Johnny Robinson (safety)

Johnny Nolan Robinson (born September 9, 1938) is a former American football safety. He played college football at Louisiana State University (LSU), where he was a member of the national championship-winning 1958 LSU Tigers football team.

Robinson played his entire career for the Dallas Texans / Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League (AFL) and later the National Football League (NFL). He led the AFL in interceptions with 10 in 1966, and led the NFL in 1970 with 10. He had 57 interceptions over his career, a Chiefs record.

Robinson was a member of the Texans in their 1962 20–17 double-overtime victory over the two-time defending AFL Champion Houston Oilers in the longest professional football league championship game ever played. He played in Super Bowl I in 1967. In Super Bowl IV, the underdog Chiefs defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 23–7. Late in the first half, Robinson picked up a Minnesota fumble to help seal the win.

Robinson retired in the summer of 1972 prior to training camp. His last game came on Christmas Day 1971, when the Chiefs lost to the Miami Dolphins 27–24 after 22 minutes, 40 seconds of overtime. It remains (through the 2010 NFL season) the longest game in NFL history. That contest was also the Chiefs' last game in Kansas City's Municipal Stadium. Robinson thus played in the sport's longest championship game and in its absolute longest game, each game closing out professional football in its respective stadium.

Robinson was a six-time All-American Football League selection who played that Super Bowl game with three broken ribs. Five times the interception leader of the Chiefs, Robinson redefined the role of safety in Professional Football, according to the late Jack Kemp. A member of the All-time All-AFL Team and one of only twenty players who were in the American Football League for its entire ten-year existence, he was a member of a team that won three division titles, three league championships and a World Championship. The Chiefs had a 35–1–1 record in games that Robinson made an interception.

Robinson and his older brother, Tommy, won the national boys junior tennis championship when they were in University High School at LSU where their father, Dub Robinson, was tennis coach. Johnny became starting fullback in his freshman year at U-High.

Robinson founded and operates a youth home for troubled boys in Monroe, Louisiana, and has been a long-time supporter of children's causes.^[1]

Robinson is an inductee of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. In 2003, he was named to the Professional Football Researchers Association Hall of Very Good in the association's inaugural HOVG class.^[2]

Professional statistics

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References