What Mike Livingston meant to the ’69 Chiefs ... and how it resonates now
The 1969 Chiefs had one of the best defenses in pro football history, punctuated over the summer by safety Johnny Robinson becoming the sixth man on the unit to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
For that matter, the Hall of Fame also honors owner Lamar Hunt, coach Hank Stram, quarterback Len Dawson and kicker Jan Stenerud … and darned-well should include revolutionary receiver Otis Taylor.
And, really, those Chiefs had too many other stars to list.
But a less-remembered name proved to be a vital bridge between a promise flickering and ultimately fulfilled with the Chiefs’ only Super Bowl victory 50 seasons ago.
“I don’t want to think of where we would have been without Mike Livingston,” Stram used to say, referring to Livingston’s steady play and 6-0 record as a starter that season.
It’s a worthy point to both commemorate on its own and consider in the current context with quarterback Patrick Mahomes ruled out for the Chiefs’ game against Green Bay on Sunday night at Arrowhead Stadium and no certainty about when he’ll play again despite returning to practice this week.
(For what it’s worth, it’s a relief here that Mahomes will sit this one out just 10 days after suffering a dislocated kneecap. From both a layman’s perspective and informed medical speculation, he’d be vulnerable to a grim turn and it also means more time for him to rest an ankle he’s injured and aggravated at least twice this season.)
Starting in his place will be Matt Moore, who wasn’t familiar with Livingston’s role with that team but appreciated hearing about it as Moore lasers in on the moment and tries to “carry the team as if nothing has changed.”
How this plays out is its own story, of course. And we’re all free to panic or find hope as we please.
But that was the task for Livingston after Dawson suffered a torn MCL at Boston in the second week of the season that in the early aftermath appeared to threaten Dawon’s prospects of playing again that season and sent a shudder through the city.
Sound familiar?
Two doctors recommended surgery, but Stram exerted his considerable influence to, essentially, find one who would say otherwise — as told in compelling detail in my friend Michael MacCambridge’s excellent new book, ’69 Chiefs: A Team, A Season And The Birth of Modern Kansas City.
Enter St. Louis (football) Cardinals’ team physician Fred Reynolds, who fittingly enough under the circumstances examined Dawson on Stram’s desk and said the injury would likely heal with rest and that Dawson could play again in six weeks.
“There is no doubt whatsoever that surgery would be the safest and most sensible thing to do,” Reynolds said then. “But I also understand that you’re a football player, and if you were to be operated on that would finish the season for you.”
That left the job for the moment in the hands of 30-year-old Jacky Lee, who was injured in the third quarter the very next week in a 24-19 loss at Cincinnati that left “all the carefully laid plans … in tatters,” MacCambridge wrote.
Enter Livingston, drafted in 1968 out of Southern Methodist. He hadn’t thrown a regular-season pass since his last season at SMU … reminiscent of Moore not throwing a pass last season.
The parallels are imperfect, of course, starting with the fact that the reason Moore didn’t throw last season was he was 34 years old and out of the NFL and left wondering if he was done.
Moreover, consider that the Chiefs’ defense gave up only 71 points in Livingston’s six starts and that Stram understood — or at least tried to convey to the team — that it was too well-rounded to be ruined by the absence of Dawson.
“We are a complete football team directed to one purpose, and that is to win,” he told the team in the days after Dawson’s injury, MacCambridge noted in the book. “We are driving a Rolls Royce; all we have to do is keep it on the road.”
Even if you believe this defense on this year’s Chiefs is still a work in progress with a new coordinator and scheme and vastly changed lineup and are encouraged by its performance at Denver, it’s at best a faint shadow of that one until demonstrated otherwise.
And while the offense has dazzling playmakers like Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins when he’s healthy, the unique Mahomes himself has been the catalyst that revs the engine and makes this a Ferrari.
“Watching Pat, it’s easy to want to play like him,” Moore said, smiling and adding, “Which I can’t.”
But sag as many might in the absence of Mahomes, the point to remember here is this:
Without its then-prospective Hall of Fame quarterback, those Chiefs “dug deeper,” Stram once said, and galvanized around Livingston — who now is 73 and has lunch weekly with former teammate Ed Budde but was unable to be reached for this story.
