THE AFL 1960–69: A RETROSPECTIVE
Hank Stram Gave Len Dawson the Chance he Needed to Excel
After rotting on NFL benches for five years, the Texans-Chiefs quarterback jumped to the AFL and wound up in the Hall of Fame.
Five years is a long time to sit around doing nothing, so it stood to reason that when Len Dawson joined the Dallas Texans for the start of the 1962 AFL season, he wasn’t going to be very sharp.
“I was shocked at how bad he was at first,” said Texans coach Hank Stram, who only remembered Dawson as a star passer for Purdue when Stram served at that school as an assistant coach in the mid-1950s. “But I couldn’t help but realize that five years of sitting on the bench or manning telephones didn’t make a man sharp. It took him a couple years to get back into the groove. He was like sterling silver, the silver was there, but he had to be polished.”
Dawson had been a first-round draft choice of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers in 1957, but he spent his rookie season backing up Earl Morrall and then the next two years he was behind legendary Bobby Layne. He was traded to Cleveland in 1960 but all that got him was a seat on the bench behind Milt Plum.
