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Pro football, more than any of the other major sports, has a rich history of folklore that incudes many team and tandem nicknames. It was really hard cutting this list down to only ten, and some of the “honorable mention” names that didn’t make the list are well known ones, like Miami’s “No Name Defense”,  the self-proclaimed Dallas Cowboys’ “America’s Team”, a current one – Seattle’s “Legion of Boom” secondary, the  “Big Blue Wrecking Crew” of the New York Giants of the Lawrence Taylor era, San Diego’s prolific “Air Coryell” offense, and the “Bull Elephant Backfield” of the 1950s Los Angeles Rams. Here are the ten that made the cut:

1. Purple People Eaters – this nickname is sometimes used to describe the entire 11-man unit of the dominant 1960s and ’70s Minnesota Vikings’ defensive units, but is really the nickname of the team’s front four, which included Gary Larsen, a pair of Hall of Famers in Alan Page and Carl Eller, and a Viking legend who belongs in Canton in Jim Marshall. The nickname stuck into the mid-70s, when Doug Sutherland replaced Larsen.

2. The Steel Curtain – this nickname was given to the dominant Pittsburgh Steeler defensive units of the 1970s that helped the franchise win four Super Bowls. Anchored by legends like Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, L.C. Greenwood, Jack Ham, Mel Blount and Donnie Shell, the Steelers dominated the decade under coach Chuck Noll with a hard-nosed in your face style of play.

3. Fearsome Foursome – the Los Angeles Rams’ front four of the 1960s earned this nickname. The line consisted of four hard-working players intent on getting after the quarterback – Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier and Lamar Lundy. Jones, in fact, pretty much invented the term “sack”, which is an official stat in pro football today. Grier was eventually replaced on the line by Roger Brown, but the unit kept the nickname throughout the decade.

4. Million Dollar Backfield – this unit, consisting of four Hall of Famers, was the San Francisco 49ers starting backfield of the 1950s. In an era when the running game dominated, this backfield included quarterback Y.A. Tittle and three running backs – Hugh McElhenny, Joe Perry and John Henry Johnson. Later in the decade, Tittle remained as the QB, but the trio of backs were replaced by J.D. Smith, R.C. Owens and C.R. Roberts and became known as the “All Alphabet Backfield”.

5. Doomsday Defense – this nickname was given to the swarming, dominant defense of coach Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys of the 1960s and ’70s. The nickname stuck with two different Dallas defensive units – the 1960s version featuring players like Chuck Howley, Bob Lilly, Jethro Pugh, Lee Roy Jordan, Cornell Green and Mel Renfro, and a later 1970s club that included Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Randy White, Harvey Martin, Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, Cliff Harris and Charlie Waters. Both versions produced Super Bowl titles for Landry.

6. The Electric Company – the Buffalo Bills’ offensive line of the 1970s that opened holes for O.J. Simpson was tagged with this nickname, as they “turned on The Juice”. They were responsible for Simpson breaking the 2,000 yard barrier in 1973, breaking Jim Brown’s single season rushing yardage record. The unit included center Mike Montler, guards Reggie McKenzie and Joe DeLamielleure, tackles Dave Foley and Donnie Green and tight end Paul Seymour.

7. Greatest Show on Turf – guided by former Arena League quarterback Kurt Warner, the 1999 St. Louis Rams developed into an explosive offensive unit that surprisingly won the Super Bowl and earned this nickname. The team remained an offensive powerhouse the following 2 seasons also, as offensive coordinator Mike Martz was promoted to head coach. Stars of those teams included not only Warner but Marshall Faulk, Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, Az Hakim and Ricky Proehl.

8. Monsters of The Midway – like Dallas’ “America’s Team” handle, this nickname is used to signify any and all Chicago Bear teams. It was especially fitting for coach George Halas’s championship clubs in the early years, and definitely fit the 1985 championship “Super Bowl Shuffle” Bears’ team coached by Mike Ditka, who along with rugged legends like Dick Butkus, Doug Atkins, Joe Fortunato, Mike Singletary and Brian Urlacher embodied the Bears’ style of play.

9. Orange Crush – this nickname was coined by a Denver sportswriter for the 1970s Bronco defense, specifically the 1977 club that reached the Super Bowl. Defensive coordinator Joel Collier, one of the game’s top defensive minds of all time, installed a 3-4 defense that made stars of players like Tom Jackson, Randy Gradishar, Paul Smith, Lyle Alzado, Steve Foley, Rubin Carter and Barney Chavous.

