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Week 13 on the NFL schedule includes the league’s annual Thanksgiving Day games, and this year two old NFL rivals face off in the annual game in Detroit, the Lions and the Green Bay Packers. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, I decided to re-post an article about a game played between these two teams in 1962 that I had originally posted in 2010 as a “Classic Thanksgiving Game”. Here it is:

On Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1962, the NFL staged its’ annual traditional game between the host Detroit Lions and the visiting Green Bay Packers, and the game was one of the most memorable ever played on the holiday. A year later, this particular date would forever become etched in history by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but in 1962 the Lions played one of the most inspired games in franchise history on the date – a game that lives on today in Lions’ team history as the “Turkey Day Massacre”. The Packers were the powerhouse team in the league at that time, having won the championship under coach Vince Lombardi in 1961. They entered the annual holiday game with a perfect 10-0 record, and had beaten the Lions 9-7 in Green Bay earlier in the season on a last-second field goal. That game had stuck in the Lions’ collective craw leading up to the Thanksgiving rematch, and the team was not the mediocrity they are in today’s NFL – they were 8-2 and second to the Packers in the Western Division at the time. Detroit’s defense, led by Roger Brown, Alex Karras and Joe Schmidt, played its’ best game of the season that day, harrassing and swarming Packer QB Bart Starr all game long, and sacking him 11 times for over 100 yards in losses. Brown, a 300 lb. defensive lineman, had 5 of the sacks himself, including one where he tackled Starr in the end zone for a safety. The Lions won 26-14, and although they won the battle that day, Green Bay won the war, as this turned out to be their only loss of the season. The Packers finished 13-1 and won their second consecutive NFL title, on their way to 5 championships in a 7 year period, a feat that earned the small Wisconsin town the nickname of “Titletown, USA”.

Lombardi didn’t easily forget this game, however. At the time, the annual holiday game was not only hosted by Detroit, but the annual opponent, from 1951 until 1963, was always the rival Packers. Lombardi lobbied the league complaining about having to travel to a road game on a short week every year, and how much of a disadvantage it was to his club, and eventually commissioner Pete Rozelle relented and the league began rotating the opponent for the Lions each year.

 Green Bay’s Bart Starr is swallowed up by a swarming Lions’ defense

One of the marquee games on the entire 2013 NFL schedule will be played this week, pitting the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots. It’s a dream matchup that league and television executives wish they could showcase every week – a battle between two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. In this week’s Thursday Throwback post, I’ll go back to 1960, to the first game played between these two franchises, and also the first regular season game played in the history of the American Football League. It was September 9, 1960, a Friday night, and the game was played at Boston University’s stadium. The Friday date was picked after a survey of Patriots’ season ticket holders showed that they preferred Friday night games over Saturday night. In fact, all Patriot home games that season were scheduled for Friday nights. They were known as the Boston Patriots at that time, and early on they became the first AFL team to score when Gino Cappelletti booted a 35 yard field goal in the first quarter. Being the inaugural game in the AFL’s history, there were many firsts achieved that night. The Broncos debuted their infamous uniforms that included vertically striped socks (see picture below), which they burned in a public ceremony at a later date, then revived a couple years ago, in the AFL’s 50th Anniversary season, as part of their throwback uniforms.  Boston’s Butch Songin threw the first pass, which was incomplete.  The league’s first touchdown came on a pass from Denver’s Frank Tripucka to Al Carmichael, covering 59 yards.

Versatile Bronco back Gene Mingo

When Gene Mingo kicked the extra point on that TD, he didn’t just make AFL history by splitting the uprights for the league’s first point after, he became the first African-American placekicker in pro football history. Have there been any since then? Actually, yes. Cookie Gilchrist played fullback and kicked for the AFL Buffalo Bills in the same era as Mingo, and Donald Igwebuike kicked for Tampa Bay in the late ’80s. He wasn’t really African American, however, just African. He was born in Nigeria. In an era when kickers were also football players, Mingo also recorded the first AFL punt return touchdown when he ran back a Patriot punt 76 yards for a score. He missed the extra point after that TD, however. Austin “Goose” Gonsoulin came up with the league’s first interception, and had 2 in the game. Most importantly, the Broncos won the game, 13-10, logging the first win in AFL history. The Broncos, nowadays, are a model franchise in the NFL. They reached a Super Bowl in the 1970s led by their “Orange Crush” defense, won a pair of titles in the John Elway era in the ’90s, and are enjoying success currently with Manning leading the way. They posted the worst record of all of the original eight AFL teams, however, in the ten year history of that league before the merger. But at least they can boast that they won the AFL’s first game ever.

Program from the first AFL game ever played

It’s common knowledge among football fans that the greatest comeback of all time in the NFL came in 1992, when the Buffalo Bills overcame a 35-3 deficit in the third quarter to overtake the Houston Oilers, 38-35 in a playoff game. NFL Films even christened the game with that title in their Greatest Games series. A much less ballyhooed game was a contest played on December 7, 1980 at Candlestick Park between the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints that was the second greatest comeback in NFL history, or the greatest comeback in regular season history. The 49ers and Saints were NFC West division rivals back then, and were young teams headed in opposite directions. San Francisco was a young team on the rise, although they entered the game with a 5-8 record. The Saints, meanwhile, were winless at 0-13, and going nowhere.  New Orleans, despite its’ dismal record, was hot early in the game, and built a 35-7 halftime lead on the strength of three Archie Manning touchdown passes and a couple of short TD runs by Jack Holmes. Then the Niners’ young quarterback, Joe Montana, mounted the tremendous comeback by his team, throwing for a pair of TDs and running for another, to tie the game and send it into overtime, where Ray Wersching won it 38-35 with a field goal. One of Montana’s key targets of that era, Freddie Solomon, also had a big day, catching one of the scoring throws and returning a punt 57 yards for another touchdown.

Years later, the 49ers always considered this game a springboard for their future success, as they dominated the rest of the decade, winning Super Bowls behind Montana and coach Bill Walsh, and over time being hailed as the “Team of The Eighties”. “Joe Cool” Montana, like Frank Reich of the Bills did prior to leading that historic playoff comeback, gave a premonition performance in his college days similar to the Saints game. In the Cotton Bowl in 1979, he led Notre Dame to a furious fourth quarter comeback against the University of Houston, as the Fighting Irish overcame a 22 point deficit to win, just as Reich had done in his college days at the University of Maryland. What’s even more amazing is that Montana was suffering from the flu in that Cotton Bowl clash, earning the game the nickname of  “The Chicken Soup Game.” So how did the two teams fare the rest of that 1980 season? The Saints avoided the ultimate embarrassment of going winless by beating the New York Jets the next week, and finished 1-15. The big comeback may have been a springboard for future San Francisco success, but the “spring” didn’t come immediately. The 49ers dropped their final two games, to Atlanta and Buffalo, and wound up 6-10.

Joe Montana