Trails of a Pro Quarterback

SPORT, July 1967

Funny, Len Dawson was musing recently, how things work out. Football is the only game his seven brothers did not teach him. Basketball and baseball, yes; but not football, which became his livelihood. All the brothers were Browns’ fans, too, living near Cleveland in Alliance, Ohio, and Len ended up as a quarterback for the football team they followed. But the most exciting thing that ever happened to Len in Municipal Stadium was getting lost in a men’s room after a baseball game. 

“As kids we were up, out of the house and on the ballfield by eight o’clock,” Dawson was recalling last April in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is one of football’s highest paid quarterbacks, an apprentice in an advertising agency and a television-radio star year-round. “We would play all day long.” 

Then there were those big outings into Cleveland to see the Indians. Like the day of that doubleheader when Len’s machinist father and his mother took two station wagons, folded the kids into them and drove to Municipal Stadium. After a few innings Len climbed up by the radio booth to gawk at the personalities. He was still gawking when the second game ended. The tail of an older brother’s shirt flapping, Len scrambled down toward the gate where the cars were waiting. He had just enough time, he calculated, to stop at the men’s room. Even now, at age 31 and a ten-year veteran of pro football, Dawson looks like Oliver Twist, featuring a shy, street-beggar’s smile, foggy eyes that change from grey to gulf green with a tilt of light, the pallor of the mills and the sloping shoulders of a chimney sweep. He couldn’t have looked much different then, more promising perhaps. 

“I followed some of the older guys into the men’s room,” he was saying. “They had an In door and an Out door. When I looked around the other guys were gone and I couldn’t figure which door they took. By the time I found the gate, both cars were heading back to Alliance. Both of them thought I was in the other car. I guess I walked around that big empty stadium ten times. Then I heard a kid sniffling and crying. He was from Youngstown. He was 11 and I was ten and neither of us had any money, but we had a common problem. Both of us had been left behind. We figured out we would call my parents collect. We did. They wired us some money and I got home about three that morning.” 

Sometimes, like when he was sitting exhausted and aching and alone outside the hotel suite where the Kansas City Chiefs were having their champagne party after winning the AFL championship last December in Buffalo, Dawson wonders about that kid from Youngstown. Did he make it? Dawson did. Fortune is the right door at the right time, the fusion of luck and ability. 

“If Lamar Hunt hadn’t started the AFL,” Dawson says, “I might be working in the mills now. Or I might still be in Cleveland, with the Browns.” 

Dawson has too much of what coach Hank Stram calls “the right kind of confidence” to assume he would have failed in the National Football League, though in five years he had done nothing. Dawson is the only five-year pension man in both leagues. He played two seasons under Buddy Parker at Pittsburgh, three under Paul Brown at Cleveland, and never in those five years did he start and finish a football game. In the following five years under Stram, he has started every game he was physically able to. Dawson threw 45 passes in the NFL; in the AFL he has thrown 132 touchdown passes, by far the most productive record in pro football since 1962 (Johnny Unitas is a distant second with 107 touchdown passes).

“Dawson is the most accurate passer I have ever seen,” says Stram, whose own fortunes have been strangely tied to Dawson’s since Stram helped recruit him for Purdue in 1953. “He has a terrific arm and a delicate touch. He can throw many pitches. The hard one when he has to, or the looper when a linebacker is crashing, or the long hanger a man can run under. But the greatest thing, he knows when to use his pitches.”

The National League never tires of poor-mouthing Len Dawson. Instead of helping, the Super Bowl only proved what they were saying: he played on the AFL side, didn’t he? Parker thought Dawson was too quiet and soft mannered, that he lacked leadership qualities. Brown insisted he was too independent and self-reliant, and, besides, his arm was weak. 

“How would they know?” Dawson used to ask. “They never saw me play.” 

It is a trademark of maturity that Dawson now blames himself. “I waited too long for the opportunity instead of making it happen,” he says. “If I had it to do over again, that’s one thing I would correct. First impressions are so important. But I had been a big deal in college (three-times total offense leader in the Big Ten) and was the first-round draft choice of the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns wanted him too, but had to settle for Jimmy Brown). And for the first time I had a little money (it was a rare contract for those times: $2000 bonus, $12,000 when he made the team). The All-Star game had a terrible effect. Hornung and Brodie were the other quarterbacks, and I took the attitude that I didn’t have to earn a chance, they should give it to me on a silver platter.”

