Erik Brady: Herb Mul-Key worked way into Bills lore as visiting player

He’s the Washington kick returner who found the end zone before most Bills fans had found their seats on the mid-August night when Rich Stadium opened 50 years ago Thursday. His road to the NFL is one of the most remarkable in Washington sports history. Yet he might actually be better remembered in Buffalo, for christening our new bowl with a bang.

John Leypoldt kicked off for the Bills with thousands of fans still stuck in traffic. Mul-Key caught the ball two yards deep in his own end zone. And then ran it back 102 yards.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said by phone from Atlanta. “That was the first game ever played in that stadium. The first game, the first kickoff – and the first touchdown.”

Preseason games are rarely memorable, but Mul-Key’s name usually comes up when Bills fans of a certain age look back on the night the new stadium opened its doors.

“It’s nice to be remembered,” he says. “People know me who I don’t know. I don’t have any problem with that. It’s nice.”

Mul-Key, now 73, made all-city football teams at Atlanta’s Harper High School, but he told the New York Times years later that his reputation as a “hothead” and “smart-mouth” had cost him a chance at college scholarships. He did a stint in the Navy and then worked odd jobs while making $25 a game in a sandlot football league in Georgia. That’s when he got a call from Harold McLinton, a high school teammate who was by then a linebacker on Washington’s NFL team.

McLinton wanted him to know that Washington was going to hold an open tryout. Mul-Key borrowed money from his father, mother and girlfriend and took a bus from Atlanta to Washington. There, in 1972, he auditioned with 300 other dreamers on a muddy field at Georgetown University.

“Those 300 guys looked more like 3 million,” he said months later. It seemed a fair approximation of his odds of making it to the NFL. But then he ran a 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds on the sloppy field, and that caught the eye of Washington special teams coach Marv Levy, who also went on to make history at Rich Stadium, though of a more lasting sort.

Washington coach George Allen didn’t much care for rookies, but Levy persuaded him to keep Mul-Key on the practice squad. He did not get into a game until Washington running back Larry Brown was injured with two games remaining in the 1972 regular season. Against the Dallas Cowboys, Mul-Key gained 60 yards rushing, 38 yards on pass receptions, and 173 yards on kickoff returns. Those 271 total yards remain the most for a Washington player in his first game.

The Bills went to Washington for that season’s last game. Mul-Key gained 95 yards rushing, nearly matching O.J. Simpson’s 101 yards. The score was tied at 17 late when a pass at midfield glanced off Mul-Key’s hands. Bills linebacker Dale Farley returned the carom 47 yards to the 3, then fullback Jim Braxton plowed in for the winning score.

“Losing a game like that is like a death in the family,” Allen said afterward, with characteristic overstatement.

Washington found life in the playoffs. Mul-Key returned two kickoffs for 60 yards in a win against the Green Bay Packers, and had none in the NFC title-game win against the Cowboys. He’d gone from sandlot to Super Bowl in a matter of months, which made him a sports columnist’s dream. He regaled reporters with a story about changing his name from Mulkey to Mul-Key. Turned out some people – even a high school English teacher – had made fun of the original spelling.

“They called me Mercury or Murky or Mushy or Musky,” he said.

New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson memorably wrote, “His name is Herb Mul-Key, with a hyphen, as in semi-pro, which he was a year ago.”

In Super Bowl VII, Mul-Key had one kickoff return for 15 yards as the undefeated Miami Dolphins beat Washington, 14-7. The next summer, his 102-yard touchdown in Orchard Park would herald a banner year: He averaged 28.1 yards per return for the 1973 season, including a 97-yard TD in St. Louis. Mul-Key had gone from sandlot to Super Bowl … to Pro Bowl.

Alas, a shoulder injury slowed him in 1974. Then he was traded to the Baltimore Colts but was cut in their 1975 training camp. Levy signed him to play for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. Mul-Key played three games there. And that was that.

“A lot of guys who play in the NFL never get to the Super Bowl unless they buy a ticket,” he says. “They never get to the Pro Bowl unless they buy a ticket.”

Mul-Key bought a ticket – for a bus ride to Washington – and it would lead him to Buffalo for that opening night 50 years ago.

“I think someone touched me around the 50-yard line,” he says. “And then I was gone.”

Into local lore, where he’s still going.