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It’s always included in NFL Films’ lists of the greatest games of all time, and rightfully so. With the Miami Dolphins and San Diego Chargers meeting this week on the league schedule, we’ll feature this game, known as the “Epic In Miami”, as our Throwback Thursday game of the week. Classic games are always more memorable when they occur in the playoffs, and this game was an AFC Divisional round clash played on January 2, 1982 in Miami’s Orange Bowl. The Dolphins, under coach Don Shula, were perennially one of the NFL’s best teams, and on this day they met up with the Chargers, who were at the pinnacle of their high-powered offensive era under coach Don Coryell. With quarterback Dan Fouts engineering the attack, the Chargers’ offense was nicknamed “Air Coryell” for its’ proficiency in the passing game. San Diego, behind Fouts’ passing and a couple of big plays from wide receiver Wes Chandler, jumped out to a 24-0 lead in the first quarter, and it appeared the game was going to turn into a blowout. As the second quarter began, Shula made the strategic decision to bench his starting QB, David Woodley, in favor of Don Strock, and the Fish rallied back to pull within 24-17 at halftime, scoring on a “hook and lateral” play at the end of the half. Miami came back to tie the game in the third quarter, but the Chargers continued to put together scoring drives, with their star tight end, Kellen Winslow, having an individual game for the ages. He caught an NFL playoff record 13 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown and blocked a potential game-winning field goal in the fourth quarter, playing through various injuries in addition to being treated for severe cramps and dehydration. He also suffered a pinched nerve in his shoulder and a gash in his lower lip that required three stitches.

A game this great needed to last longer than the standard 60 minutes, and indeed it did, as the two AFC rivals battled to a 38-38 tie through regulation. Both club’s offenses strung together drives deep into enemy territory in overtime, with both kickers, Miami’s Uve Von Schamann and San Diego’s Rolf Benirschke, missing chip shot field goals. Aided by a couple of big passes to Charlie Joiner, Fouts then drove his club into field goal range again, and given another chance, Benirschke made good on his mulligan, giving the Chargers a 41-38 win to advance to the AFC Championship game the following week in Cincinnati.

An exhausted Kellen Winslow is helped into the locker room after the “Epic In Miami”

A short while ago, we featured the 1966 American Football League championship game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs as a Throwback Thursday post – a game that decided which AFL team would represent the league in the very first Super Bowl. This week, we’ll remember the same season’s title game for the NFL, played between two clubs who meet on this week’s schedule, the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. The most famous game played between these two teams was the championship game played the following year, forever known as the “Ice Bowl”. Since we featured that game already in the past, we’ll go with this game instead. which was just as exciting and had as much drama as that “Ice Bowl” contest.

This game pitted two head coaches who had worked together as assistants in the 1950s with the New York Giants, Green Bay’s Vince Lombardi and Dallas’ Tom Landry. They would both go on to become NFL coaching legends, but were at different stages of their success at this point. Lombardi’s Packers had already appeared in 4 championship games, winning 3 of them, while Landry, who had taken over an expansion team in 1960, was just beginning to enjoy the fruits of his labor, this being the Cowboys’ first postseason venture. The Cowboys’ inexperience showed up early in the game, as Green Bay drove for an early touchdown using misdirection runs by Elijah Pitts to churn out yardage. Lombardi had figured Landry would have his team prepared to stop the vaunted Packer power sweep, so he installed those misdirection runs playing off of fake sweep plays. Bart Starr finished the drive by tossing a 17 yard scoring throw to Pitts, and when a jittery Dallas club fumbled the ensuing kickoff, the Packers’ Jim Grabowski scooped it up and ran it in for another score to up Green Bay’s lead to 14-0. It looked like the defending champions were going to coast to victory after they took advantage of Dallas’ early nervousness, but to their credit the Cowboys settled down and put together a pair of scoring drives to tie the game. The clubs traded scores after that but Starr fired three TD passes to three different receivers, while the Cowboys settled for field goals, so the Pack widened their lead to 34-20. Dallas QB Don Meredith rallied his troops to stay in the game, however. With his top target, Bob Hayes, being blanketed all day by Green Bay’s defense (he had 1 catch for 1 yard), Meredith hooked up with his other top flight receiver, Frank Clarke, on a 68 yard touchdown pass to pull the Cowboys to within 34-27. When the Cowboy defense held late in the game and got the ball back, Meredith again led a drive which reached the Packer 2 yard line with a chance to tie the game. They failed to score on consecutive plays until it was fourth down, giving them one last chance at the tying touchdown. Meredith rolled out and Packer linebacker Dave Robinson, who was supposed to drop into coverage, rushed Meredith instead and harassed him into a hurried throw into the end zone that Tom Brown intercepted to seal Green Bay’s win. In typical Lombardi style, after the game he congratulated Robinson for the play, then criticized him for being out of position. Green Bay went on to defeat Kansas City in the first Super Bowl, then called the AFL-NFL Championship game, 35-10, following the victory over Dallas.

