Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [79]
McGee, who informed reporters all week that he was retiring after the AFL-NFL championship, didn’t care. He didn’t return to the team hotel until the next morning, just as quarterback Bart Starr walked through the lobby to pick up a newspaper.
“They had these little dressing cubicles in the Los Angeles Coliseum,” Dowler recalled. “Max was right next door. . . . I sat down with Max and he gave a big sigh of [exhaustion]—like ‘Oh my gosh.’”
“What’s the matter with you?” Dowler asked.
“Don’t go down today,” McGee told Dowler.
“Tell me about it,” Dowler replied.
“So he told me about it. So I knew what was going on,” Dowler said, four decades later. “I hear there were two young ladies involved. He referred to them as ‘fiancés.’”
Not expecting to play, still hungover, and operating without sleep, McGee was ill-prepared when Dowler was injured.
“Here’s McGee on the sidelines,” teammate Bob Long recalled years later, “he’s looking around, scurrying around, he starts yelling ‘Where’s my helmet, where’s my helmet?’ Someone shouts out ‘Max, you left it in the locker room.’ Can you imagine that! He didn’t have a helmet. So I kinda felt sorry for him at that moment, I said, ‘Here Max, take my helmet.’ Max took my helmet.”
A series after he wobbled into the huddle, the Packers faced a third down at the Kansas City thirty-seven. The Chiefs had already rebuffed Green Bay on a third down the previous drive: their front four penetrated Green Bay’s offensive line and sacked quarterback Bart Starr, forcing a punt.
Rather than (predictably) running the ball on third and three, the Packers went to the air. Again, the Chiefs formidable defensive line collapsed the pocket. Because no one blocked him, blitzing linebacker Chuck Hurston crashed into Starr, slightly altering the release. The pass soared downfield to the twenty-two-yard line, intended for McGee, who was running a post-pattern near the middle of the field.
“A lot of guys on the team would tell you that Max was the best athlete on that team,” said Bill Curry. “He could just do anything, including get drunk all night and come play and then say ‘Being drunk one night is not gonna destroy twenty-five years of conditioning.’ That was the most hilarious line in the whole thing: Getting drunk one night can destroy anything.”
McGee beat defensive back Willie Mitchell to the inside and was wide open. Starr’s rhythm disrupted, the ball ended up several feet behind his target. With sharp reflexes that defied the effects of his nighttime adventures, McGee stuck out his right hand—continuing to run at full speed—nabbed the football with his fingertips, pulled it into his chest, and sprinted into the end zone.
“Max took my helmet, and he caught the first pass ever for a touchdown in a Super Bowl, so I get to tell my kids, ‘I didn’t catch the pass but my helmet helped Max McGee catch the first touchdown ever.’ That was my helmet, it was Max McGee’s body,” Bob Long said. “As Max would tell it, the story, I heard him tell this all the time. Everybody up here [in Green Bay] says ‘Hey Max, you caught that ball one-hand, behind your back.’ Max says ‘Yea, my eyes were so bloodshot I looked back for the pass from Bart Starr I saw two footballs coming. I really didn’t know what to do but I thought quickly, I’ll put my arm right in the middle between them. And that’s where the ball stuck.’”
For a sports spectacle that would produce countless unforgettable moments over the decades, McGee’s miraculous thirty-seven-yard catch was the first touchdown in Super Bowl history.
In his dubiously self-declared “final game” (he would return to the team next season), McGee was not content with the one catch. Starr and McGee hooked up on six more receptions.
“[Willie] Mitchell was out there trying to cover Max McGee by himself,” Bill Curry said. “And Max was running in the huddle saying, ‘God Almighty, throw me the ball, that guy can’t cover me.’ Which, of course, was exactly right.”
McGee and the passing game stretched Kansas City’s defense. The increasingly over-aggressive front line of the Chiefs, eager