The AFL’s Most Important Coin Flip
Two of the league’s best-ever teams finished tied atop the same division.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the 1968 New York Jets, who won Super Bowl III as 18-point underdogs to the Baltimore Colts (after an astonishing early-season loss to the Bills). It was the first time the AFL had defeated the NFL in The Big Game, and it’s the largest upset victory in any playoff game in Stathead’s database (since 1952).
Those Jets finished the regular season at 11–3, but despite what they would go on to accomplish, were they really the AFL’s best team that year?
Both the Raiders and Chiefs finished 12–2, a game ahead of the Jets while playing in the significantly harder Western Division, which went 21–9 in games against the Eastern Division.
The West was so difficult that the Broncos and Bengals combined to go 6–6 versus the East while finishing 0–12 against the West’s top three teams.
Meanwhile, New York was the only team in the East to finish above .500, and by drawing the Bengals as the West team they played twice, had the AFL’s easiest schedule.
The Raiders and Chiefs were a pair of powerhouses, each among the best teams in the history of the AFL. Oakland finished with a +220 point differential, third-best in AFL history and just above the +201 Chiefs. (The Jets came in at +139).
While the Raiders had a better point differential, the Chiefs were a defensive behemoth that allowed the fewest PPG (12.1) of any team in the AFL’s 10-year existence.
Both the Raiders and Chiefs were more than deserving of the West Division title, but only one could advance to face the Jets in the AFL Championship Game.
AFL rules stated that when two teams finished tied for first place in a division, a tiebreaker game was played to decide the division crown. Home-field for that game would be determined by a coin flip.
This only ended up happening twice. The first time came in the 1963 East. However, with both the Patriots and Bills coming in at 7–6–1, it likely didn’t matter which team played the 11–3 Chargers.
Sure enough, despite a convincing 26–8 victory in Buffalo, the Patriots were no match for San Diego, who won the AFL Championship 51–10 behind a staggering 610 total yards of offense.
But 1968 was a different story. Whoever advanced from the West would have a strong chance of winning a league title and reaching the Super Bowl.
And the host for such an important game would be based on a simple coin flip.
How much was home-field advantage really worth? League-wide, apparently not a lot. In the 1964 AFL regular season, road teams actually had the slightest of edges, going 35–34–1.
Between the Raiders and Chiefs though, it may as well have been everything.
Their first meeting came in Week 7 in Kansas City. The Chiefs put on a masterclass, scoring the game’s first 24 points and winning 24–10.
They held a Raiders offense that scored 30+ points in 9 of 14 regular-season games to a season-low in scoring and became the only team to finish a game against Oakland without a turnover.
Len Dawson only attempted three passes for the Chiefs all day long (completing two for 16 yards). Instead, Kansas City dominated on the ground to the tune of 294 yards and 3 TD.
Three different Chiefs players rushed for at least 85 yards — Mike Garrett, Robert Holmes, and Wendell Hayes. This is the only time in the Super Bowl era that a team has accomplished this.
Two weeks later, it was Oakland’s turn to host. The Raiders used a 24-point second quarter to lead 31–7 at halftime and extended that margin to 38–7 in the third quarter. The Chiefs made it a bit more respectable but still fell 38–21.
It was the only regular-season game that saw Kansas City allow more than 21 points, and they had given up 24 in the second quarter alone. The Raiders had 469 passing yards, their most in a regulation game in franchise history.
Each team thoroughly controlled the game when at home, making the coin flip to host the tiebreaker nothing short of necessary to keep title hopes alive.
Unfortunately for the Chiefs, the Raiders won the toss and proceeded to have their way even easier than in the previous matchup between the teams.
They led 21–0 after the first quarter and coasted to a 41–7 victory as the Chiefs allowed another season-high in points that was nearly as many as they’d surrendered in the five games in between trips to Oakland (46).
Daryle Lamonica passed for 347 yards and 5 TD in what was his only career game of 5+ pass TD and 0 INT. While the Week 7 meeting in Kansas City was the only game where the Raiders failed to record a takeaway, this was the only time the Chiefs couldn’t force a turnover.
It marked a painful end of the season for Kansas City. They seemed virtually unstoppable in every stadium but one.
The Raiders advanced to the AFL Championship Game, where, because the divisions rotated hosting duties on an annual basis, they traveled to face the Jets.
New York won 27–23 in a rematch of the infamous “Heidi Game” from Week 11 of that season to reach Super Bowl III, where they stunned both the Colts and the world.
While the Chiefs couldn’t get the job done in 1968, it wouldn’t take them long to win a Super Bowl of their own. The following season, they once again ended up second in the West (11–3) behind the Raiders (12–1–1).
However, for its final season before merging with the NFL, the AFL adopted a four-team playoff. Kansas City seized the opportunity, winning at the Jets and Raiders before defeating the NFL’s Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV. The Chiefs’ defense allowed just 20 points in the entire three-game run.
Despite winning nine division titles in 10 years from 1967–76, it would take until 1977 for John Madden to lead the Raiders to their first Super Bowl victory.
Sometimes you just get unlucky, whether that be by a bad matchup, poor variance, or simply the flip of a coin.
Research for this story was primarily conducted using Pro Football Reference and Stathead. Tiebreaker information from Quirky Research.
