It was looking pretty bleak.

And so I called Lenny with an idea. What would he think if I wrote an April Fools’ Day column about him making a comeback at age 65?

“Let’s do it,” he said without hesitation.

And so we did it — on April 1, 2001, I wrote a column breaking the news that Len Dawson would come to training camp in River Falls, Wisc., with the intention of winning the starting quarterback job.

“These days, with the new rules,” Dawson told me, “all you need to do is be an accurate thrower. I could always do that.”

“There aren’t that many quarterbacks around,” he continued. “They’re looking at who? Trent Dilfer? Tony Banks? They are just looking for a warm body.”

“Hey if Michael Jordan can think about coming back,” he added, “well, why not me?”

“And hey,” he concluded, “I’ve had fewer concussions than Troy Aikman.”

And he just kept on going. He said that part of the deal he’d made with the Chiefs was that he would call his own plays. He talked about how much he was looking forward to throwing to Tony Gonzalez. It was incredible. It was hilarious. Our star photographer, John Sleezer, got a photo of Lenny with a single-bar helmet. The headline was, “Here Comes Len Dawson to the Rescue.” It ended up being one of the most beloved columns I wrote in Kansas City; people still mention it to me now and then.

“I’m telling you,” Lenny said, “it just comes down to throwing accurate passes. If you can throw accurate, you put up a lot of numbers … I’ve always wanted to see what I could do with these new rules.”

For years after that, Lenny and I would laugh about that column. He said a couple of friends didn’t make it to the end—for the big reveal—and called to ask if he was serious about coming back. I got a couple of letters along those lines, too.

“You know,” he said to me one day, “I really do think I could have been a good quarterback with all the new rules. I mean, why not? Better protection. More receivers. All you have to be able to do is make quick decisions and throw accurately. That was my whole game.”

“Do you think you would have preferred playing today?” I asked. He thought about it.

“Nah,” he said. “I mean, the money’s better. But I think we had more fun.”

[Bump]

damn RIP, always enjoyed listening to him.

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by Hog's Gone Fishin

Mahomes kept his word. I am glad Lenny got to see it.

[RedinTexas]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

Mahomes kept his word. I am glad Lenny got to see it.

Somebody needs to capture that part of Lenny coming off the field at the end of the Super Bowl to meet Hank and the others who have passed with Hank saying "Nice going Leonard."

[srvy]

Been a sad day today and really haven't handled the news well Lenny was such an Icon to me. I felt nearly as bad as I did losing my father in 2006 and my sister then mother in 2021.

Len put what was jokingly considered a cowtown on the map the Alliance Ohio Lad who became an adopted Kansas Citian. Now the younger generation has what us kids of the 60s and 70s had. Lenny was our pride and joy, and you have your legend in Patrick Mahomes now. Lenny will be watching it from above.

This fellow Dad filmed in color Superbowl I see any similarity to Patrick?

My grandpa was at Super Bowl I with his 8mm film camera and saw Len Dawson play. Wanted to share some of his footage today

RIP Len Dawson pic.twitter.com/oMy4xLrlUr

— Sam Lutz (@SamShazam_) August 24, 2022

[BlackHelicopters]

RIP Lenny the Cool

[O.city]

Len Dawson was truly ahead of his time. pic.twitter.com/HrP2Qx6fTZ

— Jarrett Sutton (@JarrettTSutton) August 25, 2022

[Hammock Parties]

The pride of Alliance, Ohio he often credited his good fortune to being the seventh son of a seventh son.

Stram resurrected his career as Lenny led the Dallas Texans to the 1962 AFL Championship

— Pete Moris (@PeteMoris) August 25, 2022

His photographic memory of play calls, protections, & all the intricate details of decades-old games was remarkable.

A trailblazing broadcaster, he began his TV career while still playing QB for Kansas City

— Pete Moris (@PeteMoris) August 25, 2022

And when you put Leonard Ray Dawson in the radio booth with @mitchholthus … Well, those broadcasts were just magic!

Thanks for your friendship & kindness … Godspeed 16 pic.twitter.com/hjHXwALBi5

— Pete Moris (@PeteMoris) August 25, 2022

[Mr. Kotter]

RIP, Lenny.

[poolboy]

Lenny's Lounge great job mods..much respect⁵

[Bowser]

"Delay of game....offense......Number 16"

Absolutely. Perfect.

[luv]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

Please, please, please let Mahomes and the offense huddle up like this on their first offensive possession tomorrow night.

Woohoo!

[HC_Chief]

RIP Lenny the Cool
I loved listening to Len call Chiefs games, and loved him repping KC every chance he got. The 90s "Inside the NFL" on HBO was amazing. Lenny + NFL Films were incredible, and I feel blessed to have been able to witness them.
Len Dawson is a KC legacy. Legendary. KC loves you, Lenny! Always will.

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by srvy

Been a sad day today and really haven't handled the news well Lenny was such an Icon to me. I felt nearly as bad as I did losing my father in 2006 and my sister then mother in 2021.

Len put what was jokingly considered a cowtown on the map the Alliance Ohio Lad who became an adopted Kansas Citian. Now the younger generation has what us kids of the 60s and 70s had. Lenny was our pride and joy, and you have your legend in Patrick Mahomes now. Lenny will be watching it from above.

This fellow Dad filmed in color Superbowl I see any similarity to Patrick?

My grandpa was at Super Bowl I with his 8mm film camera and saw Len Dawson play. Wanted to share some of his footage today

RIP Len Dawson pic.twitter.com/oMy4xLrlUr

— Sam Lutz (@SamShazam_) August 24, 2022

That footage and the story behind it it pretty amazing. A real treasure.

[LongSufferingToady]

My first sports hero, and I would argue still the best. RIP Lenny. You were great!