Indeed, fans had to look around a string of newly installed 100-foot steel columns that were anchored roughly 20 rows from the playing surface. Players had to walk down a flight of steel stairs when they exited the tiny locker room onto a narrow concourse, past concession stands, then down another flight of stairs through an area occupied by fans and finally onto the field. Chiefs wide receiver Chris Burford described War Memorial as “one of the most decrepit stadiums in the AFL.”
The images of today’s Chiefs’ players making their way through a hail of snowballs brought to mind the hostility that Chiefs linebacker Smokey Stover remembered his wife faced as she was seated in old War Memorial and was “barely missed by a flying beer bottle.”
War Memorial was subject to all the miserable winter weather western New York could offer as front-end loaders and dump trucks cleared the surface with calcium pellets and nitrogen compound to prevent the ground from freezing. Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson found the mud and cold that day as “two conditions I hate.”
Still, the temperature hovered around 33 degrees at kickoff.
The Bills got behind immediately following a fumble on the kickoff, and the Chiefs quickly scored when Dawson hit Fred Arbanas for a 29-yard TD with only 1:43 gone in the game.
Buffalo’s defense was the best in the league, and the Chiefs’ league-leading running game finished the day well below its season average. The defensive line was Buffalo’s strength, but the Chiefs, recalled Arbanas, had “usually pretty good days against their secondary.”
Bills quarterback Jack Kemp tied the game at 7-7 in the first quarter on a 69-yard pass to Elbert Dubenion, but Stover remembered that Chiefs’ defensive coordinator Tom Catlin told his players before the game “to hold the Bills to two touchdowns and we would win. We held them to one.”
Johnny Robinson’s interception near the end of the first half…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at News…