The BIZARRE Retirement of Willie Lanier | 1974 Chiefs
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- In 1974, Kansas City Chiefs and eventual Hall of Fame linebacker Willie Lanier announced that this would be his last season. As it turns out, that was a complete lie, as he did not retire after the 1974 season, nor did he miss any game time. This is the story behind the bizarre retirement and un-retirement of Lanier
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Willie Lanier played for the following teams:
1967 Chiefs
1968 Chiefs
1969 Chiefs
1970 Chiefs
1971 Chiefs
1972 Chiefs
1973 Chiefs
1974 Chiefs
1975 Chiefs
1976 Chiefs
1977 Chiefs
Members of the 1974 Chiefs:
Jan Stenerud
Dean Carlson
Mike Livingston
David Jaynes
Ed Podolak
Kerry Reardon
Len Dawson
Elmo Wright
Emmitt Thomas
Mike Sensibaugh
Donnie Joe Morris
Willie Ellison
Woody Green
Cleo Miller
Jeff Kinney
Doug Jones
Wendell Hayes
Jim Marsalis
Bill Thomas
Jerrel Wilson
Jim Kearney
Willie Osley
Nate Allen
Bob Thornbladh
Jim Lynch
Tommy Humphrey
Clyde Werner
Tom Graham
Al Palewicz
Jack Rudnay
George Daney
Curley Culp
Willie Lanier
Tom Condon
Fred DeBernardi
Jim Nicholson
Ed Budde
Wayne Walton
Dave Hill
Tom Keating
Francis Peay
Tom Drougas
Charlie Getty
Bobby Bell
John Matuszak
Andy Hamilton
Marvin Upshaw
Larry Brunson
Bob Briggs
Barry Pearson
Buck Buchanan
John Strada
Morris Stroud
Otis Taylor
Wilbur Young
Hank Stram (coach)
One of the best middle linebackers in NFL history.
...and the team is gonna let him do whatever he wants. He made the all-century team last year.
A lot of players just get frustrated with a team on the decline, which is where the Chiefs were heading, to a nightmarish 2-12 season by 1977.
He was a combination of great talent and a high football IQ.
Again, without this channel, I would've never know about these bizarre stories.
Jim Lynch, who was a very good MLB at Notre Dame was asked "when did you know you were moving to outside LB?"
His response: When I saw Willie Lanier....
Great bit of info...lol
The 1969 Chiefs defense is severely underrated. Emmitt Thomas, Buck Buchanan, Curley Culp, Johnny Robinson, Bobby Bell and Lanier; all in the Hall of Fame. That rivals the number of the defense of Lombardi's Packers and the Steel Curtain in Canton.
The NFL Network picked the Chiefs LB crew as the best ever. I agree, and I am not a Chiefs fan. Just like football.
@Matt Joseph It's amazing to me that they even had the chance to play for a championship in '69. Literally any other AFL season they'd have missed the playoffs due to being swept by the Raiders but because they knew the '69 season would be their last the AFL decided to have four teams in the postseason instead of the usual two, and the rest is history.
@Matt Joseph Much harder to win back then. Teams could keep players much easier than now.
@Matt Joseph Hank Stram loved big players. Ernie Ladd was 6-9, 290, Buck Buchanan was 6-7, 270, Morris Stroud 6 foot 10, 265.
I would put (Emmitt) Thomas, Buchanan, Culp, Robinson, Bell and Lanier above Derrick Thomas.
Love these stories--You do an amazing job storytelling and doing it with such detail. Great video clips, too
The only thing this video triggers in my mind is a question of why Lee Roy Jordan and Chuck Howley aren't in the Hall of Fame. Sincerely, a Cowboys fan
If you turn the volume up here you can actually hear 'Broadway Joe's' knees creaking and crackling when he scrambles...lol. 1:28
And I thought one of my speaker wires was cracked, but all of my speaker wires are tight and perfect!
As a kid I thought Lanier’s face mask was so awesome. When I finally made it to High School and played football I used one that looked like his.
2:56 The Chiefs would not play the Eagles for 20 seasons after this game, the longest gap between meetings for any two teams in NFL history.
Paul Wiggin was also a DE with the Browns for 11 seasons from '57-67 with two Pro Bowls in his final three seasons. This is back when almost every NFL coach was a former player.
This kind of thing happens all the time. Players either change their mind or they threaten to retire as a contract ploy. Look at Favre. He retired more than the Rolling Stones.
The "will he or won't he" Brett Favre retiement saga went on for too effing long. It got to be a joke.
And when you WANT a player to retire that's when he stubbornly sticks around out of sheer spite!
@@tygrkhat4087 Gave Ed Werder a sense of job security.
Lanier (63) took over at MLB in 1967 replacing a pretty good one in Sherill Headrick (69). Headrick once played a game with an open fractured thumb - just popped it back in place and never missed a play. When Lanier came on board, the Chiefs already had a tough D. He made them even better and got that ring against the vaunted Vikings in a surprise upset in SB IV in ‘69.
Idea for a possible series if you are interested: "All For Nothing" - a series where you look at some the greatest individual performances where the player's team still lost. Examples include Derrick Thomas recording 7 sacks but still losing to Seattle in 1990 or Odell with 10 catches for 146 yards and two touchdowns in 2014 against Dallas (including the three-finger catch) but still losing.
It sounds to me like when Lanier actually started his so-called dream job with Phillip Morris he found out he'd really be making peanuts and noped out.