Dave Robinson pursues Dallas QB Don Meredith

On this week’s NFL schedule, two AFC teams fighting to qualify for the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts, are slated to meet. This week’s Throwback Thursday post will highlight a playoff game played between them, the 1995 AFC Championship game. It was played on January 14, 1996 in Pittsburgh’s old Three Rivers Stadium. The game was expected to be somewhat of a mismatch, with the Steelers, considered a strong Super Bowl contender under coach Bill Cowher, a heavy favorite over the Colts, who snuck into the playoffs as a wild card with an underwhelming 9-7 record. Ted Marchibroda, who had some success as the franchise’s head coach when they were still located in Baltimore in the 1970s, had returned to lead the Colts after a successful stint as offensive coordinator in Buffalo, helping the Bills reach multiple Super Bowls. Neither team had what would be considered a “franchise” quarterback, with Neil O’Donnell manning the position for the Steelers, while the Colts rallied behind veteran warrior Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh had earned the nickname “Captain Comeback” for leading the Colts to a few surprising come-from-behind victories in the regular season. Their wild card status meant the Colts would have to take the hard road of playing on the road in all playoff games for as long as they could stay alive, and they managed to pull off a pair of incredible wins, first defeating the defending AFC champion San Diego Chargers, then shocking the top seeded Kansas City Chiefs, 10-7, in as hard of a place to win as there is in the NFL, Arrowhead Stadium.

Meanwhile, the Steelers rolled over Buffalo 40-21 in the divisional round to advance directly into the title contest. Kansas City’s loss gave Pittsburgh the additional advantage of playing the game at home. Pittsburgh’s versatile weapon, Kordell Stewart, a former college QB who played multiple positions and was nicknamed Slash (because he was technically a halfback/quarterback/receiver) made some big plays to convert third downs and keep a drive alive which saw his club score on a 5 yard TD throw to Stewart from O’Donnell. Otherwise the teams traded field goals as the Steelers took a 13-9 lead. Early in the final quarter, Harbaugh connected with Floyd Turner on a 47 yard scoring throw and once again, it looked like Captain Comeback was leading his team to another surprising win. The Steelers weren’t going down easily, however, and O’Donnell led them on a 67 yard drive, capped by a one yard touchdown run by Bam Morris, to put Pittsburgh back on top 20-16 with a minute and a half left. Harbaugh would now have one more chance for a miracle comeback, and he proceeded to put together an impressive drive that reached the Pittsburgh 29 yard line with 5 seconds left. Needing a touchdown to win, Harbaugh launched a high, lofting “Hail Mary” pass into the end zone into a crowd of players from both clubs. The ball eventually landed in the chest of Colt receiver Aaron Bailey, but he couldn’t hold on and the Steelers secured the win by the narrowest of margins.

The ensuing Super Bowl proved to be too big of a stage for O’Donnell, who threw a pair of interceptions to the game’s MVP, Dallas cornerback Larry Brown, helping Dallas win their third Super Bowl title of the decade.

Colts’ last second Hail Mary falls short

Two old American Football League rivals, the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, play on the NFL’s schedule this weekend, and this week’s Throwback Thursday feature will travel back in time to 1967, when these two clubs met to decide not only the AFL championship for the 1966 season, but also who would represent the upstart league in the very first AFL-NFL Championship game, which of course, was the very first Super Bowl. The game was originally scheduled for December 26th, the day after Christmas, but when merger talks between the two leagues were completed, the new title game was created and this matchup was moved to New Year’s Day.

