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Every fan of the game of football today knows what a “Hail Mary” pass is – a desperation heave at the end of a half or a game, with time expiring, in an attempt to steal an out-of-reach game from an opponent.  It’s the ultimate “steal victory from the jaws of defeat” play. Perhaps the most famous one took place in a college game, when Doug Flutie hit Gerard Phelan on the final play of the game for Boston College, in 1984, to upset Jimmy Johnson’s University of Miami squad. The Hail Mary pass is now a regular strategy employed by teams when the situation warrants it. With the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings scheduled to play this weekend on the NFL’s week 9 slate, it’s only fitting for this week’s Throwback Thursday post to feature a game played between those two franchises, on December 28, 1975, that marked the unofficial “birth” of the Hail Mary pass, at least as far as the NFL is concerned. In actuality, the term had been used as far back as the 1930s in college football, to describe a deep, low probability pass, mostly by Notre Dame’s famed Four Horsemen, or other Catholic universities.

The term was revived in that December playoff game in Minnesota, when the Cowboys, led by quarterback Roger Staubach, took the field on their own 15 yard line with a little under two minutes left to play, trailing the Vikings 14-10. “Roger the Dodger”, whose trademark throughout his entire career was leading late-game comebacks (earning him the nickname “Captain Comeback”), drove his team to midfield. He completed a pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson for a first down on 4th and 17 to reach that point. With 32 seconds left, Staubach unleashed his desperation heave, again for Pearson, who was covered by All Pro Viking cornerback Nate Wright. Wright slipped and fell, and Pearson pinned the ball against his hip, turned and scampered into the end zone for the winning score as Dallas triumphed 17-14. When asked about the play afterwards, Staubach, who is Catholic, said, ” I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary, it was a very lucky play”. And the Hail Mary in the NFL was officially born. There were some strange circumstances surrounding the game that day, also. Incensed Viking fans pummeled referee Armen Terzian with objects after the play, feeling that Pearson had pushed Wright and that offensive interference should have been called. Terzian was hit by a whiskey bottle, opening a gash that required 11 stitches. Also, Viking QB Fran Tarkenton, shortly after the game concluded, was informed that his father had passed away of a heart attack while watching the game at his home in Georgia.

Drew Pearson celebrates his winning “Hail Mary” touchdown against the Vikings.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders match up on this week’s NFL schedule, and although in 2013 both teams have struggled to start the season, a game played between them that is known as one of the most famous in NFL history was an easy choice as this week’s edition of the Thursday Throwback. It took place on December 23, 1972 at Pittsburgh’s old Three Rivers Stadium, and was that season’s AFC Divisional playoff game. The game itself was a defensive struggle between the Raiders, who had been a league regular season powerhouse going back to their days in the old AFL, and the young Steelers, who were rebuilding under coach Chuck Noll and looking for their first playoff win ever, a fact that’s hard to believe considering the franchise’s success since then. At the time, the Steelers were only a couple of years removed from being one of the worst teams in the NFL over a period of at least two decades. When owner Art Rooney hired Noll, it was the first move in a total transformation of the team, as they brought in future star players like Franco Harris, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Jack Ham and Mel Blount and had become a team clearly on the rise. The Raiders had been one of the AFL’s strongest teams, even making an appearance in the second Super Bowl, and their success continued after the leagues merged and they became part of the American Conference. However, they were in a period when they were starting to gain a reputation for not being able to “win the big one”, as they suffered continual playoff failures. With 5 seconds left in this particular game, it looked like the Raiders were on their way to the AFC Championship game, as they held a razor-thin 7-6 lead with only a last ditch Terry Bradshaw Hail Mary pass left for the young Steelers to attempt. The play didn’t start out particularly well for Pittsburgh, and Bradshaw wound up flinging a wounded duck pass into the middle of the field. The pass headed toward John “Frenchy” Fuqua just as Raider safety Jack “The Assassin” Tatum arrived on the scene and delivered a hard blow to the Steeler running back in an attempt to break up the play. Tatum’s hit succeeded, but the ball popped out and flew directly to Harris, who barely plucked it out of the air before it hit the ground and continued untouched to the end zone to give his team a nearly impossible to believe 13-7 win. At the time, league rules stated that if a pass caromed off an offensive player, only that player was eligible to catch it. The Raiders argued vehemently that the ball had bounced off Fuqua, therefore making Franco an ineligible receiver on the play, but the game officials ruled the ball had hit Tatum. John Madden, Raider head coach at the time, to this day has never accepted the official’s ruling on the play. NFL Films chose the game’s final play as the greatest of all time, and also its’ most controversial.

