There is a matchup of the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals on this week’s NFL schedule, and our Throwback Thursday time machine will take us back to November 29, 1959 for a game between these 2 old franchises. The Bears were an NFL powerhouse in the 1940s but despite declining on the field in the ’50s, they were still the favorites of fans of the city. At the time the Cardinals were also based in the Windy City, but played second fiddle to the Bears to the point that team owners decided to move to St. Louis for the 1960 season. This game is significant because it was the last home game the Cardinals would play in Chicago. Coach George Halas’ Monsters of The Midway would give their cross-town neighbors a rude sendoff, winning 31-7 in a game that was decided early.
The Bears’ played their home games in that era at Wrigley Field, the venerable old ballpark that is still home to baseball’s Cubs to this day. This matchup took place at the Cardinals’ home base of Soldier Field, for the last time of course with the move to St. Louis pending. The attendance was a bit over 48,000, but with the indifference of Cardinal fans at that point, the betting here is it was mostly a Bears’ fan crowd. The Bears’ Ed Brown had what was a typical outing at that time for a quarterback. He completed only 12 of 27 passes for a meager 188 yards, a 44% completion percentage that would be unacceptable to today’s efficiency driven signal callers, and a surprisingly below average performance in what was a one-sided game. Brown made his completions matter, however. He threw touchdown passes of 76 and 12 yards to Willard Dewveall in the first half, and John Aveni’s 24 yard field goal put Halas’ forces up 17-0 at the break. Dewveall was the statistical star of the game with 3 catches for 105 yards and the 2 TD.
Rick Casares’ 28 yard touchdown rumble put the lead at an insurmountable 24-0 in the third quarter, but the Cardinals managed one final score in their soon to be abandoned home stadium as QB King Hill tossed a 25 yard TD pass to Perry Richards. Hill had an even more miserable passing day than Brown. He was 7 of 21 (33%) for only 102 yards while being intercepted twice. Merrill Douglas’ 2 yard scoring run gave the Bears their final 31-7 advantage, and the Cardinals’ stay in Chicago, which had begun in 1920 as one of the original NFL franchises (and as an independent athletic team since 1898) came to an end. The Bidwell family, Cardinal owners, kept the club in the Gateway city until 1987, then after a stadium dispute moved them again to their current home in Arizona.
Cardinals/Bears program from 11/29/1959