Remembering Otis Taylor

[Angel]

NO. 89 has a grip on our memories
JOE POSNANSKI
The Kansas City Star

Every month, our little group gathered at Maxine’s Fine Foods on Benton. Everybody in the group ate sausage and talked about how Otis Taylor should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The group was led — as much as such groups can be led — by a dreamer named Michael MacCambridge. He had become an author in his adult life, a father, a teacher and so on. At heart, though, Michael was the kid who breathed Kansas City Chiefs football. He believed that those great Chiefs teams of the Nixon years and those lousy Chiefs of disco formed him, shaped him and taught him something about being a man. Those Chiefs thrilled him and disappointed him. They inspired him and sent him into weeklong depressions. They were bigger than anything else in his world.

The biggest, brightest, boldest and baddest man on Michael’s Chiefs was Otis Taylor.

Everybody in Maxine’s felt that way. Otis Taylor, perhaps more than any athlete, bursts in Kansas City’s memory. There were other players, of course, other stars — Brett, White, Lanier, Bell, Archibald — but Taylor was a whole new thing. He was a 6-foot-3, 215-pound wide receiver. He could run by defensive backs and plow over linebackers. He could catch footballs one-handed while being bent and twisted by four defenders. He was — like only the rarest athletes — memorable.

The Otis Meetings followed the same pattern every week. Everybody gathered in the restaurant — a larger group every week — to get their food and hug Maxine. Then Michael would ask for ideas about getting Taylor into the Hall of Fame. And like that, all organization collapsed, sausage flew, drinks spilled, and the meeting devolved into a dozen people shouting at once, all wanting to share their favorite Otis Taylor moment.

“There was the catch at Oakland …” “Remember against Washington …”

“How about the time he threw Ben Davidson down …”

“And in the Super Bowl …”

Michael sat and listened for a long time. And then, for the 100th time, he would say loudly: “Look, everybody in here already knows Otis belongs in the Hall of Fame. The question is, how are we going to get other people to understand?”

•••

Family members want us to remember Otis Taylor when he was young and fast and so alive. So they do not let strangers in now. Parkinson’s disease has seized Taylor. He rarely gets out of bed. His memory fades in and out. Taylor speaks without moving his lips, and his voice stretches and hums like a dial tone. Even his closest friends have trouble understanding him.

“It’s so hard to see any friend in this condition,” his friend Ollie Gates says. “But to see Otis now — well, that’s hard. We remember Otis when he could do anything.”

•••

There was the catch at Oakland …

The catch happened in the last AFL Championship Game. It was January 1970. The Chiefs played at Oakland, and in those days, the Chiefs-Raiders rivalry was so intense, coaches would scream at players who did not cheap-shot the other guy.

The score was tied. The Chiefs had the ball on their 2. It was third down and 14. Quarterback Len Dawson dropped back and looked for Robert Holmes, a little running back from Southern University. Holmes was not open. Raiders buzzed all around. Dawson flung the ball toward Otis Taylor, who was running by the sideline.

Even now, on crackling old film, the catch looks like a David Copperfield illusion. Taylor snags the ball with one hand and somehow keeps himself in bounds. Rewind. He catches it again with one hand. Rewind. Again. First down. The Chiefs went on to score. The Chiefs went on to the Super Bowl.

“Few people understand,” former teammate Mike Garrett said, “that most of Otis Taylor’s catches were big catches.”

•••

The reason Otis Taylor is not in the Hall of Fame is because of his numbers. It is true that in today’s four-wide, spread-formation, West Coast-offense world, Taylor’s numbers merit barely a second glance. He caught 410 passes for 7,306 yards — many forgettable receivers in recent years from Brian Blades to Webster Slaughter have significantly bigger numbers. Taylor did catch a Chiefs-record 57 touchdown passes. That record will be broken by tight end Tony Gonzalez, perhaps today.

It is hard to explain that in Otis Taylor’s time and place — the 1960s and ’70s with the ultra-conservative Chiefs — those numbers were very good. People don’t believe you. It’s like trying to explain to a child how much more a dollar was worth in 1955.

But consider this:

In Otis Taylor’s best eight years, he caught 26 percent of the Kansas City passes for 34 percent of the Chiefs’ passing yards.

In Jerry Rice’s best eight years, he caught 26 percent of the San Francisco passes for 34 percent of the 49ers’ passing yards.