The win helped catapult the Steelers into their golden age in the decade of the 1970s, when they won four Super Bowls, but in ’72 they weren’t quite ready for prime time, as they went on to lose the following week in the AFC Championship game to the year’s eventual Super Bowl champions, Don Shula’s undefeated Miami Dolphins. The Raiders would hang on to the “can’t win the big one” stigma for a few more years until they finally broke through with a Super Bowl win over the Vikings following the 1976 season.

 Franco Harris completes the Immaculate Reception TD to the delight of Pittsburgh fans….

Raider coach John Madden had a different reaction.

The scheduled game from the NFL for week seven that will be the Throwback Thursday feature for this week is between two old AFC East rivals, the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. There are many games to choose from over the years in this storied rivalry that were unforgettable – the first game ever played between the teams, in Miami’s first year in the AFL in 1966, the Bills’ first win over the Dolphins after going 0-for-the 1970s, in the first year of the Chuck Knox era, Joe Ferguson’s epic game in the Orange Bowl when he outdueled Dan Marino in his rookie year, Jim Kelly’s end zone dive to secure a win in 1989, or any of the many Bills’ wins in the Marv Levy era. Since the 2 teams meet twice a year every season, there will be other opportunities to feature those games.

Instead, I decided to feature a game from 1975 that included one of the most bizarre officiating calls in NFL history. The Bills, with O.J. Simpson leading the way, were a good team in the 1970s, but could never get over the hump when it came to competing with Don Shula’s Dolphin teams. Miami dominated the series, but that domination bordered on the ridiculous as Buffalo was completely swept for the entire decade, losing twice a year to the Fish every year from 1970 through 1979. But on December 8, 1975, the Dolphins got some unexpected help on their way to a 31-21 win over the Bills in the Orange Bowl. That old stadium was a house of horrors for Buffalo, but they left south Florida that day incensed over a call that left them out in the cold as far as having a chance to win the game, and put a major crimp in their playoff hopes. Considering the way they totally dominated the Bills for the whole decade, Miami didn’t need any help, but got some in a major way in this game. The Bills had staged a major comeback, from a 21-0 deficit, led by some stellar play from Simpson and Ferguson, and trailed by a mere field goal, 24-21, when Miami running back Mercury Morris fumbled the ball, and Bills’ lineman Pat Toomay ran over to attempt to recover the ball. He did, which appeared to give the Bills possession and a chance to take the lead. However, head linesman Jerry Bergman ruled that Morris had not fumbled, and Toomay was assessed a personal foul penalty for “roughing the official”, a call not heard of in the league before (or since), giving the ball back to the Dolphins with a first down. They proceeded to drive for a touchdown that sealed the win, a victory that the Bills felt was tainted. Bills’ owner Ralph Wilson may have been the most angry of anyone in the organization, as he called for Bergman to be fired and threatened to not send his team on the field for any future games that Bergman officiated. Wilson’s quote: “Anyone that incompetent should not be allowed to officiate and should be barred from football.”

Bergman became one of Buffalo sports fans’ most hated villains, and he received over 1,500 critical letters from fans. His wife said that one letter, addressed only to “Blind as a Bat Bergman, Allegheny County” managed to find its’ way to their mailbox. It didn’t help the situation that at the time, Dolphin coach Shula was head of the league’s competition committee, and the general assumption around the NFL was that he “owned” the officials.

