RIP

Garo "I KEEK A TOUCHDOWN" Yepremian, Whose Kicks Outshined One Pass, Dies at 70

By DAVID STOUTMAY 16, 2015

ny times                        

 

Garo Yepremian, a highly accomplished field-goal kicker who proved to be a comically inept Super Bowl passer in one of the most famous bloopers in the history of the National Football League, died on Friday at a hospital in Media, Pa. He was 70.   
 

Of course he was a Detroit Lion.

Yepremian, who was left-footed, played in the N.F.L. from 1966 through 1981, kicking for the Detroit Lions, the Miami Dolphins, the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In 1966, he kicked six field goals for the Lions in a game against the Minnesota Vikings.

 

But the high points (and famous low point) of his career were with Miami. As Christmas Day turned to night in 1971, he kicked a 37-yard field goal in Kansas City, Mo., to lift the Dolphins over the Chiefs, 27-24, in the second overtime of a playoff game. The contest was the longest in N.F.L. history at the time. Weeks later, his field goal gave Miami its only points as the Dolphins lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-3, in the Super Bowl.
 

Then came the magical season of 1972. Yepremian was his team’s leading scorer as the Dolphins took a 16-0 record into the Super Bowl against the Washington Redskins on Jan. 14, 1973, in Los Angeles. The Dolphins were leading, 14-0, with just over two minutes left when Yepremian was sent in to attempt a field goal. 

 

Don Shula, the Dolphins’ coach, relived the moment decades later, as The Associated Press recalled Saturday: “I thought, ‘Boy, this will be great if Garo kicks this field goal and we go ahead, 17-0, in a 17-0 season. What a great way that would be to remember the game.’ And then Garo did what he did.”  

 

What Yepremian inexplicably did, after the Redskins’ Bill Brundige blocked the kick, was pick up the ball and try to pass it. But Yepremian was used to kicking the ball, not throwing it, and the ball slipped out of his hands. He tried to bat the ball out of bounds, but instead he batted it into the hands of the Redskins’ Mike Bass, who ran 49 yards for a touchdown.
 

Yepremian hid on the end of the bench for the final two minutes, his 5-foot-7 ½-inch stature making concealment easy. He was reprieved as the Dolphins hung on to win, 14-7, but his blunder was already legendary.
 

“Every airport you go to, people point to you and say, ‘Here’s the guy who screwed up in the Super Bowl,’ ” Yepremian said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press. “Fortunately, I’m a happy-go-lucky guy.”

   

            

Garabed Sarkis Yepremian (pronounced ya-PREM-ee-an) was born in Cyprus on June 2, 1944, and came to the United States when he was 22. A former soccer player, he spoke only a little heavily accented English when he broke into professional football. “I keek a touchdown!” he supposedly exclaimed after a successful kick.  



 

In his Miami years, Yepremian sold neckties, some made in his basement — “wide, wild and woolly ones, with bright, abstract patterns that remind you of the kind of visions people must have on acid trips,” as Judy Klemesrud of The New York Times wrote in 1972.
 

Shula has always been able to laugh about the miscue. Still, he organized a special drill in training camp the season afterward, as he told the A.P.
 

“We had holder Earl Morrall let the ball slip through his fingers,” Shula said. “I yelled at Garo, ‘Fall on it! Fall on it!’ ” This time, he did.