10. The Over The Hill Gang – Washington Redskins’ coach George Allen had a soft spot for veteran players, and despised having to use rookies due to their penchant for making mistakes. When he built the early 1970s Washington teams, he loaded the roster with veteran retreads like Ron McDole, Myron Pottios, Bill Kilmer, Richie Petitbon, Maxie Baughan, Jack Pardee, Verlon Biggs, Roy Jefferson and Boyd Dowler. When the team started to play well and win games, they were given this nickname. Allen even guided the crusty veteran team into the 1972 Super Bowl, where they lost to the undefeated Miami Dolphins.

The seventeenth and last week of the 2014 NFL schedule includes a contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants, so the final Throwback Thursday feature of the season will be a look at an unforgettable game played between these two teams on November 19, 1978 that forever became known in NFL lore as “The Miracle at The Meadowlands”. Both teams were mired in mediocrity that season, and the game wasn’t very artistic, but Giant quarterback Joe Pisarcik, who wasn’t exactly a darling of the Big Apple media (he was sarcastically dubbed “Off-Broadway Joe”), did enough to put his team in position to secure a win with a pair of touchdown passes early in the game. The Giants held a 17-12 lead and had possession at the two minute warning, thanks to an interception by Odis McKinney. New York ran a couple of plays with fullback Larry Csonka, including one that gained 11 yards and a first down. With the Eagles out of timeouts, all the G-Men now had to do was kneel down and run out the clock. Pisarcik did just that on first down, but Philly linebacker Bill Bergey burst through the line and hit the New York center Jim Clack, knocking him into the Giant signal caller. It was a desperate attempt to force a fumble that failed. However, in an era before the automatic “victory formation” kneel downs of today, Giant offensive coordinator Bob Gibson sent in a standard running play, with Pisarcik to hand the ball off to Csonka, the same play that had just been successful. Gibson’s explanation afterward was that he didn’t want to expose his quarterback to further injury, so in a way Bergey’s charge worked. Also, in that era many coaches considered the kneel down to be dishonorable.

When the play was sent in, New York’s offensive huddle was in shock. Csonka begged Pisarcik not to give him the ball, and the rest of the players exhorted him to change the play and kneel down again. Pisarcik had gotten a lot of heat for audibling out of a play the week before, and being an inexperienced second year man, he demurred to the offensive coordinator. The play turned out to be disastrous, and forever took it’s place in NFL history. The Giants had wasted a lot of time in the huddle arguing over the call, and the play clock was running down when they lined up so Clack snapped it before his QB was ready. Pisarcik bobbled the snap but hung on to the ball, but his handoff glanced off of Csonka’s hip and wound up on the ground. Eagle defensive coordinator Marion Campbell called for an all out 11 man blitz on the play, and Herman Edwards broke into the backfield, scooped up the ball and ran it into the end zone to lock up the improbable win for Philly. The play was costly for the Giant organization. Pisarcik needed a police escort to get to his car after the game, and Gibson was fired the next morning. The stigma of that call was so bad that he never worked in football at any level again. Head coach John McVay and personnel director Andy Robustelli finished the season but were let go afterwards. Ironically, a couple of years later Pisarcik was traded to the Eagles for a draft pick.

Eagle DB Herman Edwards completes the “Miracle at The Meadowlands” deciding play

The Dallas Cowboys and Indianapolis Colts clash in the NFL’s week 16 schedule, and for this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, we’ll encore a post that we published during Super Bowl week in 2011. It was Super Bowl V,  a mistake-filled game played on January 17, 1971, between the Cowboys and Colts (who were based in Baltimore at the time):

Super Bowl V may have been the strangest of all of the 44 NFL title games played since the Super Bowl began. It was played following the 1970 season, the first year the NFL and AFL merged into one league with 2 conferences, after Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore were transferred from the old NFL into the American Conference of the new NFL. After the AFL had established itself as the NFL’s equal with 2 consecutive stunning Super Bowl wins, by the Jets and Chiefs, suddenly the game wound up with 2 old NFL teams playing each other, which took some of the competitiveness out of the game which existed when the young AFL was trying to make a name for itself in earlier years. Both teams entered this game with issues – the Cowboys had gained a reputation for being a good team that “couldn’t win the big one” after failing in the playoffs every year since the early ’60s. The Colts returned to the game where they had suffered the “embarrassment” of being upset by the upstart AFL Jets 2 years earlier, only this time were representing that upstart league as AFC champions. Nonetheless, both teams entered the contest needing to win badly to erase a losing stigma, despite being successful, winning franchises.