The Chiefs were also one of the first teams to heavily scout the southern black colleges. Lloyd Wells was the first black scout in professional football. Willie Lanier went to Morgan State.
brett favre 70's style. And wasn't lanier the longest lasting chief from the '69 s b winner? dude had range and got a lot of picks for a lb. Got the snake a few times. All afl team.
Mike Livingston, Jan Stenerud, and Emmitt Thomas all played with the Chiefs after Lanier retired. Jerrel Wilson and Curley Culp also played in the NFL after Lanier's retirement, though not with the Chiefs.
When football players were really football players
WELL...yes and no. They all had offseason jobs as opposed to the modern 24/7 pro athlete and used training camp to get back in shape.
@@DolFan316 I feel for the men who HAD to have an offseason job, gave it their all on the field and today live with the crippling affects of playing the game they loved, the arthritic joints, the affects of multiple concussions including CTE and/or living with the knowledge of CTE and thinking, " Do I have it "? Or, " When will I get it "? Imagine the kind of money Willie Lanier would command today with the skill-set he had in his prime.
Thanks for putting this in context since at the time I was hopelessly blinded by Orange.
You do know that the Steelers defense of the 1970s was based on the Chiefs defense of the 1960s
Willie Lanier may have been the perfect linebacker. He did everything expected of a linebacker exceptionally well. Quick as quick silver, hit like a brick thrown by superman, 27 interceptions.
6:15 This play is the only reason my team beat the Chiefs in '74. They played so badly that in a RUclips highlight video of that game Pat Summerall called it a "moral loss".
Considering how the Chiefs crumbled in the mid '70s, Lanier really should've retired after the '74 season. He still would've gotten into the Hall Of Fame and spared himself three more seasons of misery. Maybe if Lanier had known that KCs '75 draft would arguably be the worst in NFL history he'd have quit right then and there.
You should cover the many incidents where Lamar Hunt hired and fired Hank Stram only to bring him back days later.
strange that he had to wait a few years to get into the HOF
❤ my client was Willie’s nephew years ago looked just like him
Willie linear was the greatest inside linebackers ever play the game he would be an All-Pro in today's game. 6'0. 245 lb Lanier created the phrase "sideline to sideline" inside linebacker.
DT would have had a lot better numbers if not for that car accident. :(
The much needed context: 1:24
So Hank Stram was hired by a Dallas team in 1960. He would win two championships six years apart from each other. The second was in New Orleans and was over a team losing its first Super Bowl. That would be the first of four straight Super Bowl losses for that team. This included a return Super Bowl in New Orleans, where they’d lose to the team of the decade. Stram would be the only coach in that Dallas franchise’s history for many years. But then Stram got fired by that franchise. That’s the last time this sequence of events would happen in NFL history.
If you hate this guy's videos so much why do you watch them? And if you can do better, why don't you?
The Vikings did not lose four straight Super Bowls; they lost four overall. Only the Buffalo Bills have lost four straight Super Bowls. Hank Stram won four championships, the AFL title in 1963, 1966 and 1969; and he won Super Bowl IV, which was a separate title from the AFL or NFL. And when Stram was fired from the team he had coached for 15 years, it hadn't been based in Dallas for 12 years.
@@Rockhound6165 I sincerely hope you’re being sarcastic. If not, what about this post makes you think I hate this channel? I’m one of his biggest fans, and I know I can’t do better than him.
@@tygrkhat4087 I had a real factual error in my post. You not only missed it, you perpetuated it. Once you identify it, I’ll clarify your points since there is a larger point I was trying to make.
I must be missing the part where they said they hated JaguarGator's vids?
47 Years Ago
When I was a year old.
Not that long ago really.
Willie Lanier: Thinks about retiring because health concerns.
Also Willie Lanier: Wants a job with a tobacco company at a time when people were finally finding out how deadly cigarettes were and ads were banned from TV.
Willie Lanier deserves every accolade one could bestow on him, both as a player and a human being. Loved Willie! 1st African-American Middle Linebacker in the history of pro football. And by the way, you (narrator) mentioned that Paul Wiggin was not a very good coach. I disagree. Wiggin was handed a Chiefs team that had grown old and didn't have the injection of youth that his successors did. Wiggin was fired after only 2-1/2 seasons coaching the Chiefs and never truly got a fair shot. I felt Wiggin could have turned the Chiefs around, given time and some decent players. But Chiefs management (Jack Steadman, Jim Schaaf, etc) didn't supply him with the players necessary in order for the team to turn it around. So he was fired before owner Lamar Hunt could take a closer look at what was really going on in the front office, which was incompetence.
he made me like the chiefs in the early 70s
In 1978 Lanier went to the Colts, but retired in the preseason.
Yet Willie Lanier could DO NOTHING to STOP the Green Bay Packers and Bart Starr in Super Bowl I......
Lanier did not play in that Super Bowl. That game was played following the 1966 season.
Lanier was drafted in 67
My dad worked with him.
Cover the Eli Herring story
I want to know about the beef with Jimbo Elrod ????
The dirty donkeys. Doesn’t surprise me at all.
willie lanier was ray lewis before ray lewis himself BUT BETTER1!!!!!!!!!!
I love that the Chiefs have been bringing the gray facemasks back.
They wore them just once.
Today is my birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Oh cmon, I coulda picked that one off...lol. 1:30
#TITANUP
His nickname among his teammates was honey bear.