Dawson didn’t get off the bench in the All-Star game. In fact he did not play another football game until late in his rookie year when Parker started him against the Eagles. It was a brief exercise: Dawson fumbled when he was hit attempting to pass and Parker replaced him with Earl Morrall. With Cleveland in 1959, Dawson started one game, against Pittsburgh, with much the same results. Then he was starting to believe he really was a poor quarterback, and it is possible he was right. 

“Parker never taught me anything,” Dawson said. “I was scared and nervous and screwed up. I never knew where I stood. He wouldn’t even say I was lousy. The second year Bobby Layne joined Parker at Pittsburgh, and I thought: here is my chance to learn something.” 

Dawson learned more than he needed from Layne. By the time he arrived in Dallas in 1962, Dawson thought he was Layne, and Stram had to lead him back to Lenny Dawson. “He was trying to be big and bold and chew people out the way he had heard Layne do it,” Stram recalls. “It was pretty obvious this wasn’t Len’s personality.” 

“Hank couldn’t believe this was the same Len Dawson he had known at Purdue,” says Hunt. “Dawson was very unimpressive. He had developed a lot of bad habits, and his arm was so weak from inactivity.” 

Dawson says, “Layne took me aside and told me I wasn’t aggressive enough I finally made up my mind that if they wanted noise, I would give them noise. If they wanted guys chewed out, I would chew them out. Layne wasn’t a good fundamental quarterback—he did a lot of things wrong from a technique stand-point, and I was picking them up, not realizing that it was Layne’s competitive nature that made him a great quarterback. He did teach me some good things. Like the realization you can never overlook mistakes, either in yourself or with the team.” 

Faced with a periodic player rebellion, Paul Brown traded Junior Wren and Preston Carpenter to the Steelers for Dawson and Gern Nagler before the 1959 season. Dawson was going home, back to Cleveland to study under the master of his formative years. Layne had helped crack the shell, and Dawson was feeling around. But whereas Parker wanted Dawson to express himself, Brown wanted the very opposite. 

“Again, I made a bad first impression,” Dawson says. “I was injured in an auto accident that winter and I couldn’t work out. I reported overweight and my arm was weak. I’m a slow starter anyway. Paul Brown, though, couldn’t understand that. I couldn’t understand Paul Brown, either. In his system, a quarterback is just another player. Brown was it, first and last. We didn’t even have quarterback meetings. Looking back, I’m not sure I could have done well under Paul Brown even if I had been given the chance.” 

Dawson has always had difficulty projecting himself. Part of the reason is that his confidence is so subtle, like a cross-current under a placid river, that he comes off timid. This is a dangerous misconception; Dawson cannot be bullied. Ohio State learned that too late. Otherwise, Dawson would be a graduate of Ohio State, although not necessarily one of its great football stars. Many of Dawson’s friends, including Stram, have the impression he signed with Purdue because it offered the best opportunities for a passer. It did. Ohio State had a top young quarterback, Johnny Borton, who had been two classes ahead of Dawson at Alliance High. 

But in addition Dawson says, “Ohio State took the position I was an Ohio boy and for that reason I had to come to Ohio State. It was my patriotic duty. Woody Hayes said it so often I began to question why. On the other hand, Purdue said, ‘We want you. We need you.’ I had never heard of Purdue until about 1951, when it beat Notre Dame. I remember Hank came down to talk to me. I liked his personality. He built me up, made me feel important. He was a dapper dresser, even then. He didn’t have any pockets on his pants. I kept wondering where he kept his wallet.” 

In high school Dawson was better known as a basketball and baseball player. Stu Holcomb, Purdue’s head football coach, took the wide approach. He assured Dawson that he could play football as a sophomore, then introduced him to basketball coach Ray Eddy, who likened the kid from Alliance to the best thing he had seen under a basket since cheerleaders. 

Dawson studied Eddy with those cool honest eyes and said, “How do you know, coach? You’ve never seen me play.”  

