#1 - Buck Buchanan, DT, 1963. 1st pick.
To get a feel for the impact of Buck Buchanan, recall that he was 6-7 and his weight was generally listed at 270 to 280 pounds. To put that into perspective, here are the heights and weights of the guards and centers of the other AFC West teams in 1963, his rookie year.
Chargers
LG 6-1, 242 lbs,
C 6-2 240 lbs
RG 6-1 250 lbs
Broncos
LG 6-2, 245 lbs.
C 6-3 260 lbs
RG 6-3 247 lbs.
Raiders
LG 6-0 240 lbs
C 6-2 255 lbs.
RG 6-2 245 lbs.
Add to that the fact that Buck was blazing fast with a 10.2 100 yard dash time, and the Chiefs had a game-changer. Buck alone changed the balance of power in the AFL, because there was no one else like him.
So how did the Chiefs get this game changing talent? Recall that the Chiefs drafted him during the height of the AFL-NFL draft wars. In the exact same draft, as we saw earlier, the Chiefs had a guy sleeping in his car in front of Ed Budde’s house.
There were several reasons, good and bad, so let’s start with the bad.
In 1963, the NFL was still pretty racist. In 1946, the Rams were the first NFL team forced to bring on black players as part of their move to Los Angeles. They were planning to use a publicly funded stadium, and black leaders cited Supreme Court rulings that the Rams either had to integrate or the city would have to build a separate but equal stadium for black football players.
Once the Rams integrated and broke the race barrier, most other teams followed suit. Except the Redskins, of course, because the Redskins were racist as all get out. The Redskins refused to sign black players, and convinced the rest of the league to limit their signings of black players. Eventually, the federal government forced the Redskins to sign black players in 1962 on the threat of expelling them from their own publicly funded stadium.
So when Buck came of age, all NFL teams had black players, but the rumor was that there were informal quotas of about five blacks per team. The NFL didn’t spend much time scouting black players, particularly at all-black schools, so they were out of touch.
In the meantime, our beloved Lamar Hunt had a policy of watching all of the games that took place in the Cotton Bowl, and Grambling University was one of the schools that he saw. He believed that there was a lot of talent in the black schools, so he hired a scout, Lloyd Wells, specifically to concentrate on them. And that’s where they found the legendary Buck Buchanan.
Several things then happened at once. NFL teams knew about Buck Buchanan, but they couldn’t find him. Lamar Hunt had generously offered Buck an apartment in Dallas, and conveniently hid the location of that apartment from other teams. Then Lamar drafted Buck with the #1 pick overall in the AFL draft in 1963, which made him the first black athlete in any sport to be selected with the first overall pick. In contrast (and maybe in part because they couldn’t find him), Buck was the 265th pick of the NFL, taken in the 19th round by the New York Giants. But I think the bigger reason was that the NFL simply didn’t scout Grambling, and didn’t know what Buck represented.
But Buck knew the score. As quoted in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/17/sp...s.html?mcubz=0 , he said
"At that time, I was the first player from a small black school drafted in the first round," Mr. Buchanan once recalled. "It said a lot for a player from the Gramblings, the Prairie Views. That was important to me."
That commitment to black players, along with the signing of Buck Buchanan, undoubtedly helped the Chiefs win the hearts of the core of their greatest teams. Guys like Otis Taylor, Emmitt Thomas, and Willie Lanier joined the team in subsequent years from small black schools, and the Chiefs were the first team in pro football to have a roster that was more than 50 percent black. It’s impossible to deny that this infusion of talent wasn’t critical to their championship runs.
And now here’s a good piece of trivia for you. Buck was actually drafted three times during this period. The Chiefs selected him #1 in 1963, the Giants selected him 265th in 1963, and Vince Lombardi’s Packers mistakenly drafted him 238th in the 17th round of the 1962 NFL draft. At the time, NFL teams didn’t have a lot of rigor in their drafts and Buck was not yet eligible, so the NFL forfeited the Packers’ pick after they figured it out.
In Super Bowl I, this actually caused some controversy. When a reporter asked Lombardi his opinion about Buck, Lombardi commented that he liked Buck enough to draft him. This led to an argument when the reporter swore that the Giants drafted Buck, but Lombardi wouldn’t back down. The following day, Lombardi apologized and said he was wrong, but he actually wasn’t wrong. He did indeed draft Buchanan, but he did it a year too early.
Regardless of all that, Buck joined the Chiefs and wrought havoc upon the land. Other teams couldn’t control him, and they had to actively game plan against him. Lombardi said in Super Bowl I that Buchanan was the guy that they were most worried about, and the lore is that the Raiders drafted guard Gene Upshaw purely to face off against Buck Buchanan. But none of these plans worked. Buck dominated, and the result was Super Bowl IV.
Overall, while records are not precise, Buck may have started more games than any other first-rounder in Chiefs history (as many as 177), which is all the more impressive when you consider that he played in 14-game seasons and he played defensive tackle. He collected 8 pro bowls and 4 all-pro nods over the course of 13 seasons with the Chiefs, which given his performance record seems like fewer accolades than he deserved. But recall the era in which he played. He was competing against Hall of Famers like Bob Lilly and Alan Page and Merlin Olsen and Mean Joe Greene every year.
Buck was the fourth Chiefs player who entered the NFL Hall of Fame, sadly just a week after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
So we know that Buck was good, but how good was he? Stats weren’t widely available from his era.
Well, here are three examples of why Buck Buchanan is the best-ever first-round draft pick of the Chiefs. Aside from helping to clear the runway for other players from small black schools, let’s look at how he’s been viewed by history.
As a first bit of evidence, Sports Illustrated in 2006 wrote an article about the ten most revolutionary defensive players in NFL history:
https://www.si.com/photos/2006/11/21...ensive-players . The ten players they profiled were:
Lawrence Taylor
Deion Sanders
Deacon Jones
Ronnie Lott
Dick Butkus
Reggie White
Mel Blount
Brian Urlacher
Buck Buchanan
Bob Lilly
Look at that list. Look at it! Buck Buchanan is on that list as one of the ten defensive players who most changed the game via his performance on the field. That's impressive.
As a second bit of evidence, Sports Illustrated held an all-time NFL draft a few years ago (or maybe last year – I can’t figure out the date).
https://si.com/specials/mmqb-nfl-all...t-results.html
They brought together 11 football people and that idiot Dan Fouts to draft 26 players per team for 12 teams. Setting aside the fact that Dan Fouts had no idea how to draft a team, we see that Buck Buchanan was the 96th pick. In other words, he was identified as one of the top 100 players in NFL history.
And last but not least, what's the name of the award that goes to the best Division 1-AA defensive player? It’s the Buck Buchanan Award. He was so good that they named the award after him. What more proof would you want?
I hereby conclude that Buck Buchanan is the top first-round pick in Chiefs history.
