Mike Mercer puts the foot in footnote: He kicked the first field goal in Super Bowl history.
This week is a good time to remember that bit of yesteryear because Sunday the Buffalo Bills will play the Kansas City Chiefs. And Mercer hit that historic field goal for the Chiefs while on loan from the Bills.
Wait, what?
This is the story of how that came to be. Mercer is a frequent football footnote for having scored the first points in Minnesota Vikings history, for booting that first field goal in a Super Bowl – and for going from the Bills to the Chiefs and back to the Bills in one of the oddest player-share arrangements in sports history.
He was born to his profession. His father, Ken “Moco” Mercer, was a kicker for the Frankford (Pa.) Yellow Jackets in the early years of the NFL. Mike kicked for four college teams before landing in the NFL, where he was with the Vikings in 1961 and 1962 and the Oakland Raiders in 1963, 1964, and 1965.
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Meanwhile, a kicking revolution was underway in Buffalo. The Bills’ Pete Gogolak was pro football’s first soccer-style kicker, in 1964 and 1965, as they won the AFL title in each of those seasons. Then the New York Giants signed Gogolak away from the Bills in a move that would soon lead to the NFL-AFL merger, and thus the Super Bowl era.
The kicker who had the unenviable task of filling Gogolak’s cleats in 1966 was Booth Lusteg. The Bills signed Mercer just in case and put him on their developmental squad as a backup should Lusteg falter. Then, on Oct. 3, 1966, the Bills beat the Chiefs, 29-14, in Kansas City. That day Lusteg made three field goals – and Chiefs kicker Tommy Brooker got hurt. After the game, right there at the midfield handshake, Chiefs coach Hank Stram and Bills coach Joel Collier worked out a crazy deal.
Buffalo lent Mercer to Kansas City for the rest of the season in return for a fifth-round draft choice. Then the Bills could take Mercer back for the 1967 season, if they chose. Remarkably, the AFL went along with it.
Two weeks later, the Bills had reason to regret the loan. Lusteg missed three field goals in four attempts in a 17-17 tie with the San Diego Chargers. The last miss – from 23 yards with six seconds to play – is the most infamous regular-season miss in Bills history. Legend has it that three Bills fans mugged Lusteg as he walked on Delaware Avenue after the game.
Mercer would go on to make 20 field goals on 26 attempts in 10 games for the Chiefs – the best percentage in pro football that season. When the AFL title game was played in Buffalo, on New Year’s Day 1967, Mercer kicked a 32-yard field goal with three seconds left in the first half to give the Chiefs a 17-7 lead. They would go on to beat the Bills, 31-7, for the right to go to the first Super Bowl.
The Chiefs kicked off to start that game, meaning Super Bowl history officially began when Mercer’s foot struck the ball. The Green Bay Packers won, 35-10, though Mercer’s 31-yard field goal pulled the Chiefs within 14-10 at the half. That was on Jan. 15. Only days later, the Bills took Mercer back.
That worked out well for the Bills, as Mercer made the AFL’s Pro Bowl team in 1967. It worked out even better for the Chiefs: Jan Stenerud succeeded Mercer and kicked his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (As it happens, Stenerud saw his first pro game in Buffalo as the guest of Buffalo Evening News legend Larry Felser, an unlikely tale that you can read here.)
Mercer set a Bills record with a 51-yard field goal on opening day of the 1967 season – and the Bills beat the New York Jets, 20-17, on his 43-yarder with four seconds left. “I never even thought about it,” he said of the pressure. “When you’ve played the game this long, you don’t think about it.”
But three games into the 1968 season – amid missed kicks and a sore hamstring – Mercer lost his job to Bruce Alford. Mercer signed with the Packers when his hammy healed and played there for the rest of the 1968 season. Then, in 1969, when he made just five field goals in 17 attempts, the Packers sent him packing midseason. And the kicker who replaced him was the same one he had replaced in Buffalo: Booth Lusteg.
Mercer finished his career in San Diego in 1970 when he made 12 field goals in 19 attempts for the Chargers. But it is something he once said to the Green Bay Press-Gazette that succinctly sums up the up-and-down life of his chosen profession.
“You’re either a hero or a bum when you’re a kicker,” he said. “You just hope the hero thing happens more than the bum.”
