The novel coronavirus has claimed another member of the New Orleans Saints family. News broke late Saturday night that legendary former Saints kicker Tom Dempsey passed away due to health complications suffered after he contracted the infection, dying in hospice at 73. He was diagnosed with the coronavirus in late March, as were many other residents of the Lambeth House assisted living facility he resided in.
Dempsey only played a few years with the Saints early in the team’s history, but just about every Saints fan knows someone who claims to have been in the old Tulane Stadium in 1970 when Dempsey hit a walk-off, 63-yard field goal to defeat the Detroit Lions. That kick became an NFL record that lasted 43 years, until it was outdone by a single yard in the thin air at Denver’s Mile High Stadium. And that victory over the Lions was just the second and final game the Saints would win that year.
What’s fascinated so many fans is Dempsey’s story. He entered the NFL as an undrafted kicker and defensive lineman, leaving scouts unimpressed at workouts when he weighed in at 6-foot-2 and 255 pounds. Medicals didn’t help his case — Dempsey played football despite a birth defect that left him without toes on his right foot or fingers on his right hand. Despite his deformities, he put in the work and rose to the occasion when Saints fans desperately needed a hero.
And New Orleans treated him like a hero. Dempsey became the toast of the town, but things sort of got out of hand, and poor performance eventually sent him on a tour of the NFL.
“Instead of lifting weights, I was lifting too many forks and spoons and knives,” Dempsey later told the Associated Press. He went on to play for four different teams during a nine-year career, working odd jobs after his NFL days were over, but he and his family never left the New Orleans area. At one point he worked at a car dealership owned by one Tom Benson; years later, Benson purchased the Saints.
It’s such a shame that the coronavirus is threatening America’s most vulnerable, and hitting so close to home for so many Saints fans. Hopefully this public health crisis will pass sooner rather than later.