Don Shula

One of the games on this week’s NFL schedule is expected to be one of the most lopsided games in league history, matching the undefeated and seemingly unstoppable Denver Broncos, led by Peyton Manning, and the hapless Jacksonville Jaguars, who are winless and going nowhere. The point spread on the game has reached as high as 28 points. The Throwback Thursday game I’m highlighting this week was also played between these two franchises, and wound up being featured by NFL Films as one of the top ten in their “Greatest Games” series. They dubbed it the “Ambush at Mile High”, and going into the game the expected result was pretty much what the experts are counting on this week – a one-sided Bronco victory. The year was 1996 and the Broncos were the AFC’s top seed going into the playoffs, and behind star quarterback John Elway, were expected to breeze through the competition into the Super Bowl. When the first team they would face turned out to be the Jaguars, that path looked to be extremely easy. The Jaguars were a second year expansion team that finished the year with a 9-7 win/loss record, barely squeaking into the playoffs as a wild card team. They pulled what appeared to be a major surprise in the wild card round the previous week when they overcame an early 14-0 deficit to upset the Buffalo Bills 30-27. It wasn’t clear at the time, but it turned out the Bills were in decline at that point. In fact, the game turned out to be Jim Kelly’s final appearance, as he left the field with a head injury and wound up retiring in the off-season. Against the 13-3 Broncos, the Jaguars, under coach Tom Coughlin, were supposed to be an easy mark, especially at Mile High Stadium, where the team had a major home field advantage. The game followed the same pattern as the Jags’ wild card win the previous week, with Denver jumping out to a 12-0 lead in the first quarter. However, just as in the Buffalo game, Jacksonville stormed back behind the pinpoint passing of Mark Brunell, who played the game of his life, and the hard running of Natrone Means, who ground out 140 rushing yards. Jacksonville hung on for the win, again by a 30-27 score, but unfortunately they were eliminated the next week in the AFC Championship game by coach Bill Parcells’ New England Patriots. The upset may have lit a fire under Elway and the Broncos, however, as they went on to win back-to-back Super Bowls following the 1997 and ’98 seasons.

Natrone Means (photo courtesy of Bleacherreport.com)

One of the matchups on this week’s NFL schedule is an NFC East clash between two long-time rivals, the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. This week’s Thursday Throwback features a famous game played between these 2 rivals on November 20, 1960, at Yankee Stadium, when a play that became known as “the hit heard ’round the world” took place involving a pair of future Hall of Famers, Eagle linebacker Chuck Bednarik and Giant running back Frank Gifford. The game was a must-win situation for the Eagles, who were enjoying a rare season where they had a shot at dethroning the 2 dominant teams in the NFL’s Eastern Division, the Giants and Cleveland Browns. They were hanging onto a 17-10 lead late in the game and the Giants were beginning to mount a comeback when Bednarik laid out Gifford with a hard, clean hit as the Giant back was attempting to catch a pass over the middle. The hit was so hard it knocked Gifford unconscious, and he had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. He suffered a concussion, with symptoms so bad that he was out of football for 18 months, and wound up retiring.

The two players involved were polar opposites of each other. Bednarik, whose nickname was “Concrete Charlie”, was a hard-nosed intimidating player who took pride in the fact that he was the last of the NFL’s two-way players, playing both linebacker on defense and center on offense. Gifford was a “golden boy” back who played his college career at USC and became a media darling there on the West Coast, then moved onto the pro stage on the other coast, under the bright lights of New York City, where he garnered endorsement deals and, after winning the NFL MVP Award in 1956 while helping the Giants win the league championship, became a player the league tried to push as the face of the NFL. There’s no question that at the time, Bednarik relished in the fact that he knocked the “golden boy” out cold, but as time passed, grew to respect Gifford, especially after the Giant star defended the hit as clean when Bednarik began to get a reputation for being a dirty player.

