A Warm Day, a Hot Running Back

Twenty-five years ago, on an uncommonly warm Christmas afternoon, Kansas City Chiefs running back Ed Podolak and Miami Dolphins middle linebacker Nick Buoniconti lay on the turf at the old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City.

It was sometime during the second overtime, and they had just collided for about the two-dozenth time that day. As an exhausted Podolak clawed at the mud sticking in his facemask, he looked at Buoniconti and said, “Do you think this thing will ever be over?”

It did end, eventually, but not before it became the longest game in NFL history. On December 25, 1971, the Dolphins beat the Chiefs, 27-24, in an American Football Conference playoff endurance contest that lasted 82 minutes and 40 seconds.

Those who witnessed the game--the 50,374 who attended the final game at Kansas City’s quaint, old park at 22nd and Brooklyn, or the millions who watched it on television--saw Miami’s Garo Yepremian kick a game-winning, 37-yard field goal, and Kansas City’s usually reliable Jan Stenerud miss a 31-yard attempt with 35 seconds left in regulation time. Stenerud also had a 42-yard field-goal try blocked in the first overtime.

The outcome precipitated the teams’ axes rotating in diametrical paths. The Dolphins would go on to make the first of three consecutive trips to the Super Bowl, including their perfect season in 1972. The Chiefs, only two years removed as Super Bowl champions, would not return to the playoffs for 15 years.

Obscured by all this was the multifarious role played by Podolak, Kansas City’s third-year running back, who rushed 17 times for 85 yards and one touchdown; caught eight passes for 110 yards and a touchdown; returned three kickoffs for 153 yards and returned two punt returns for two yards. His 350 combined net yards is an NFL record for a postseason game.

“It just seemed that there were a number of big holes that I hadn’t seen on a big-play day like that,” Podolak recalls. “And pass receptions

The play Podolak remembers most came after the Dolphins had tied the score, 24-24, with 96 seconds left in regulation. He received the kickoff at the goal line and a hole popped open in the middle. In trying to dodge Yepremian, who was standing in the center of the field, Podolak veered toward the left sideline.

“When I did that, their safety man from the opposite side, Curtis Johnson -- I’ll never forget who it was -- got an angle on me and was able to run me out of bounds. He took an angle to where I couldn’t cut back. I looked at it on film a number of times afterward to see if there was any way I could have scored. He was smart; he gave me just one way to go until I ran out of sideline.”

Podolak was forced out of bounds at the Miami 22-yard line, right in front of the Dolphins’ bench (both benches were on the same sideline). The Chiefs ran three time-consuming plays, moving the ball to the right hashmark on the 24-yard line. Stenerud came on for what should have been a routine field goal -- at that time, the goal posts were on the goal line -- but he pushed the ball to the right and it stayed out over the upright.

The two teams battled on for an extra quarter and a half before the Dolphins emerged triumphant. In the locker room after the game, a physically and emotionally spent Podolak wept. Two years earlier, he had been a rookie when the Chiefs won Super Bowl IV. But he suffered a torn hamstring early in that season, missed eight weeks and was relegated to special teams only in the Super Bowl. He had wanted to “make a meaningful contribution to a Super Bowl team” and now that dream was dashed.

“We had a really good team (in 1971),” he says. “In fact, I think most of us on that team felt it was even better, top to bottom, than the team that had won the Super Bowl two years prior to that. ... The disappointment of knowing we weren’t going to continue on to the Super Bowl and being exhausted -- yeah, I was very emotional.”

Podolak celebrated Christmas that night in Kansas City with his parents, his brother and his fiancee, but he escaped from the disappointing surroundings as quickly as he could. By 7 a.m. the next day, he was on a plane for Aspen, Colo., where at that time he had a second home.

Podolak played six more seasons before deciding to retire in May 1978. He grew weary of the losing -- the Chiefs tied for the worst record (2-12) in the league in ’77 -- and, like many of his teammates, was disappointed when popular longtime assistant Tom Bettis, who had become the team’s interim head coach midway through the ’77 season, lost the top job to Marv Levy in 1978. Podolak left as the Chiefs’ all-time leading rusher (4,451 yards) but later was passed by Christian Okoye (4,897).

Today, Podolak lives with his wife, Vicki, and daughter Laura (another daughter, Emily, is a freshman at Vanderbilt) in Colorado, where he owns a real estate and investment business in Aspen. For the last 15 years, he has been the football radio analyst for the University of Iowa, his alma mater. He still follows the Chiefs closely and gets to Kansas City for a game at least once a year. And he still runs into people who remember his remarkable performance on Christmas Day in 1971.

“People have asked me a lot of times if I felt any different physically or mentally (that day), and I can’t say that I did. I guess they say, ‘You got in the zone.’ That’s the word everybody uses now. I guess I was just in the zone. Whatever that means.”