Rita Hutchinson
July 31, 2008
Helen Ann Hebert Martin
August 4, 2008
He only played two seasons with the New Orleans Saints and made slightly more than half his field goal attempts during that time.
Yet Tom Dempsey remains one the most beloved figures in the team’s 42-year existence.
“The older you get, the nicer it is to be remembered,” said the 61-year-old Dempsey.
On Nov. 8, 1970, he made the famous play in Saints history and one of the most famous in National Football League history.
With two seconds left in the game and the Saints trailing the Detroit Lions 17-16, the field goal unit lined up to attempt an NFL record 63-yard field goal.
“Don Heindrich, the offensive coordinator for the team, sent word down that we were going to try a long field goal,” Dempsey said.
Saints head coach J.D. Roberts, in his first game leading the team, agreed.
Dempsey had supreme confidence he could make the kick.
“I had made 70 [yard field goals] a bunch of times in practice,” he claimed.
With holder Joe Scarpati spotting at the Saints’ own 37-yard line, snapper Jackie Burkett launched a good lob. Dempsey, wearing his modified right shoe with a flat, enlarged toe surface, blasted the kick through the uprights with a couple of feet to spare.
The Saints won 19-17, the last of their two wins that season. Dempsey crushed the previous record of 56 yards set by Baltimore Colts’ kicker Bert Rechichar in 1953.
So how often do people tell Dempsey they were there in 81,000-seat Tulane Stadium to witness “The Kick?”
“A lot of times, even though a lot of people weren’t there that day,” he said. “We were having a bad season and we only drew 60,000 that day. If everyone who said they were there came, we’d have sold out.”
Former Denver Broncos kicker Jason Elam has equaled Dempsey’s mark since then, in 1998. However, Elam’s field goal was not a game winner, and he did it in the thin air of Denver’s Mile High Stadium. Tulane Stadium was situated below sea level. Surely Dempsey feels his kick was more impressive, right?
“Not really,” he said. “I like Jason a lot. We talk every now and then. He knocks the hell out of the ball.”
Dempsey was born in 1947 in Milwaukee and raised in Encinitas, Calif. Despite a birth defect that caused him not to have toes on his right foot, Dempsey was an athletic child.
“I played all sports growing up,” he said. “When I was younger I played baseball. When I got to high school, I played football.”
He played both sides of the ball at San Dieguito High School (Class of 1964) and Palomar College, a junior college in San Marcos, Calif.
As a defensive end and an offensive tackle, kicking was not part of Dempsey’s repertoire.
Then, one day, his college coach needed someone to do the kickoffs and called for a team tryout.
“The coach lined up the whole team and said, ‘Try kicking,'” Dempsey recalled. “I took my shoe off and kicked it, and it went out of the end zone. He said ‘do it again,’ and it went out of the end zone again. He said ‘you’re kicking Saturday night.'”
After two years at Palomar, at age 19, Dempsey signed a free-agent contract with the Green Bay Packers and was placed on the practice squad.
He didn’t see action with the Packers, so the next year he signed with the San Diego Chargers. Again he was placed on the practice squad and did not get playing time. His time with San Diego did produce something positive for Dempsey’s career.
“It was San Diego Chargers coach Sid Gillman who came up with the idea of a flat toe shoe,” Dempsey said.
In 1969, Dempsey signed with the Saints, which was entering its third year in the league.
“I thought it was my best opportunity to get on the field,” Dempsey said.
In his rookie year, Dempsey made 22-of-41 field goal attempts and 33-of-35 point after touchdown tries, which earned him his only NFL Pro Bowl selection.
The next year, he was 18-of-34 on field goals and 16-of-17 on extra points.
Dempsey was growing fond of the Crescent City, but the Saints lost interest in him. They cut Dempsey after the 1970 season.
“I was a free agent again and the [Philadelphia] Eagles signed me the same day the Saints released me,” he said.
Dempsey would play nine more seasons in the NFL with three other teams after the Saints and Eagles – the Los Angeles Rams, Houston Oilers and Buffalo Bills.
When he retired after the 1979 season, he and his wife Carlene, an elementary school teacher, returned to New Orleans to raise their three children.
Dempsey has spent his successful post-NFL career in various sales positions, including a stint in one of Saints owner Tom Benson’s car dealerships.
In 1989, Dempsey, along with safety Tommy Myers, was inducted into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame’s second class.
“It’s always nice to be remembered for your accomplishments,” he said.
Unfortunately, like so many other New Orleanians, Hurricane Katrina flooded Dempsey’s home. After evacuating to Shreveport, he returned to survey the damage.
“I drove down to look at it, and basically everything in the first story was molded,” he said. “So I called Carlene and told her she was going to get that new furniture a lot quicker than what she thought.”
After renting an apartment for a few months, the family found a new home in Metairie. Dempsey lost a lot of memorabilia to Katrina, but that is of little consequence to him.
“I didn’t lose as much as other people in New Orleans and other places,” he said. “All we lost was stuff, and you can replace stuff. My family was all OK. Everything worked out.”
Today, Dempsey is retired. He does not catch many Saints games in the Superdome, preferring to watch games from home.
Dempsey is predicting a winning 2008 season for the Saints. He definitely sees them making the playoffs and an NFC South Division title is possibility.
As for the Super Bowl, Dempsey, like many longtime fans, is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Trailing the Detroit Lions 17-16, former New Orleans kicker Tom Dempsey etched a place in history Nov. 8, 1970, with his 63-yard game-winning field goal. * Photo courtsey of TOM DEMPSEY