The iconic photo pictured below of the hit appears to show Bednarik celebrating over Gifford’s prone body, but the Eagle Hall of Famer always insisted that in that moment, he wasn’t even aware of the injury, and was actually celebrating the fact that the hit forced Gifford to fumble, and the Eagles had recovered to basically put the must-win game away. It turned out to be a huge win for Philadelphia, as they went on to win an improbable NFL title, handing Green Bay a 17-13 loss in what turned out to be Vince Lombardi’s only postseason defeat. Gifford’s retirement turned out to be temporary, as he came back in 1962 and switched positions to flanker. As the pro game began evolving the third running back into a second wide receiver, other star runners of that era, like Bobby Mitchell and Paul Warfield, were doing the same. Gifford became an All Pro at that position also, then retired again following the ’63 season to go into broadcasting.

Chuck Bednarik celebrates over the prone Frank Gifford

This week’s “Throwback Thursday” matchup from the NFL’s week 4 schedule is between the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, two franchises with close ties that go beyond their proximity in the state of Ohio. They face each other this Sunday in the first of their two annual meetings as AFC North rivals, and those meetings have become routine over the years. Their first meeting, however, was anything but routine. It came on October 11, 1970, in Cleveland, and was a “homecoming” for Bengals founder and head coach Paul Brown. Brown had also founded the Browns franchise, in the old All America Conference in 1946, and coached the team through its’ most successful era from ’46 in the AAFC, through its’ entry into the NFL in 1950, until he was unceremoniously relieved of his coaching duties by owner Art Modell following the 1963 season. Brown’s iron-fisted approach with the Cleveland team had grown tiresome among the players, who revolted against him, and went to Modell, led by star Jim Brown, to try to get rid of him. Modell complied with their wishes, and the decision looked like a good one when the Browns won the NFL championship in 1964 under Brown’s replacement, Blanton Collier. The legendary coach resurfaced a couple of years later when the American Football League decided to award an expansion franchise to Cincinnati, as the new team’s ownership group recruited him to come on board as part owner, general manager and coach to help build the new team. Brown, a staunch NFL guy, had little use for the AFL, which was ridiculed by the old-line NFLers as a “Mickey Mouse” league, and would only agree to join the Cincinnati group after the NFL/AFL merger agreement was completed, assuring the Bengals would be an NFL team. In a move many believe was done just to “tweak” Modell, Brown chose the exact shade of orange for the Bengals’ uniforms as he had for the Browns in Cleveland, with black as the primary color instead of brown. As a football executive, Brown proved he hadn’t lost his touch – he built the Bengals into a playoff team by their second year of existence. The club boasted the AFL’s Rookie of the Year in their first 2 years also – running back Paul Robinson in 1968 and quarterback Greg Cook in 1969. The two leagues finally merged into one starting with the 1970 season, and the Browns and Bengals were put together in the same division of the AFC, which meant they would regularly meet twice a year.

Paul Brown with one of his Bengal assistants, Bill Walsh

As for that first meeting, Brown’s Bengals fought mightily but in the end the Browns pulled out a 30-27 victory, with Bill Nelsen throwing a pair of touchdown passes and future Hall of Fame running back Leroy Kelly supplying 163 combined rushing and receiving yards and scoring twice. The Browns were still a formidable club in 1970 but were on the decline, and in their second meeting, in Cincinnati, Paul Brown got his revenge as the Bengals won a defensive struggle, 14-10. With those two hard-fought games, the annual “Battle of Ohio” was on.

Leroy Kelly (photo courtesy of Bleacherreport.com)

This week’s NFL matchup that I decided to highlight a past game of on “Throwback Thursday” is between the San Diego Chargers and Tennessee Titans. The classic matchup between these 2 franchises took place on New Year’s Day in 1961, when both were located in different cities. The Chargers, playing in Los Angeles, won the Western Division title, while the Titans’ descendants, the Houston Oilers, won the Eastern crown. This game, played in Houston’s Jeppesen Stadium, would decide who would be champion of the inaugural season of the fledgling American Football League. The AFL was founded to rival the National Football League, by eight men, some of which had been spurned by the NFL in bids to acquire franchises in that league, and that group became known as “The Foolish Club”, a nickname they all wore proudly after the new league became popular and eventually forced a merger with the NFL. Owner Bud Adams’ Oilers would win this game, 24-16, to be crowned the first AFL champs. Adams had pulled a major coup by luring Heisman Trophy-winning back Billy Cannon from LSU to sign with the new Oiler franchise instead of the NFL, and the move paid off as Cannon was a major factor in helping win the title game. In the fourth quarter, he snared a short pass from QB George Blanda and scampered 88 yards to a touchdown which put the game away. The same 2 clubs would meet again the next season for the new league’s second championship, and the Oilers won again, 10-3, in a defensive struggle. Cannon was again the hero, scoring the game’s only touchdown on a 35 yard pass from Blanda. Things were a lot different for both teams in the second title matchup, with the Chargers now located in San Diego, and the Oilers being coached by Wally Lemm, who took over for Lou Rymkus after Rymkus was fired early in the year, despite the fact he had led the team to the ’60 championship.