“Thing is, Otis Taylor isn’t about numbers,” said his teammate and Hall of Famer Bobby Bell, and he’s right too. Reducing Taylor to receptions and yards is like judging Rembrandt based entirely on the number of paintings he made or trying to establish Bruce Springsteen’s place in music by looking at how many No. 1 records he made.

Taylor’s best catches were masterpieces. You have to see them to understand.

•••

Remember against Washington …

This was 1971. Washington was undefeated. The score was tied 20-20. And again, the Chiefs were deep in their own territory, third and long, and Dawson flipped a pass to Taylor. This time he dragged two defenders, possibly three, until he had crossed the first-down marker.

Later in the drive, Dawson heaved a high pass to the end zone. As Taylor reached up to catch it, Washington defensive back Pat Fischer grabbed Taylor’s right arm. So Taylor simply reached up with his left and pulled in the ball.

“Impossible,” Dawson would say. And he added, “All you need to know about Otis Taylor were in those two catches.”

•••

Sometimes Otis Taylor felt angry in his days after playing. The Chiefs did not offer him a coaching job. The Chiefs fired him from his scouting job shortly after Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer arrived in 1989. Taylor did not get many endorsement offers around town. He did not have the high profile of George Brett or Len Dawson or other Kansas City sports legends.

“I gave this town some thrills,” he said — this was a couple of years ago — and he did, more thrills perhaps than any player to wear a Chiefs uniform. He played the game with joy and passion. He high-stepped in the end zone and made amazing catches and blocked ferociously and played his best in the biggest moments.

He wondered: Where was his love? Perhaps, he thought, people did not forgive him for the admitted drug issues of his youth. Taylor said he quit after collapsing to his knees in prayer. Perhaps, he thought, people in Kansas City could not embrace an outspoken black man from the 1960s, back when the town was still segregated and charged. Perhaps, he thought, they simply had forgotten.

He talked about a recurring dream he had. It is the same dream he writes about in his book The Need to Win. In the dream, he soared high above a football stadium. He wore a Kansas City Chiefs uniform. People in the stands pointed up at him. They gasped. They were in awe. He flew. Then he woke up. Every time Otis Taylor snapped out of the dream, he felt scared and alone.

He never scored the touchdown in the dream.

And waking up, he said, felt just a little bit like dying.

•••

How about the time he threw Ben Davidson down …

This was 1970. In the fourth quarter of that game, with the Chiefs up by three, Dawson ran a bootleg and gained 19 yards and a big first down. When he was tackled, Oakland’s Ben Davidson rushed in helmet first and speared Dawson so hard he flipped over him.

Taylor was enraged. He rushed in, grabbed Davidson’s neck and wrestled the bigger man to the ground. Everybody fought on the field. Flags were thrown. The play was nullified. And Oakland ended up tying the game. Taylor would blame himself for the tie. Teammates didn’t see it that way.

“People never understood,” Dawson would say, “just how big a heart Otis Taylor had.”

•••

And in the Super Bowl …

There were so many big Otis Taylor plays, too many big plays to recount here, like the bomb against the New York Jets and the one-handed catch against Buffalo and the time against the Raiders when the Chiefs needed a first down and, in the huddle, Dawson looked squarely at Taylor.

“Get open,” Dawson said.

Of course, the biggest play of all came in Super Bowl IV against Minnesota. Chiefs up by nine, second half, Dawson flipped a short pass to Taylor. Earsell Mackbee tried to tackle him. Taylor ran him over. Safety Paul Krause tried to catch him. Taylor high-stepped away. He scored the touchdown, 46 yards, one of the most dazzling plays in NFL history. And he always said that when he crossed the goal line, he heard his mother in the crowd shouting, “That’s my baby.”

•••

“It’s nice what you’re doing,” Otis Taylor said to me once, not long after one of our Otis Meetings at Maxine’s. He was appreciative of our little Otis meetings. I told him that the meetings were not likely to do much good — in general, Pro Football Hall of Fame voters are set in their ways, and they don’t like to be lobbied.

“That’s OK,” he said, “I just appreciate being remembered.”

And just then, a fan came up for an autograph. Already, you could see that Parkinson’s was slowing Taylor’s reflexes and slurring his voice. Soon, Taylor would stop appearing in public. It took him a moment to sign the autograph.

“You were the greatest receiver I ever saw,” the fan said.

After he walked away, Otis Taylor said: “People just can’t know how much that means to me.”

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/football/nfl/kansas_city_chiefs/15644973.htm


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------