Along with 80,879 other people inside Tulane Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 17, 1967, New Orleans Saints second-year tight end Kent Kramer, acquired seven months earlier along with quarterback Billy Kilmer from the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL expansion draft, couldn’t hear himself think.
But, he did have eyes in the back of his head.
As John Gilliam took the opening kickoff against the Los Angeles Rams and raced up the hashmarks en route to his storybook 94-yard touchdown return on the first official play in Saints history, Kramer, who died Feb. 21 at his home in McKinnney, Texas at the age of 79, saw nothing but black-and-gold smoke.
Kramer’s lunch-bucket job on the return team was to block the “L3” Ram – the player third to the right of Rams kicker Bruce Gossett. He didn’t have much to do as the Gulf of Mexico parted.
“I was second row up,” Kramer recalled in a 2017 “Saints Legends” golden anniversary video highlighting members of the inaugural 1967 team. “I had ‘L3,’ and I was supposed to peel him out to the outside. I started taking him out, and the next thing I knew, John was through the wedge, and all you saw was his feet running.”
And, then, the explosion.
“You know, you couldn’t hear,” Kramer said. “The crowd was so loud. They were stamping on that metal flooring, and it was deafening.”