“The Foolish Club” – original AFL owners 

This is the second installment of a weekly feature during this NFL season that I’m calling “Throwback Thursday”, in which I highlight a past encounter between 2 teams that are scheduled to play on that weekend. This week, one of the scheduled games is an NFC North divisional matchup between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings, who have been NFL division rivals since the Vikings came in the league as an expansion franchise in 1961. These 2 clubs played on opening day of the ’61 season in the Vikings first ever regular season NFL game. The Bears were one of the league’s flagship’s franchises at the time, led by legendary coach George Halas. The Vikings originally were committed to joining the fledging American Football League, but the NFL convinced the ownership group to jump ship and be added as a new team in the established league. The NFL, at that time, wasn’t very generous to new teams when it came to stocking their rosters through the expansion draft, so the Vikings were a ragtag bunch. They hired Norm Van Brocklin, who had just ended his playing career as an NFL quarterback by guiding the Philadelphia Eagles to the 1960 NFL title over Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, as head coach. The “Dutchman”, as he was known, was a perfect fit to lead the new team in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. The opening day matchup, on paper, looked more like a sacrificial offering, with the Vikings playing the lamb. Van Brocklin’s team didn’t show much in the early stages of the game, so the coach played a long shot – benching his starting quarterback, veteran George Shaw,  in favor of an unknown rookie, some guy named Fran Tarkenton. Tarkenton went on to throw four touchdown passes while running for another in a stunning performance, as the upstart Vikings shocked the Bears, 37-13. Jerry Reichow, a receiver who played on the ’60 title-winning Eagle team with Van Brocklin, caught 3 passes for 101 yards and one of the four TDs. The Vikes eventually came down to earth and finished their first year with a 3-11 won/loss record, and in fact, on the season’s final day, the Bears got their revenge by pounding the Vikings 52-35 at Wrigley Field. But for one day, on opening day of their inaugural season, they were NFL world-beaters, trouncing one of the league’s top teams. Tarkenton, of course, became one of the top players in franchise history, and wound up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. With his scrambling style of play, he would probably be a great fit in today’s pro game that features read-option running quarterbacks.

QB Fran Tarkenton

The new NFL season begins tonight, and in past years this is where I would post my weekly predictions for the upcoming games. This year, however, I decided to substitute a new weekly feature in place of picking games. It’s a post called “Throwback Thursday” and will feature an NFL game from past years between 2 teams that are scheduled to play that weekend. On this opening day weekend, there’s a game scheduled between the Indianapolis Colts and Oakland Raiders, two franchises who played a famous playoff game in the 1970s that became known as the “Ghost to the Post” game. The game is regularly featured on NFL Films as one of the greatest contests in league history, and the “Ghost to the Post” describes a key play in the game – a 42 yard pass from Raider quarterback Ken Stabler to his tight end, Dave Casper, that set up a game-tying field goal to send the game into overtime. Casper the Friendly Ghost was a popular cartoon character at the time – thus the tight end Casper running a post pattern and catching the key pass became the “Ghost to the Post” play.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

The game wound up going into double overtime, and the Raiders won when Stabler hit Casper again, this time for a 10-yard touchdown to seal a 37-31 win. It was an exciting see-saw battle between the Raiders, one of the winningest teams of the era, and the Colts, who of course were located in Baltimore at the time. 1977, when the game was played, was the Colts’ 25th season in the NFL, and their QB at the time, Bert Jones, was one of the league’s best. Their head coach was Ted Marchibroda, who would go on to be offensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills’ Super Bowl teams in the early ’90s, then return to the head coaching post with the Colts after they had already relocated to Indianapolis. The Raiders also relocated – to Los Angeles – before returning to Oakland. The double OT game was one of many thrilling Raider victories in the franchise’s history, with a lot of them coming during the coaching reign of their head coach that year, John Madden. However, they may have emptied their collective tanks to pull out the win, as they lost the AFC Championship game the following week to the division rival Denver Broncos.