And if you think Moore has it tough starting against the Packers on Sunday, Livingston’s stint began in a wretched situation.
An October Denver snowstorm made for the first snow Livingston had ever seen as he looked out his hotel window the night before, and it left the field muddy as temperatures rose the next day.
Whatever heaviness Livingston was feeling beforehand, Robinson lightened the locker room when he approached Livingston and said, “Mike, I don’t want you to worry about a thing: If we don’t win this game, we’re just going to cut your balls off.”
Laughter echoed through the room as the team headed out to the field for what became a 26-13 victory with Livingston completing 14 of 27 passes for 214 yards.
He threw no touchdown passes but no interceptions, either, part of a “first-do-no-harm” profile that was pivotal in a role now backed up by Tom Flores (yes, that Tom Flores) and John Huarte.
They’d beat the Houston Oilers a week later 24-0, with Livingston’s game including a 39-yard scramble and a 14-yard bootleg on a day he threw just 15 times.
Or 16 if you count the swing he threw at Houston’s Zeke Moore with his right hand.
“That’s just what we need; our only quarterback breaks his hand on someone’s helmet,” Stram said on the sideline, according to MacCambridge.
When he came off the field, Stram scolded him with characteristic humor: “Mike, what are you doing?! You’ve got to be thinking out there. If you’re going to take a swing at somebody, use your left hand!”
Then Livingston threw for 308 yards in a 17-10 win over Miami, including his first touchdown pass. The Chiefs improved to 6-1 with a 42-22 win over Cincinnati, with Livingston completing 15 of 25 for 208 yards and three TD passes with two interceptions.
With Livingston struggling in the first half of his fifth straight start Nov. 2 at Buffalo, Dawson returned and led the Chiefs to a 29-7 win. But Dawson’s health remained precarious.
Back home against Denver on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27, he heard his knee pop when he was hit by two defenders. “This is it,” Dawson first thought, according to the book. “I figured the season was over for sure now, and that I’d need the operation because I couldn’t even step down on my leg.”
Livingston filled in for the rest of the 31-17 win and the 22-19 victory over Buffalo a week later. Dawson returned for the regular-season finale against Oakland but was so gimpy that Stram opted to have him pass just six times to keep him out of harm’s way in a 10-6 loss.
That meant the Chiefs would have to play at the defending Super Bowl champion Jets to open the postseason — another unfavorable scenario that instead began a remarkable stretch:
Culminating with their 23-7 victory over the Vikings in Super Bowl IV, that postseason the Chiefs allowed a total of 20 points — three fewer than last season’s team gave up after halftime in its 37-31 overtime loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.
The defense was essential to the championship, and so were Dawson and Stenerud and Stram and others in the postseason.
But Livingston was part of that team’s DNA in what would prove to be the highlight of his career.
The heir apparent to Dawson didn’t take over until 1976, when the franchise was in flux and went 11-32 in his starts through 1979.
Early that last season after he was pulled from a game in favor of Steve Fuller, estimable longtime pro football writer Rick Gosselin wrote that Livingston probably had “heard more boos than anyone in Kansas City history” in a story about how Livingston was handling it with such class.
Livingston’s Super Bowl ring was stolen out of the Chiefs’ locker room in Detroit, The Star reported, and he endured hard times before working a construction job for years before he joined a friend in business.
But Livingston always had perspective, in part because his father, Jack, returned from the European Theater in World War II with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts, The Star wrote in 2003. Jack Livingston later worked as a fireman.
“He’s a real hero,” Livingston said then. “Football players, they aren’t (anything) compared to these guys.”
He’d say his life wasn’t defined by 1969, though The Star wrote that he was overcome when 115 people pitched in to spend $11,000 on a new Super Bowl IV ring for his 50th birthday.
It’s only a symbol, yes, but something he earned by completing 84 of 161 passes for 1,123 yards during a magical season he helped keep alive.
“We put together all the pieces of a championship team,” Dawson once told The Star, “and it was all on his shoulders.”
Something to aspire to for Moore ... and his supporting cast.
This story was originally published October 25, 2019 at 7:32 PM.