1968 and 1969 Chiefs highlights

[brdempsey69]

Here are the videos of 1968 and 1969 Chiefs. These two seasons still rate as the finest back-to-back seasons in the Chiefs history.

The 1968 season was a hugely successful season for the team, even though they suffered two blowout losses to the Raiders in the two games played out in Oakland (one in the regular season & one in the Western Division playoff after the regular season ended). The team finished 12-2 in spite of having 5 new starters on Defense and 3 new starters on Offense, as well as injuries to key players like Mike Garrett and Otis Taylor.




The 1969 season, of course, would result in the Chiefs only Super Bowl victory to date, and the Defense would have two new starters in DT Curley Culp and rookie 1st-round draft pick, CB Jim Marsalis.

The narrator of the 1969 video does make an incorrect assessment when he calls the Chiefs "pro football's team of the '70's", as that honor would have to go to the Pittsburgh Steelers. A better assessment would have been "pro football's team of 1969", because in the 1970's, the foundation of Chiefs would crumble and collapse very quickly and they never had a winning record the last 6 years in that decade (1971 was kind of like a last hurrah & was kind if tainted, anyways). The 1970 Chiefs highlights are also available from the same guy that uploaded these, but I'm not bothering with linking to them, because I watched that depressing season first-hand and knowing what followed afterwards.

[Eydugstr]

TY for posting these! A lot of people forget what Mike Livingston did for us in the '69 season.

[brdempsey69]

TY for posting these! A lot of people forget what Mike Livingston did for us in the '69 season.

And by the time Livingston got to play regularly, the team around him had crumbled. He's the only drafted QB in the teams history to have any type of success. All others have failed miserably.

[ctchiefsfan]

Thanks for posting these brbempsey! Somewhere there is a website that has a lot of these games available for free but for some reason I can't access it so I really appreciate your posting them.

[Eydugstr]

And by the time Livingston got to play regularly, the team around him had crumbled. He's the only drafted QB in the teams history to have any type of success. All others have failed miserably.

Very true. By the time Livingston got a shot, it was Schaaf and Steadman running the show, Hank Stram was gone, and Arrowhead's concrete based astroturf was sending a lot of guys to the bench. Livingston got his chance at the perfect moment to fail.

[brdempsey69]

Very true. By the time Livingston got a shot, it was Schaaf and Steadman running the show, Hank Stram was gone, and Arrowhead's concrete based astroturf was sending a lot of guys to the bench. Livingston got his chance at the perfect moment to fail.

THIS!! I don't know what genius had decided on the playing surface to astroturf at that time, but I could easily see that it was hurting the team immensely during 1972 season, plus the pathetic draft classes through the 1970's sunk the franchise to the deep.

[Eydugstr]

THIS!! I don't know what genius had decided on the playing surface to astroturf at that time, but I could easily see that it was hurting the team immensely during 1972 season, plus the pathetic draft classes through the 1970's sunk the franchise to the deep.

I've always felt that astroturf was (sort of) the silent Grim Reaper in the room as far as injuries were concerned. With astroturf it meant having one less grass field to maintain, and with it being "state-of-the-art" at the time, the money men bought it hook, line and sinker.

Arrowhead was also originally designed to have a rolling roof that went over both Arrowhead and Kaufmann (then Royals) stadium, but it was eventually written off as being too expensive. While nothing would've fixed the damage caused by Schaaf and Steadman, or father time catching up with Stram's players...looking back at all the injuries and poor sales from bad teams, we might've been better off investing in the roof and ditching the astroturf.

[brdempsey69]

I've recently watched footage of Chiefs games at Arrowhead in 1972. It looks so dank & dreary. The Chiefs lost 4 games at home that year & I always believed that if they had been playing on a grass field, that they would have won at least two more games and made the playoffs that year.

But either way, the foundation of the team that had carried them through a respectable stretch run from 1966 through 1971 was slowly crumbling and by 1974, finally collapsed.