Stram says, “If you’ve heard Lenny talk, you can appreciate the way he said it. Not cocky, not insolent, just an honest sentence in good faith. I remember just before Lenny’s first game as a sophomore, one of our assistant coaches was leaving town on a scouting trip and he stopped by to wish Lenny good luck. Lenny said, ‘Coach, luck won’t help—you need ability.’ Again, he wasn’t being sarcastic. He didn’t start that first game (against Missouri), but he came in later and threw four touchdown passes. He threw four more the next week against Notre Dame.”

Stram left Purdue before Dawson’s senior season, moving to SMU, then to Miami. When the AFL was being formed before the 1960 season, Stram was approached about the head job in Dallas by a former sixth-team end at SMU, Lamar Hunt. Meanwhile, Stram had followed Dawson’s career, such as it was. Stram always felt that Dawson had the touch, the arm and the temperament to be a top pro quarterback. Something was not in order. Over lunch one day in Pittsburgh, where Stram was attending a coaching convention, he and Dawson talked about when things were good, then Stram said, “Lenny, if for some reason you ever get your release, I’d love to have you in Dallas.” 

A couple of years later Paul Brown, with Dawson in his office, telephoned Stram. Brown said he had agreed to make Dawson a free agent. Unless another NFL club claimed him on waivers, Dawson would be up for grabs the following Saturday. The timing seemed almost predestined. A year earlier or a year later it could not have happened this way—someone in the NFL would have claimed Dawson, if for no other reason than to harass the new league. 

But Dawson says, “I think the general feeling among NFL coaches at the time was that I did most things fairly well but probably didn’t have the competitive spark. They thought I was content to serve my time. They thought I couldn’t be a winner.” 

On wings of paranoia, Stram disappeared from Buffalo, where he was attending the coaches’ all-star game, flew to Cleveland and signed Dawson at the airport Saturday night. Dawson gave Stram his delicate, wry smile and said, “Why are you worrying, coach? I told you I wouldn’t sign with anyone else.” That year the Texans (who would move to Kansas City and become the Chiefs the following season) won their first AFL championship, defeating Houston in a dramatic double-overtime game. Dawson was voted the league’s Player-of-the-Year.  

“It took him another couple of years to get back into his old groove,” says Stram. “He was like sterling silver—the silver was still there, but it was tarnished. If I hadn’t known him so well, I might have given up. But Lenny was like a baseball pitcher. He never extended himself until he knew his arm was strong enough. Each day you could see the rotation of the ball becoming a little tighter. I felt secure in my own mind he would make it.”

Hunt recalls, “Lenny didn’t look like a quarterback until the final exhibition game. He won the starting job then, and the next week, after he beat Boston in the season opener, we traded Cotton Davidson to Oakland. I’ll never forget that Boston game. We were protecting a one-touchdown lead late in the fourth quarter. We had it, third-and-one on about our own 30. Dawson faked into the line and threw a 30-yard pass to Bill Miller. Later in a television interview they asked him why he took such a risk. He said in that matter-of-fact way of his: ‘Because I thought it would work.’” 

All the cobwebs were not on Dawson’s arm. His mind was as active as grandma’s recollection of National Geographic. Buddy Parker had taught him nothing about recognizing defenses, and under Paul Brown defenses were an abstract concept, as much a stigma to the culture as, say, neckties to a nudist colony.  

“I knew from working with Layne that everything is predicated on the defense,” Dawson explains, “but there was still the problem of conditioning my mind and reflexes. You could almost see the wheels turning in Layne’s head: Is the free safety playing man-for-man? Must I worry about the linebacker coming? Is the weakside safety tipping his angle to middle deep coverage? What does it mean when the middle linebacker has his right foot forward?

“A quarterback can get into bad habits,” Len says. “It’s important to know how your personnel stacks up against their personnel—where the weaknesses and strong points lie—but it’s also important not to get into a pattern. Don’t let them get a book on you. On third-and-short-yardage last year, for example, I threw a lot of play-action passes. The first league game against Buffalo, I hit one for a touchdown—Saimes took the bait on the fake. The linebacker was coming and he was supposed to take the first man out of the backfield, but the fake froze him and Bert Coan was ten yards out by himself before Saimes recovered. The next time we played Buffalo, Saimes played back ten or 12 yards off the line. That’s the time to run the football. 

