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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