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Week 13 on the NFL schedule includes the league’s annual Thanksgiving Day games, and this year two old NFL rivals face off in the annual game in Detroit, the Lions and the Green Bay Packers. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, I decided to re-post an article about a game played between these two teams in 1962 that I had originally posted in 2010 as a “Classic Thanksgiving Game”. Here it is:

On Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1962, the NFL staged its’ annual traditional game between the host Detroit Lions and the visiting Green Bay Packers, and the game was one of the most memorable ever played on the holiday. A year later, this particular date would forever become etched in history by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but in 1962 the Lions played one of the most inspired games in franchise history on the date – a game that lives on today in Lions’ team history as the “Turkey Day Massacre”. The Packers were the powerhouse team in the league at that time, having won the championship under coach Vince Lombardi in 1961. They entered the annual holiday game with a perfect 10-0 record, and had beaten the Lions 9-7 in Green Bay earlier in the season on a last-second field goal. That game had stuck in the Lions’ collective craw leading up to the Thanksgiving rematch, and the team was not the mediocrity they are in today’s NFL – they were 8-2 and second to the Packers in the Western Division at the time. Detroit’s defense, led by Roger Brown, Alex Karras and Joe Schmidt, played its’ best game of the season that day, harrassing and swarming Packer QB Bart Starr all game long, and sacking him 11 times for over 100 yards in losses. Brown, a 300 lb. defensive lineman, had 5 of the sacks himself, including one where he tackled Starr in the end zone for a safety. The Lions won 26-14, and although they won the battle that day, Green Bay won the war, as this turned out to be their only loss of the season. The Packers finished 13-1 and won their second consecutive NFL title, on their way to 5 championships in a 7 year period, a feat that earned the small Wisconsin town the nickname of “Titletown, USA”.

Lombardi didn’t easily forget this game, however. At the time, the annual holiday game was not only hosted by Detroit, but the annual opponent, from 1951 until 1963, was always the rival Packers. Lombardi lobbied the league complaining about having to travel to a road game on a short week every year, and how much of a disadvantage it was to his club, and eventually commissioner Pete Rozelle relented and the league began rotating the opponent for the Lions each year.

 Green Bay’s Bart Starr is swallowed up by a swarming Lions’ defense

One of the marquee games on the entire 2013 NFL schedule will be played this week, pitting the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots. It’s a dream matchup that league and television executives wish they could showcase every week – a battle between two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. In this week’s Thursday Throwback post, I’ll go back to 1960, to the first game played between these two franchises, and also the first regular season game played in the history of the American Football League. It was September 9, 1960, a Friday night, and the game was played at Boston University’s stadium. The Friday date was picked after a survey of Patriots’ season ticket holders showed that they preferred Friday night games over Saturday night. In fact, all Patriot home games that season were scheduled for Friday nights. They were known as the Boston Patriots at that time, and early on they became the first AFL team to score when Gino Cappelletti booted a 35 yard field goal in the first quarter. Being the inaugural game in the AFL’s history, there were many firsts achieved that night. The Broncos debuted their infamous uniforms that included vertically striped socks (see picture below), which they burned in a public ceremony at a later date, then revived a couple years ago, in the AFL’s 50th Anniversary season, as part of their throwback uniforms.  Boston’s Butch Songin threw the first pass, which was incomplete.  The league’s first touchdown came on a pass from Denver’s Frank Tripucka to Al Carmichael, covering 59 yards.

Versatile Bronco back Gene Mingo

When Gene Mingo kicked the extra point on that TD, he didn’t just make AFL history by splitting the uprights for the league’s first point after, he became the first African-American placekicker in pro football history. Have there been any since then? Actually, yes. Cookie Gilchrist played fullback and kicked for the AFL Buffalo Bills in the same era as Mingo, and Donald Igwebuike kicked for Tampa Bay in the late ’80s. He wasn’t really African American, however, just African. He was born in Nigeria. In an era when kickers were also football players, Mingo also recorded the first AFL punt return touchdown when he ran back a Patriot punt 76 yards for a score. He missed the extra point after that TD, however. Austin “Goose” Gonsoulin came up with the league’s first interception, and had 2 in the game. Most importantly, the Broncos won the game, 13-10, logging the first win in AFL history. The Broncos, nowadays, are a model franchise in the NFL. They reached a Super Bowl in the 1970s led by their “Orange Crush” defense, won a pair of titles in the John Elway era in the ’90s, and are enjoying success currently with Manning leading the way. They posted the worst record of all of the original eight AFL teams, however, in the ten year history of that league before the merger. But at least they can boast that they won the AFL’s first game ever.

