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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