From lark to Hall of Fame: Former Chief Jan Stenerud never intended to be a pro kicker

We’ve all heard the expression, “practice makes perfect.” Sometimes practice just makes opportunity.

Take Jan Stenerud for example, which the Kansas City Chiefs did in the third round of the 1965 AFL “redshirt” draft (teams could draft future rights to players that still had collegiate eligibility).

Stenerud attended Montana State on a skiing scholarship. A national-caliber ski jumper in Norway, he was recruited by the Bobcats, who already had a skier from Norway.

In the offseason, Stenerud had two options for keeping his legs in shape — cross country skiing, which he hated, or running the stadium steps. Late in the fall of his junior year, Montana State’s kicker was kicking field goals in the stadium. Stenerud, who grew up playing soccer, went down to the field and tried kicking the football. He quickly noticed that he booted it farther than the team’s kicker.

After asking if he could try it with the side of his foot — soccer style — he kicked it even farther than that.

Stenerud didn’t know it, but the men’s basketball coach was watching. He told football coach Jim Sweeney what he had seen.

“Sweeney didn’t think much about the scouting report from the basketball coach,” Stenerud said recently. “He didn’t do anything about it. But a couple of weeks later, before the last home game of 1964, I was running the stadium steps and I heard his voice, ‘Hey skier, get down here on the field. I hear you can kick.’”

Sweeney asked Stenerud to try kicking off. After topping the first attempt, Stenerud sent his second through the uprights and into the end zone seats, more than 70 yards away. He then did that several more times, drawing applause from the football team.

Sweeney told Stenerud that he wasn’t eligible right then, but he wanted him to get used to warming up before a game. The coach was worried that kicking in front of a frenzied crowd on game day was harder than doing it in practice. Stenerud didn’t tell Sweeney that in his last ski jump competition in Norway he had jumped in front of 80,000 people, so the 8,000 that packed the house in Bozeman wouldn’t intimidate him.

Sweeney soon offered Stenerud a scholarship, which blew him away.

“I couldn’t believe I could get a scholarship just to kick the football,” he recalls. “Then they told me I had a chance to play professional football just by kicking the ball. What a great country!”

Stenerud played two seasons for the Bobcats, catching the attention of the Chiefs. His 59-yard field goal in his junior year set a record for the longest collegiate field goal at the time. Following his senior year, when he tallied 82 points, he joined the Chiefs. Sweeney had wanted him to stick around for one more year to get selected in the NFL Draft, as well.

He was drafted by the expansion Atlanta Falcons, but “the minute I met Bobby Beathard, who was a scout for the Chiefs; Tommy O’Boyle, the head scout; Hank Stram; and, of course, Lamar Hunt, there was no doubt where I wanted to go,” he said.

Stenerud says he never felt comfortable about keeping his job.

“You’re two bad games in a row from being replaced,” he said.

He led the AFL in field goals his rookie year with 21, including the league’s longest at 54 yards, and converted 45 of 45 extra-point attempts. The following summer, he saw a picture in The Kansas City Star of head coach Stram and GM Jim Schaaf in England trying out professional soccer players as placekickers.

“I learned very early never to take anything for granted,” he said.

A member of the Chiefs Hall of Fame, Stenerud ended up playing 13 seasons for the Chiefs before being replaced by Nick Lowery, who was 14 years younger and less expensive. He signed a free-agent contract with the Green Bay Packers in 1980 and stayed for four seasons. He is also a member of the Packers Hall of Fame.

In 1984, the Packers traded Stenerud to the Vikings, where he made his final Pro Bowl. He retired after the 1985 season. His 373 career field goals and seven seasons of scoring 100 or more points were NFL records. He kicked 17 field goals longer than 50 yards; his personal best was a 55-yarder against Denver in 1970.

A six-time all-league selection, Stenerud played in two AFL All-Star games and in four AFC/NFC Pro Bowls. He was named the Outstanding Offensive Player in the 1972 Pro Bowl. He was the oldest player in the Pro Bowl following the 1984 season, too, at 42.

In an era when average kickers made about 60 percent of their kicks because so little attention was paid to special teams in practice, he was the first kicker to make at least 80 percent of his field goals in a season when he actually made 91.7 percent (22 of 24).

That was 1981, a year in which he was not selected to the Pro Bowl. He made better than 80 percent of his field goals two more times in the next three years. He made 96.5 percent of his extra points in his career, recording perfect seasons seven times. He was 128 of 128 on extra points between the 1969 and 1972 seasons.

Stenerud was the first “pure kicker” inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, getting in on his first chance in 1991. He was named a part of the NFL’s 100-year team last season.

In the Chiefs’ 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV, Stenerud’s three field goals, including a then-Super Bowl-record 48-yarder, accounted for the first nine points of that game. But he remembers one of his few bad games more than he does that game.

On Christmas Day 1971, he missed three field goals in a double-overtime playoff loss to the Miami Dolphins. One was supposed to be a trick play, and another was blocked.

But a short miss with 30 seconds left in regulation still haunts him.

“If you’re a professional, you expect to do well all the time,” he said. “When I was at Montana State, even if I missed the field goal, the fans cheered because the ball went so far. But as a professional, the expectations are totally different.

“If I could have kicked a 31-yard field goal right before the end of regulation,” he said, ”we would have won that game. That bothers me a lot, even to this day.”

Too bad practice doesn’t really make perfect

David Smale is a freelance writer and author of 22 books on sports history. One of his recent books, The Keys to the Kingdom, is on the entire history of the Chiefs franchise. It is available at www.davidsmalebooks.com. He also is the host of “Sports Connections,” available wherever podcasts are found.