Program from the first AFL game ever played

It’s common knowledge among football fans that the greatest comeback of all time in the NFL came in 1992, when the Buffalo Bills overcame a 35-3 deficit in the third quarter to overtake the Houston Oilers, 38-35 in a playoff game. NFL Films even christened the game with that title in their Greatest Games series. A much less ballyhooed game was a contest played on December 7, 1980 at Candlestick Park between the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints that was the second greatest comeback in NFL history, or the greatest comeback in regular season history. The 49ers and Saints were NFC West division rivals back then, and were young teams headed in opposite directions. San Francisco was a young team on the rise, although they entered the game with a 5-8 record. The Saints, meanwhile, were winless at 0-13, and going nowhere.  New Orleans, despite its’ dismal record, was hot early in the game, and built a 35-7 halftime lead on the strength of three Archie Manning touchdown passes and a couple of short TD runs by Jack Holmes. Then the Niners’ young quarterback, Joe Montana, mounted the tremendous comeback by his team, throwing for a pair of TDs and running for another, to tie the game and send it into overtime, where Ray Wersching won it 38-35 with a field goal. One of Montana’s key targets of that era, Freddie Solomon, also had a big day, catching one of the scoring throws and returning a punt 57 yards for another touchdown.

Years later, the 49ers always considered this game a springboard for their future success, as they dominated the rest of the decade, winning Super Bowls behind Montana and coach Bill Walsh, and over time being hailed as the “Team of The Eighties”. “Joe Cool” Montana, like Frank Reich of the Bills did prior to leading that historic playoff comeback, gave a premonition performance in his college days similar to the Saints game. In the Cotton Bowl in 1979, he led Notre Dame to a furious fourth quarter comeback against the University of Houston, as the Fighting Irish overcame a 22 point deficit to win, just as Reich had done in his college days at the University of Maryland. What’s even more amazing is that Montana was suffering from the flu in that Cotton Bowl clash, earning the game the nickname of  “The Chicken Soup Game.” So how did the two teams fare the rest of that 1980 season? The Saints avoided the ultimate embarrassment of going winless by beating the New York Jets the next week, and finished 1-15. The big comeback may have been a springboard for future San Francisco success, but the “spring” didn’t come immediately. The 49ers dropped their final two games, to Atlanta and Buffalo, and wound up 6-10.

Joe Montana

On this week’s NFL schedule of games, the Indianapolis Colts play St. Louis, and a game played in 1967 between these two franchises is the Thursday Throwback feature for this week. Of course, in 1967, Indianapolis had no NFL team, and the professional team in St. Louis was the Cardinals. The Colts were located in Baltimore back then, and the current St. Louis team, the Rams, were based across the country in Los Angeles. Even though the two teams were on opposite coasts, a quirky temporary re-alignment by the NFL that year placed them in the same division, and led to an odd season-ending game between the teams, an ending not seen before then and not possible today under the current league system. The NFL and rival AFL had agreed to a merger in 1966, establishing a common draft of players among both leagues starting right away, and a formation of one league, the NFL, with all the teams from both leagues playing under one commissioner, Pete Rozelle, beginning with the 1970 season. The two leagues, beginning in that 1970 season, would be split into the National and American Conferences.

The old, established NFL decided to freshen up their look for the three remaining “waiting period” seasons by re-aligning into four divisions that weren’t necessarily geographically friendly – the Century, Capitol, Central and Coastal divisions. The Colts and Rams were placed in the Coastal division, and each team played its’ division rivals twice per year. In 1967, with the league still playing a 14 game schedule, the Colts and Rams were both powerful franchises. They played to a 24-24 tie in Baltimore in their first meeting (there was no regular season overtime in those days), and were slated to play again on the season’s final Sunday. Amazingly, both clubs entered that final showdown undefeated, with matching 11-0-2 records. Because there was no “wild card” playoff format at the time, it meant that the winner of that regular season finale showdown would win the Coastal crown, and the loser was out in the cold, even though the other three division champs had all won only 9 games apiece. So the ultimate showdown “winner-take-all” battle took place on December 17, at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The hometown Rams defended their turf in style, routing Don Shula’s Colts 34-10 to win the division. Ram quarterback Roman Gabriel threw three touchdown passes and clearly outplayed his more heralded opponent, John Unitas, who was harassed by the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line, led by Deacon Jones and Merlin Olsen, all day long. Unitas was intercepted twice and sacked four times (unofficially since sacks were not an official statistic then). The celebration in Los Angeles was short-lived. The Rams lost to Green Bay in the playoffs the next week, with the Packers advancing to the NFL championship against Dallas in what would become the “Ice Bowl”.

Ram DE Deacon Jones harasses Baltimore’s John Unitas

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)