On October 7, 1956 the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers, 2 west coast NFL rivals, met at San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium in a week 3 contest. They are also facing each other on this week’s league slate so that matchup was chosen for the Throwback feature. The 49ers entered the NFL as one of the merged franchises from the All American Football Conference in 1950, and in the 6 years prior to ’56 the Rams dominated the series, with San Fran only managing 3 wins and a tie in 12 tries.
The Rams were an offensive powerhouse in those days, but in this contest the first half played out rather strangely. L.A. quarterback Billy Wade scored the only touchdown of the half on an 8 yard run, with teammate Les Richter adding a field goal. On the San Francisco side, Gordy Soltau, known as a “Ram killer”, provided the only points with 4 field goals, giving his club a 12-10 lead. The scoring opened up in the third quarter. Wade hit Bob Boyd with a 24 yard TD pass, and the 49ers countered as Joe “The Jet” Perry scampered 28 yards to the end zone. The Rams continued the see-saw battle to retake the lead at 23-19 when Wade found future Hall of Famer Elroy “Crazy Legs”Hirsch open for a 57 yard scoring bomb.
San Francisco added a pair of 2 yard touchdown runs by Hugh McElhenny in the final quarter to jump out to a 10 point advantage at 33-23. For various reasons in that era, teams regularly changed signal callers, and in this case the Rams went with veteran Norm Van Brocklin, who connected with Hirsch for a short 3 yard touchdown. That was all that L.A. could manage, and they fell 33-30. The strange part about this game? Los Angeles almost doubled the amount of total yardage gained with 432 compared to the 219 by the 49ers. Those totals included 382 passing yards for the Rams to only 52 for San Fran. Ram ends Hirsch and Boyd collected 150 and 119 yards receiving respectively, with back Tank Younger adding 86.
The culprit in the defeat? Seven turnovers by the Rams in a sloppy display that cost them. They did exact revenge later that season, however, routing the Niners 30-6 at the Coliseum.
Game program from 10/7/1956