Dave Casper hauls in the “Ghost to the Post” pass

The recent passing of Steve Sabol, son of the founder of NFL Films and long-time president of the company, Ed Sabol, sent me searching through my modest DVD collection for the NFL Films gems that I dig out and replay every year around Super Bowl time. Between those DVDs, the Super Bowl highlight shows that are shown late at night around that time and the collection of NFL Films music that I have on my Ipod, I can always count on working myself into the proper frame of mind to get psyched up for the game, no matter who is playing in it that particular year. There’s no doubt that the work of the Sabols in uniquely capturing the game of pro football in the 1960s drew many fans to the game. The use of sideline cameras to capture the action up close, and the use of slow-motion to punctuate great plays, were markedly different than the way the game was shown on television broadcasts, and enhanced the game for fans. The shot of a perfect spiral, spinning in slow motion through the air and landing softly in the hands of a receiver, was a trademark of what NFL Films brought to the game.

The NFL Films story began when Ed, who was a topcoat salesman but filmed his son Steve’s high school football games as a hobby, formed a small production company, called Blair Motion Pictures, hiring his son Steve to join the company. In 1962 the company won a bid to film the league championship game and put together a highlight movie. I remember watching a show in which Ed Sabol recalled the filming of that game. It was played between the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers at frozen Yankee Stadium, and the some of the cameras the Blair Motion Pictures crew was using wound up freezing. Sabol recalled thinking, “what the hell kind of footage are we going to get from these?” Well, the footage turned out to be pretty good, and the highlight film that was put together impressed NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle so much that he lobbied the league’s owners to buy out Sabol’s company and put them to work full time promoting the league. The owners, relunctantly, agreed and the company was renamed NFL Films. It was one of the best decisions those owners ever made, as NFL Films turned out to be a tremendous promotional tool for the league, bringing the game closer to its’ fans and personalizing the players to the public. Steve Sabol once said that it was Rozelle’s genius that really should be credited for the company’s success. He claimed that at the time, nobody working for NFL Films realized what they were accomplishing, but Rozelle did, and realized the potential it had. Eventually, the highlight videos and shows produced by the company were enhanced by the music of Sam Spence, whose orchestral scores combined elements of jazz, classical, rock, marching band music and western movie tracks to add drama to the close-up, slow motion game films. NFL Films videos were narrated by John Facenda, who has been dubbed “The Voice of God”. His narrations were classic, and the combination of his deep baritone voice and the poetic scripts he read made for unforgettable viewing. Maybe the best example of the style of NFL Films  is the Oakland Raider film titled “The Autumn Wind“, featured below. A television critic named Matt Zoller Seitz probably summed it up best when he called NFL Films “the greatest in-house P.R. machine in pro sports history . . . an outfit that could make even a tedious stalemate seem as momentous as the battle for the Alamo.”

Over the years, the Sabols and NFL Films produced such classics as Football Follies, featuring bloopers from NFL games, This Week In Pro Football, which would show highlights from the previous week’s games, NFL Films Presents, Lost Treasures, Greatest Moments and the recent HBO series Hard Knocks. The company has won a total of 107 Sports Emmys, and was a big player in helping the league reach its’ position as the most popular sport in the country today. The league, of course, now has it’s own network, and NFL Films provides a lot of the content shown on it. Steve Sabol, whose love for the game always came across on the screen in the videos he produced and introduced on camera, will be sorely missed. To view The Autumn Wind , click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jroy7fHIMaI?rel=0