The game was an artistic mess, and it looked as if neither team was going to be able to erase that losing stigma, or if either was even capable. The game, which became known as the “Blunder Bowl”, featured 11 combined turnovers, including 7 by the winning team (a record that still stands today), 14 total penalties and a boatload of punts. The Cowboys finished with 113 passing yards, the Colts had 69 yards rushing. All 3 quarterbacks who played in the game, John Unitas and Earl Morrall for Baltimore and Craig Morton for Dallas, completed less than 50% of their pass attempts. A rookie kicker, Jim O’Brien, won the game by kicking a field goal with 5 seconds left, but only after Cowboy RB Dan Reeves let a pass slip through his hands that LB Mike Curtis intercepted, to set it up. Baltimore’s Don McCafferty became the first rookie head coach to win a Super Bowl, but obviously his coaching genius wasn’t much of a factor in the win. For the first and only time in Super Bowl history, a player from the losing team – linebacker Chuck Howley of the Cowboys (pictured below) – was named the game’s MVP. Howley refused to accept the award, saying it was meaningless to him after his team lost. So the Colts, ultimately, erased the stigma of being embarrassed by the Jets in Super Bowl III, but, instead of winning back the glory for the old guard NFL, their win gave the upstart AFL, now the AFC, a 3-2 lead in title games between the leagues. The Cowboys’ story finally got a happy ending also, as they returned to the Super Bowl the next season and soundly defeated Don Shula’s young up-and-coming Miami Dolphin squad in Super Bowl VI to finally give Tom Landry his long-awaited championship. One thing this game accomplished – it firmly established the fact that the old battleground days of the NFL and AFL were over, and that the NFL was now just one big happy family. From this point, the game grew immensely in the 1970s and beyond into the monster it is today.

Dallas Cowboy LB Chuck Howley

Two long-time NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, will square off this week on the league schedule in a game that will likely decide the division championship. The Throwback Thursday post for the week will feature a game played between these two franchises on Thanksgiving Day in 1989, at the beginning of the Jimmy Johnson era of Dallas football, that would become known as the “Bounty Bowl”. It was Johnson’s first year as Cowboy coach after taking over for the legendary Tom Landry, and the team was enduring a horrific season that would find them finishing with a 1-15 record. The Eagles were coached by Buddy Ryan, considered a defensive “genius” who had earned the Philly head coaching job with his great work as defensive coordinator in the mid-1980s with the Chicago Bears. His Eagle team was a defensive powerhouse, and a heavy favorite to defeat Dallas on this day. The game pretty much followed the script, as the Eagles harassed Dallas’ rookie quarterback, Troy Aikman, all day and crushed the Cowboys 27-0. It was what supposedly happened during the game, however, that had Johnson fuming afterwards. Dallas’ coach accused Ryan of putting up bounties of up to $200 on two Cowboy players – Aikman and placekicker Luis Zendejas, who had been with Philly earlier in the season, was cut, and signed with Dallas. At his post-game press conference, Johnson said this: “I have absolutely no respect for the way they played the game. I would’ve said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big, fat rear end into the dressing room.”

For his part, Ryan denied the accusations, saying that his players had no intention of hurting anyone, and even claiming it was in the Eagles’ best interest to keep Zendejas in the game, since he was in a slump. He also joked about Johnson’s comments, saying: “I resent that. I’ve been on a diet. I lost a couple pounds, and I thought I was looking good.” The facts show that Eagle players took numerous cheap shots at both Aikman and Zendejas during the game, and the Mexican-born kicker said afterwards that during his time in Philadelphia, Ryan had paid an unnamed player $100 for each of two hits on an opposing punter. The game caused such a fury that when the two teams played later that year in Philadelphia, the contest was dubbed “Bounty Bowl II” by the media, with CBS Sports doing a pre-game opening that featured wanted posters of the involved players showing bounty amounts. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue attended the second game, and although no incidents occurred on the field, Johnson, some of the referees and television announcers Verne Lundquist and Terry Bradshaw were pelted with snowballs, ice and beer. Even Eagles’ player Jerome Brown was hit with a snowball while standing on the sideline, attempting to get the fans to stop throwing things. Eventually, Johnson got the last laugh, as he built the Cowboys into a dynasty that won a pair of Super Bowls in the early 1990s, while Ryan never reached that level of success as a head coach in stops at Philadelphia and later with the Arizona Cardinals.

