The Chief Who Could : Kenney Came From Nowhere and Waited a Long Time to Prove He Belonged

The Raiders will start an unknown quarterback Sunday if Marc Wilson can’t make it. That would make it a pair of them, since the Kansas City Chiefs will be starting the greatest unknown of them all.

The Raiders may go with rookie Rusty Hilger, who at least attended school somewhere on the map, if the farther reaches of it. He went to Oklahoma State in picturesque Stillwater, where football’s popularity is challenged only by local rattlesnake festivals.

Hilger was a No. 6 draft pick, which is on the low side but is lordly compared to No. 12, where Bill Kenney went. Kenney is every scout’s nightmare, the one every team in the NFL had at least 12 shots at and missed. Compute that.

He has since become the fifth quarterback ever to pass for 4,000 yards in a season, has played in a Pro Bowl and is one of the keys to the Chiefs’ renaissance.

Three weeks ago, Kenney picked on the Raiders for 259 yards and a pair of touchdowns in Kansas City’s 36-20 win. The upstart Chiefs now lead the AFC West with a 3-1 record. Counting last season’s finish, they’re 6-1 in their last seven games.

How did a quarterback like this escape the watchful eye of Al Davis and everyone else?

Simple:

--Some players fall through the cracks.

--Some are unlucky.

Kenney was both.

As a collegian, he developed the habit of breaking bones in his throwing hand on the helmets of oncoming rushers. He did that twice before his 21st birthday.

When he was healthy, his coaches couldn’t decide whether he was a tight end or a quarterback.

A graduate of San Clemente High School, where he was a quarterback, he did stints at Arizona State, where he was a tight end, and Saddleback Junior College, where he went to play quarterback again while awaiting another transfer, to Cal.

A rule change on transfers scotched that one. He wound up at UNC, which does not stand for University of North Carolina, but University of Northern Colorado. You know, the big noise from Greeley?

And even there, after migrating all over the western U.S. looking for a gig, he was still a tight end as a junior. It was only as a senior that he finally became a genuine college quarterback.

How’d he do? His future promise must have finally been in evidence by then.

“Nah,” said Kenney from Kansas City. “We were like 3-6. I completed like 45% of my passes. But I was a big kid (6-4, 210). I could throw the ball. I was intelligent.

“Of course, I had pro aspirations. I didn’t know if I could play but I had aspirations. It wasn’t like I had to make pro football. If I got a chance, I got a chance. If I got lucky, I got lucky.”

What happened to him could be considered lucky only in the broadest sense.

First, there was his career with the Miami Dolphins. It lasted almost five weeks.

“I was the second-to-the last man picked in the (1978) draft, 333 out of 334,” he said. “They still gave me $3,500 to sign. They only gave their eighth and ninth picks $4,000. They really wanted me.

“Here’s what (Don) Shula told me: ‘You know, Bill, you don’t have a chance to make our squad. I’m going to try and showcase you and trade you, so it’s important that you look good in warmups.’

“At the Hall of Fame game, I guess I looked good in warmups. I got in in the fourth quarter, went 2 for 6 with 2 passes dropped and 1 intercepted. They traded me to Washington the following Tuesday.”

Well, at least the Redskins must have wanted him, since they traded for him.

They wanted him for a month, anyway.

“They had (Joe) Theismann, (Bill) Kilmer and me,” Kenney said. “They played Theismann the whole first two exhibition games. They played Kilmer the third. The last one, they played Kilmer and Theismann. They had told me I was going to play in that one.

“Bobby Beathard (the Redskin general manager who had made the trade) told me, ‘Don’t worry about anything. You’re looking good in practice. You’ve really come a long way.’

“Then they cut me. I talked to Jack Pardee, the head coach. He had been telling me I was the next Bert Jones, that they had another Bert Jones on their hands. He said it was a numbers game. I said, ‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

“But I understand. I wouldn’t want to be a head coach.”

OK, then how about being an unemployed quarterback?

“I went back to Greeley,” he said. “I didn’t know where else to go. I’d been out of California for five years. I became a stockbroker. They had a penny stock market that was cooking back then. I took $500 and ran it to five grand in three months.”

So far, we have covered the camp phase. Pro teams need quarterbacks to throw footballs to their receivers. They’re also always on the lookout for darkhorses.

Now, Kenney was about to embark on the next phase, the midseason look-sees. Teams are always inviting quarterbacks in, to check them out in case of injury. And, of course, no one wants to miss a possible darkhorse.

“Buffalo called,” Kenney said. “They told me to come on out. I said, ‘I haven’t thrown a ball in three months.’ They told me to come anyway.

“I told (Coach) Chuck Knox I hadn’t thrown in three months. He said, ‘What did you come for?’ They brought in three of us and didn’t sign any of us.

“A lot of teams called, everyone but Denver, the team I was hoping would call. They were the local team.

“Kansas City called. I threw two passes inside their weight room--it was snowing outside--and they said they’d sign me if they could.”

They did. They even kept him. One reason was that he accepted their offer to move to the area over the summer and work out year-round. Kenney gained a lot. He who wants it has an edge.

By 1980, Kenney’s second season, he was fighting a No. 1 pick, Steve Fuller, for the starting job.

Kenney was still fighting Fuller in his third and fourth seasons, until Coach Marv Levy was fired. The new coach, John Mackovic, the former quarterback coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was looking for a passing offense, one man to trigger it and no confusion over who that was. He traded Fuller to the Rams.

In Mackovic’s rookie season, Kenney passed for 4,348 yards, the fourth-highest total ever, behind two of Dan Fouts’ seasons and one of Lynn Dickey’s.

Just when things were getting cranked up, Kenney broke a bone in his right hand on another helmet in an exhibition, sat out half of last season and still passed for more than 2,000 yards. At least, he didn’t get moved back to tight end.

He quarterbacked the closing three-game winning streak. He has led the Chiefs to this season’s 3-1 start that includes victories over the Raiders and Seahawks. He is 23 yards short of being on a 4,000-yard pace. All things come to him who can bear the wait.

Raider Notes Marc Wilson practiced Thursday, but Rusty Hilger seemed to get more time running the first unit. . . . The Raiders got waivers on another rookie quarterback, Russ Jensen, of Cal Lutheran, and put him on the roster for Sunday’s game. He had been on injured reserve.