The Chiefs, under coach Hank Stram, were a powerhouse AFL team that year, blending a creative offensive attack with a menacing defense to post an 11-2-1 record, dominating the Western Division. Stram was a true innovator, from his team’s use of their unique “choir huddle” to their use of different formations and motion to confuse opposing defenses.  The Bills were two-time defending AFL champs and a league dynasty at the time, but the ’66 season had been a bit of a struggle. Lou Saban, who coached the Bills to their consecutive titles, left abruptly following the previous season in a dispute with owner Ralph Wilson, and his top assistant, Joel Collier, took over as head man. Collier did a decent job of keeping the Bills afloat even though they were decimated by injuries to the defense, while quarterback Jack Kemp was getting up in years. Also, even though he’s widely considered one of the top defensive minds in pro football history, Collier was a bit in over his head as a head coach. The media’s feelings about this game showed up in the fact that even though Buffalo was a two-time defending champ and the game was being played in their home stadium, they were three point underdogs.

There was an omen of sorts for the Bills on the game’s first play, as they fumbled the opening kickoff, which the Chiefs recovered, setting up a touchdown pass from K.C.’s veteran QB, Len Dawson, to tight end Fred Arbanas. The Bills, trying valiantly to play like defending champs, countered with a 69 yard touchdown throw from Kemp to Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion, to tie the score. However, that would be the Bills’ only shining moment in this game. They turned the ball over three more times and the Chiefs’ offense made them pay, riding the passing of Dawson and the running of Mike Garrett, who scored a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns, to an easy 31-7 win. The Bills were clearly a team in decline, starting to show signs of age, and their fortunes dipped considerably in the years to follow. The Chiefs were just getting started. Although they lost to Green Bay in that first Super Bowl, they remained an AFL power the rest of the decade and a few years later stunned the Minnesota Vikings to win their first (and only) Super Bowl.

 QB Len Dawson calls the play in the Chiefs’ unique “Choir Huddle”

The Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins meet on this week’s NFL schedule, and we’ll feature a game played in the past between these two teams for this week’s Throwback Thursday post. We’ve featured a lot of past Super Bowl games this year as throwback games with Super Bowl 50 approaching, and the Cowboys and Dolphins once played in one. However, with Thanksgiving coming up soon, let’s go back to a Turkey Day clash played between the two in Dallas, in an unexpected snow storm, that saw a Dallas player, defensive lineman Leon Lett, commit a major gaffe that cost his team the game.

The game was played on Thanksgiving Day in 1993, with both teams fighting for playoff spots. Miami was 8-2 entering the game and leading the AFC East, while the Cowboys had a 7-3 mark. The city of Dallas was hit with the rare snow storm, which also included sleet and made for slippery playing conditions for the game. The Cowboys, behind a pair of touchdowns from Kevin Williams, one on a punt return and another on a pass from Troy Aikman, led 14-7 at halftime. Miami’s offense struggled, not only because of the field conditions, but also because their star quarterback, Dan Marino, was sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury, leaving aging veteran Steve DeBerg to guide them. They managed only a pair of Pete Stoyanovich field goals and trailed 14-13 when DeBerg, who had thrown 2 interceptions in the game, led them on a drive to set up another field goal attempt by Stoyanovich. It was a 41 yard attempt to take the lead but the kick was blocked. That’s when Lett stepped in to help Miami’s cause. While most of his Cowboy teammates began celebrating, Lett attempted to recover the ball. He slipped on the ice as he tried to pick up the football, and Miami recovered on the Dallas one-yard line. Had Lett simply done nothing, the Cowboys would have automatically received possession and could have run out the clock. By touching the ball and then failing to hold onto it, Lett enabled the Dolphins to take possession and then try another field goal with three seconds left on the clock. Given another chance, Stoyanovich’s second attempt was good, giving the Dolphins a 16–14 victory as time expired.

Oddly, both teams’ fortunes changed dramatically after this epic contest. Dallas won all their remaining games on their way to a Super Bowl title, while Miami never won another game the rest of the season.

Leon Lett kicks some snow after his Thanksgiving Day blunder