Jimmy Johnson complains to the officials as Luis Zendejas (6) is helped by trainers after enduring a hard hit

The Washington Redskins and St. Louis Rams meet on this week’s NFL schedule, and that matchup harkens back to a meeting between these 2 franchises that was played way back on December 11, 1949, a game that will be today’s Throwback Thursday feature. It was played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, as the Rams were located in L.A. back then, and even though it took place 65 years ago, it could be considered a look into the future of the sport. The final score was one-sided, as the Rams, an offensive powerhouse of that era, won handily 53-27, but it was a game that, if you scanned the final statistics, looked like a game that could’ve been played today. The two teams combined for 725 yards passing and 962 total yards,  unheard of totals for the time. The Redskins were quarterbacked by the player who basically invented the forward pass in the pro game, Hall of Famer “Slingin” Sammy Baugh, while the Rams’ QB situation was a two-headed monster, as a pair of future Hall of Famers, Norm Van Brocklin and Bob Waterfield, shared playing time at the position. Van Brocklin threw 4 touchdown passes, and Waterfield added 2 more. Another future Hall of Famer, split end Tom Fears, caught a pair of scoring throws, but on this day, his less-heralded teammate, Bob Shaw, caught 4 touchdown throws. Baugh was valiant in a losing cause for Washington, completing 29 of 48 passes for 308 yards, and was responsible for all 4 of his team’s touchdowns, throwing 3 TD passes and scoring on a one yard run. Unfortunately, he also was responsible for “slinging” 2 of his team’s 4 interceptions on the day, which most quarterbacks who are put in a position of having to try to bring their team from behind can relate to, as the ‘Skins trailed 53-14 at one point in the fourth quarter. Baugh’s backup, Harry Gilmer (who would one day coach the Detroit Lions in the 1960s), threw the other two. Washington had a total of six turnovers in the game, and in another similarity to today’s game, the two clubs combined for a total of 20 penalty calls. For the Rams, Waterfield hit on 14 of 22 throws for 253 yards and his 2 scores, while Van Brocklin, amazingly, got his 4 TD throws on only 6 completions (on 10 attempts for 152 yards). In another rarity for what is known as the “three yards and a cloud of dust” era, Shaw and Fears both had over 100 yards receiving. The Rams would go on to advance to the NFL Championship game in 1949, but their offensive powerhouse would meet a fearsome opponent the day of the title game – Mother Nature. The game was played in a driving rainstorm at the L.A. Coliseum, which turned the field into a mud pit, slowing down the Ram attack to the point where they were shut out by the Philadelphia Eagles, 14-0.

Slingin’ Sammy Baugh looks downfield for a receiver

The game from this week’s NFL schedule that we’ll feature in this week’s Throwback Thursday post is a contest between the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills. The game was played in January of 1990 and was an AFC divisional playoff game. It featured a classic shootout between two of that era’s top quarterbacks, Buffalo’s Jim Kelly and the Browns’ Bernie Kosar.  The backdrop to the game was this: the Browns had lost a pair of heartbreaking games to John Elway and the Denver Broncos in the playoffs in previous seasons, and Buffalo, coming off an appearance in the AFC championship game the prior year, had regressed in the 1989 season. They ended the regular season with a couple of losses that almost cost them a playoff berth altogether, and those losses caused some infighting in a very competitive Bills’ locker room that earned the team the nickname “The Bickering Bills”.

