Richard John Karlis (born May 23, 1959, in Salem, Ohio) is a former American Football placekicker who played nine seasons for the Denver Broncos, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Detroit Lions in the National Football League from 1982 to 1990. He played college football at the University of Cincinnati and is known as the last of the field goal kickers who kicked barefoot full time in the NFL.
Karlis is best known for kicking the game winning field goal in overtime for the Broncos against the Cleveland Browns in the 1986 AFC Championship game to reach Super Bowl XXI. He had a rather ironic performance in Super Bowl XXI, tying a Super Bowl record with a 48-yard field goal, but also missing a 23-yard attempt, the shortest missed field goal in Super Bowl history at that time.
In 1989, he tied a then NFL record by kicking seven field goals in a game against the Los Angeles Rams, a record held until 2007.
Karlis made 172 field goals and 283 extra point attempts for 799 points in his career and also holds Super Bowl records for most field goal attempts with six, making three of them and other records including most consecutive field goals made as a rookie with thirteen in 1982.
Karlis is the creator of an instructional video for kickers.
Famous quotes containing the word rich:
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)