“To give you another example, say you’re playing against a young aggressive (middle) linebacker. He’s making tackles all over the field. It’s against my nature, but I might tell our fullback to forget the ball, just fake it and go for the linebacker and I’ll keep the ball. Even if I don’t get by the linebacker that play is going to have the effect in the future of making him think before he moves. The whole secret of attacking a defense is making them play the way you want them to. If a cornerback is playing you tight, throw deep. If a big lineman like Ernie Ladd is too tall to throw a slant pass over, fake a back right at him, make him react to the back, then step back and throw your slant.”

Stram has drilled his own philosophy into Dawson: never waste a play. Dawson attacks a defense as well as any quarterback in the league because he has learned to recognize what play will work against what defense. Or what offensive player can work against what defensive player. He has learned to meet pressure and transfer it. 

Dawson says, “A defensive back has the toughest job in football. He’s either a hero or a bum. One reason our secondary had such a good year is we were scoring and people were playing catch-up against us. They couldn’t work on our defensive backs. But we could work on theirs. Right away you start throwing at a defensive back, he thinks, ‘Oh my God, they think I’m their weak spot.’ I know Charlie Warner of Buffalo thought we were picking on him last year. First game, Otis Taylor caught five or six passes on him real quick. Of course we were working on him! The second time we played, Taylor caught a 71-yarder against him. I’m sure he felt we were picking on him again, but the truth is, I didn’t even realize he was in the game at the time.”

Stram has created his offense around Dawson, entrusting him with “maintaining the personality of our ballclub. We think our feature is a strong running attack, complemented by rollout passes (from Stram’s clever moveable pass pocket) and play-actions.” 

In a way, Stram has also created a myth. Critics claim Dawson holds the ball too long, but it is part of Stram’s doctrine to hold the ball until the last possible instant. This helps hold down interceptions. Some even say Dawson is too inclined to scramble, yet he ran the ball only 24 times in 1966. A weak arm? Well, Dawson attempted only about 20 passes per game last season, but he threw 26 of them for touchdowns while holding his interception total to ten. Ironically, the toughest critics accuse Dawson of indecision. Dawson answered this charge dramatically in the Super Bowl against Green Bay, and a wrong decision may have cost Kansas City the title. In the third quarter, Dawson’s decision to throw while back-pedaling from the blitz enabled Willie Wood to intercept and stake the Packers to an 11-point lead. 

“I saw the blitz in plenty of time,” Dawson says. “But I still had to make a decision, and I’ve learned, right or wrong, to not hesitate. We had the ball, third-and-five and we were moving. Now do I intentionally give up the ball, or do I try for the first down? Obviously, I should have thrown it out of bounds. But the worst part of the decision was I threw the ball while I was moving back. I had nothing on it, no zip.” 

Stram defends him saying, “A lot of writers said that Lenny panicked after the interception. Yet he completed two of his next three passes. A lot of writers said he abandoned the game plan too early. Memory plays tricks on you. What happened was this: we’re down 11 points after the interception, but we come right back, doing what we’ve been doing the whole game, using play-actions and some straight-ahead power and sending out five-man patterns because we’re not anticipating a lot of blitzing. We march almost to midfield and now it’s third-and-one. Lenny calls the best possible play, a weakside sweep to Coan. But we miss a block and we’re thrown for a loss. We punt and by the time we get the ball again Green Bay is leading by 18. Only then did we abandon our game plan and try to catch up.”

“We just didn’t play a good game against the Packers,” Dawson says. “If I had it to do over, I would stay longer with the game plan. We had to establish our running game against them because they react and pursue so well. If we could make our running game go, our other things would go.” 

Dawson admits that the Super Bowl defeat gnaws at him. So does the memory of those five years in the NFL, and the awareness that the senior league still regards him as a junior quarterback. For a young quarterback, Dawson is pretty old, but he figures he’ll have some more shots at the NFL.  

And he has a solid future in television. Station KMBC was third in its market when Dawson became its sports director in April, 1966. Now it is first. As he had to in football, Dawson has learned to project his voice, make it bigger than life, you might say. The years ahead look good to Len, but he can’t completely stop thinking of the past, the wasted years in Pittsburgh, the lost years in Cleveland…

And whatever happened to that kid from Youngstown?