The game itself was exciting and included some memorable plays, including a 90 yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Cleveland’s Eric Metcalf and a pass to Buffalo’s Don Beebe in which he was flipped by a Cleveland defender and landed squarely on his head. After falling behind late in the game, Buffalo’s coaches made the decision to go to a fast-paced no-huddle offense to save time, and it turned out to be highly successful. Kelly led his team on a couple of late scoring drives to bring the Bills to within four points at 34-30, hitting Thurman Thomas with a short scoring toss. Unfortunately, Scott Norwood slipped on the icy turf on the extra point attempt and kicked the ball into the backs of his offensive linemen, keeping the score at 34-30 and forcing the Bills to go for a touchdown rather than a tying field goal later on. After that drive, the Bills defense held Kosar to a three-and -out, and after the Browns punted, Kelly proceeded to lead his club downfield with a quick passing attack featuring short throws to his backs, mainly Thomas. The drive included a pair of fourth down conversions, and reached the Cleveland 11 yard line with 14 seconds left. Then came a controversial play in which Kelly found a wide open Ronnie Harmon in the corner of the end zone, and tossed him a pass that he got both hands on, but promptly dropped. There was controversy among fans and in the locker room afterwards about the play, with Harmon claiming the pass was overthrown but fans and some teammates accusing Harmon of having “alligator arms” and not going all out to make the catch. On the next play, Kelly tried to hit Thomas in the end zone but the ball was intercepted by Cleveland linebacker Clay Matthews, father of the current Packer legend.

Despite the loss, some good came out of the game for Buffalo. On the plane ride back home, the coaches, after seeing the success of the fast-paced offensive attack guided by Kelly, decided to make it their base offense the following season, and it was the impetus for the team’s four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl in the early 1990s. Named the “K-Gun” (supposedly after tight end Keith McKeller), it played a major role in making Hall of Famers out of players like Kelly, Thomas, Andre Reed and James Lofton.

Did Bills’ RB Ronnie Harmon have “Alligator Arms” on this potential game-winning pass?

The NFL schedule this week includes an AFC West battle between two old enemies, the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs, so a past game between these two clubs will be our Throwback Thursday feature. When the merger took place that joined together the National Football League with the American Football League, it stipulated that the leagues would begin to exist as the “new” NFL beginning in 1970, with the teams divided into the National and American Conferences. Great care was taken to try to preserve the rivalries built up among teams in each league. One of those was the AFL Western Division rivalry between the Raiders and Chiefs. It wasn’t a rivalry that existed when the AFL was founded in 1960 – the Raiders were a bad team with financial problems in the league’s first couple of years, while the Chiefs began their life as the Dallas Texans, one of the league’s better clubs on the field behind the coaching of Hank Stram. Unable to compete with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, owner Lamar Hunt moved his franchise to K.C. where it enjoyed even more success. When the Raiders hired Al Davis to be their head coach in 1963, they soon shunned their loser label and became an AFL powerhouse. Both clubs developed into flagship franchises for the new league, and being in the same division it was inevitable that they would become bitter rivals. The two teams won 3 of the final 4 AFL titles as the league wound down, and their rivalry continued on into the NFL in the ’70s, and thrives even today. There have been many classics played between these two teams – including an AFL title game in 1969, a season that saw the Raiders sweep the 2 regular season meetings, only to have the underdog Chiefs come into Oakland and upset the Raiders in the title match. The Chiefs had a mascot, a live horse named Warpaint, that would circle the field after every K.C. touchdown. In a 1975 clash, the Chiefs blew out the Raiders 42-10, prompting Oakland coach John Madden to utter: “We couldn’t beat the Chiefs, but we damn near killed their horse!”

The game we highlight for Throwback Thursday is the first encounter they had as members of the NFL, played on November 1 1970. As usual, they were locked in a battle for the division lead, only now it was for the NFL’s AFC West lead, not the AFL Western Division. The Chiefs scored first on a short run by Wendell Hayes, then Raider QB Daryle Lamonica hit his tight end, Raymond Chester, on a pair of short touchdown tosses, to give Oakland a 14-10 lead. Kansas City scored the next 10 points, on a field goal by Jan Stenerud and a TD throw from Len Dawson to his star wideout, Otis Taylor. The Chiefs now led 17-14 and appeared to be on their way to the win, until Taylor became involved in another play. On this play, Dawson scrambled for first down yardage, and on his way down to the ground, got speared in the head by Raider defensive end Ben Davidson. Taylor immediately came to his quarterback’s defense, jumping Davidson and igniting a bench-clearing brawl. Both Davidson and Taylor were ejected but under the rules at the time, Taylor’s penalty nullified the first down and the Chiefs were forced to punt. This allowed Lamonica to drive his team down the field to set up a tying field goal by Oakland’s old reliable, George Blanda. Blanda nailed the kick and the game ended in a 17-17 tie (there was no overtime in the NFL then). That tie eventually cost the Chiefs the division title, as Oakland won the rematch on their home field later in the year to win the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Oakland’s menacing defensive end Ben Davidson