Super Bowl IV

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Super Bowl IV was played on the 11th of January 1970, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Kansas City Chiefs had something to prove. Not just to fans, but to an entire league that had spent years being told it was second-rate. The American Football League was on the verge of merging with the NFL, and this game was its last chance to stand on equal footing. The Chiefs entered as 13-and-a-half-point underdogs, facing a Minnesota Vikings squad that had gone 12-2 in the regular season, outscored its opponents by 246 points, and fielded a defense so fearsome it had earned its own name: the Purple People Eaters. Almost nobody outside Kansas City believed the Chiefs could win. The Jets had pulled off an upset the year before, but most dismissed that too as a fluke. So here stood the AFL again, trying to convince a skeptical world that it belonged. What unfolded that afternoon in New Orleans was one of the most decisive performances in championship history.

• 2. Two Leagues, One Trophy

  ›

  The AFL-NFL merger had been coming for years, and Super Bowl IV was the last game played before it took full effect. The series stood at two wins apiece heading into New Orleans, but the NFL's superiority was treated as settled fact by most observers. The Vikings, who had scored 50 or more points in three separate regular-season games, entered as representatives of that assumed superiority. Kansas City hadn't even won their own division; they finished second in the AFL's Western Division behind the Oakland Raiders, who went 12-1-1. Critics called the Chiefs a backdoor entry into the playoffs. The AFL had expanded its 1969 postseason to four teams specifically to mirror the NFL structure before the merger, and Kansas City arrived as what was essentially the first wild card team to reach a Super Bowl. Len Dawson, the Chiefs' quarterback, had spent five seasons in the NFL as a backup before the AFL gave him a chance to start. His career resurrection in the younger league was, to many observers, evidence of its inferior competition rather than his talent. "The AFL saved my career," Dawson said. Proving that career meant something would require more than words.

• 3. Dawson's Impossible Week

  ›

  Five days before the Super Bowl, Dawson's name surfaced in connection with a federal gambling investigation in Detroit. He was eventually cleared of any charges, but the timing could not have been worse. Dawson described it as "beyond a doubt, the toughest week of my life", with lost sleep and broken concentration compounding an already enormous pressure. He had thrown more touchdown passes in his eight AFL seasons, 182, than any other professional quarterback during that stretch. But because many viewed the AFL as inferior, those numbers carried an asterisk in the public mind. His only previous Super Bowl appearance had ended in a 35-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I, a result that seemed to confirm every doubt about the league he played in. The gambling controversy added a fresh layer of scrutiny to a quarterback already treated as guilty of playing in the wrong league. What the pregame week could not foresee was what Dawson would produce under those conditions, or what coach Hank Stram would do with a microphone secretly hidden under his clothes.

• 4. Stram, Wired

  ›

  The night before the game, Ed Sabol of NFL Films met with Hank Stram and persuaded him to wear a hidden microphone during the contest, so that his sideline remarks could be recorded for the official Super Bowl IV film. It was the first time a head coach had been miked during a Super Bowl, though Stram had worn one previously in a regular-season home game against the Boston Patriots. Sabol's top sound man, Jack Newman, who had previously wired Vince Lombardi during a playoff game, concealed the microphone on Stram and monitored audio throughout. Some Chiefs players noticed something was off. Linebacker Willie Lanier said Stram "seemed somewhat more animated". Dawson said he "wondered why he was being so joyous and chattering all the time". Halfback Mike Garrett recalled that Stram "was in rare form and pretty glib". The microphone awareness may have had a direct effect on the game itself. Stram called plays and communicated them to Dawson, even though Dawson had been calling between 80 and 90 percent of the plays himself all season. Stram's audible enthusiasm when the Chiefs scored on the 65 Toss Power Trap play became one of the most memorable moments in football film history: "65 Toss Power Trap! Yaaa-haaa-haaa-ha-ha!" The resulting film ranks among the most popular of all official Super Bowl highlights.

• 5. Chess Match on the Field

  ›

  Stram had studied the Vikings carefully and identified two structural mismatches. Minnesota's secondary could play deep because defensive ends Carl Eller and Jim Marshall were so effective at disrupting short passes. Stram's answer was to double-team both ends, allowing Dawson to complete short passes without interference. Neither Marshall nor Eller knocked down a single pass. The second mismatch was even more telling. The Vikings' inside running game depended on center Mick Tingelhoff, who weighed 235 pounds, blocking interior linebackers. Stram stationed 285-pound Buck Buchanan or 295-pound Curley Culp directly across from Tingelhoff. Minnesota safety Karl Kassulke said afterward, "I think the main thing, due to their different sets, was our moment of hesitation." The Vikings rushed for only two first downs on the ground. A 48-yard field goal by Jan Stenerud in the first quarter set a Super Bowl record that would stand for 24 years. Stenerud, one of the first soccer-style placekickers in professional football, was singled out by Dawson as "a major factor". The Vikings were unprepared for him. By halftime, Kansas City led 16-0, the largest halftime margin in Super Bowl history to that point. Minnesota had rushed for only 24 yards in the first half and failed to convert any of five third-down attempts.

• 6. Taylor Ends the Debate

  ›

  Otis Taylor's 46-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter closed any remaining question about the outcome. He caught a short pass from Dawson at the Minnesota 41-yard line, broke tackles by cornerback Earsell Mackbee and safety Karl Kassulke, and ran down the sideline to make it 23-7. The play came after Taylor had already recorded six catches for 81 total yards, and it broke the backs of a Vikings team that had looked increasingly overmatched. Minnesota managed only 67 total rushing yards in the game. In the NFL Championship Game the week before, Dave Osborn had rushed for 108 yards and Joe Kapp for 57. In Super Bowl IV, the two combined for 24 rushing yards. Kapp himself had to be helped off the field in the fourth quarter after being strip-sacked by Aaron Brown. The Vikings committed five turnovers in total. Kansas City's cornerback Emmitt Thomas intercepted three passes and defensive back Johnny Robinson ended the game as well. Kassulke summarized it simply: "We made more mental mistakes in one game than we did in one season." The final score of 23-7 gave the AFL its second Super Bowl victory and squared the pre-merger series at two games apiece.

• 7. What the Victory Left Behind

  ›

  The Kansas City parade the day after the game drew more than 150,000 people downtown. It was the first major professional sports championship won by a Kansas City-based team. The game itself was almost lost to history: CBS erased the original videotape a few days after the broadcast, as it had done with Super Bowls I and II. For many years the only surviving recording came from the CBC archives, preserved because of Bud Grant's history coaching in the Canadian Football League. CBC transferred the footage to black-and-white film using a kinescope process. A color videotape covering the first three quarters and part of the fourth was discovered in 2023 and is now publicly available. Dawson was named Super Bowl MVP, the fourth consecutive winning quarterback to receive the honor. Fifty years after Super Bowl IV, a handful of players from that Chiefs team attended the parade celebrating the Super Bowl LIV champion Kansas City Chiefs, closing a gap between two eras of the same franchise. The Chiefs would not appear in another Super Bowl between those two wins.