It’s Thanksgiving week, and the NFL celebrates the holiday with a trio of games. However, this week’s Throwback Thursday feature is a somber one. It involves an event that happened on October 24, 1971 in a game between the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions, who clash this week on the 2021 NFL schedule. The game was basically just your average NFL contest of the era, although both clubs were off to good starts for the season, with the Lions a game ahead of Chicago in the standings after 5 weeks of play. Don Shy’s 21 yard touchdown run for the Bears was sandwiched between a pair of Errol Mann field goals in the first quarter to give the Bears a 7-6 lead. In the second stanza Bobby Douglass completed a 54 yard scoring pass to George Farmer to add to Chicago’s lead, but when Ron Jessie returned the ensuing kickoff 102 yards for a touchdown, the momentum swung back to Detroit. Greg Landry then led the Lions on another scoring drive that he completed with a 16 yard TD throw to Larry Walton, giving the Motor City club the lead for the first time at 20-14. Douglass hit Bob Wallace from 15 yards out to finish the first half scoring, and Chicago went into halftime back in the lead at 21-20.
Both defenses stiffened in the third quarter, with the only scoring coming on another Mann field goal for Detroit, giving the Lions the lead back. Douglass, a swashbuckler of a signal caller, rallied his team to another score and did the honors himself by plunging in for the touchdown to put the Bears back ahead 28-23. Landry and the Lions didn’t give up the fight. With under 2 minutes to play, Detroit began a drive to retake the lead. The Lions’ QB found receiver Chuck Hughes for a 32 yard gain. Hughes jumped up and raced back to the huddle, knowing time was working against his club. That reception was the 15th and final catch for Hughes. A couple of plays later, both of which were incompletions, Hughes grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. In the confusion, the Bears’ bench thought he was faking an injury to get the clock stopped, and the Lions thought Bears’ linebacker Dick Butkus had leveled Hughes with a dirty hit. But when Butkus, who noticed the fallen player was convulsing, began frantically waving to the Lions’ bench for the trainers to come out, it became obvious there was a problem. Detroit’s team doctors worked to try to revive the Lions’ player, and an ambulance was brought out, transporting him to the hospital. It wasn’t known to anyone in the stadium at the time, but Hughes was already dead from a heart attack. The last minute of the game was played in a hushed silence as the stunned crowd looked on. Chicago hung on to win but almost nobody cared. The tragedy of this day remains the only time a player has died on the field in an NFL game, and Hughes left behind a wife and a not-quite 2 year old son. Ironically, earlier in the season Hughes had complained of chest pains, and was checked out by doctors and eventually cleared to play. The Detroit franchise to this day does not issue Hughes’ number 85 jersey to any player unless permission is given by the Hughes family.
Lions’ Chuck Hughes lies prone on the field