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A pair of franchises that have a deep history of hard-fought battles face off on this week’s NFL schedule. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Las Vegas Raiders, although both are mired in mediocrity in 2022, have been notorious for hating each other over the decades. In the 1970s, the Raiders, then in Oakland, had one of the top regular season winning percentages in the NFL. But the Steelers dominated the postseason in that decade with 4 Super Bowl wins, and in the early to mid-’70s won 5 of 7 matchups with coach John Madden’s club. In 1976, the tables began to turn in Oakland’s favor. They defeated Pittsburgh in the regular season and again in the playoffs on their way to the first Super Bowl title in franchise history that year. In the second half of the decade and into the early 1980s the Raiders continued to own their AFC rivals, to the tune of 4 more victories in a row to stretch their winning streak over the Steelers to 6.

It’s the final game of those 6 consecutive wins that we feature in this week’s TBT post. It was a divisional playoff game of the 1983 season, played on New Year’s Day of 1984. The Raiders had relocated to Los Angeles in 1982, so the game was played at one of the 20th century’s athletic cathedrals, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Raiders were favored in the game as the Steelers, although they managed to grab a playoff spot, were a shell of the team that had been so dominant in the previous decade. Terry Bradshaw was gone and the Steel City club was quarterbacked by a pair of journeymen in Cliff Stoudt and Mark Malone, both of whom saw action in this contest. After a Gary Anderson field goal gave Pittsburgh an early lead, Lester Hayes pilfered a Stoudt pass and returned it 18 yards for a touchdown to put L.A. ahead 7-3. The Raiders used their rushing attack, with quarterback Jim Plunkett filtering in passes to Cliff Branch and Todd Christensen, to put together drives that ended in a 4 yard TD scamper by future Hall of Famer Marcus Allen and a Chris Bahr field goal, upping the lead to 17-3 at halftime.

The rest of the game’s scoring came in the third quarter. The Raiders’ ground game continued to churn out yardage, with Kenny King scoring on a 9 yard run and Allen finding daylight on his way to his second score of the game from 49 yards out. The rout was now on, but Stoudt broke the L.A. momentum with a 58 yard touchdown bomb to John Stallworth. Frank Hawkins’ 2 yard touchdown run matched that and the Raiders advanced to the AFC Championship game with a resounding 38-10 win. In all the Raiders racked up 413 yards of offense, including 188 hard-fought rushing yards. Allen had a banner day, totaling 121 yards on 13 carries and his 2 TDs. The win proved to be a springboard for Los Angeles, as they soundly defeated Seattle in the AFC title game, then shocked the heavily favored defending champion Washington Redskins 38-9 in the Super Bowl to secure their second NFL championship.

Marcus Allen shreds the Steeler defense

On this week’s NFL schedule there is a meeting of the Minnesota Vikings and Indianapolis Colts, 2 teams that were members of the old guard NFL before the merger. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature our sights are set on opening day of the 1964 season, which was a pretty successful one for the Colts and their young coach, Don Shula. The old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota was the setting for the game, the September 13th home opener for the Vikings. The team was still relatively young as a franchise, entering their fourth season under coach Norm Van Brocklin. The Colts, still located in Baltimore then, had high hopes for the new campaign. They had ended the 1963 season with 3 straight wins, including a 41-10 thrashing of the Vikings, and appeared ready to shed the mediocre reputation that had befallen the franchise since winning back-to-back NFL titles in the late 1950s.

That old pro football saying of “any given Sunday” is a real thing, and it played out on this day. Minnesota’s Tommy Mason raced 51 yards for a touchdown in a sign of things to come, as the Vikings’ rushing attack would have 2 backs go over 100 yards for the day and the team would amass over 300 on the ground. Lenny Moore got the Colts even with a 2 yard scoring run, followed by a short Fred Cox field goal and a 48 yard TD pass from Fran Tarkenton to his fullback, Bill Brown. That gave the Vikings a 17-7 halftime lead. The entire second half amounted to the teams trading scores. John Unitas cut the Viking lead to 17-14 with an 18 yard touchdown throw to Jimmy Orr, but the Vikings answered that with a 1 yard Brown plunge. Unitas kept his club close with a 70 yard bomb to Moore to close out the third quarter. Tarkenton, however, opened the final stanza with an answer to that, finishing a drive with a 6 yard touchdown toss to Paul Flatley to put Minnesota up 31-21. The teams traded field goals to close out the scoring and Minnesota had themselves an impressive 34-24 opening day victory.

Mason finished with 137 yards on 20 carries while Brown added 103 on 20 tries and also chipped in 84 yards on 3 receptions to fuel the Viking attack. It wasn’t the start Shula and the Colts expected, but they didn’t let it derail their aspirations. They would lose only 1 more time in that ’64 regular season, finishing 12-2 to claim the Western Division crown. Their string of wins included a sweep of Vince Lombardi’s Packers and shutout wins of 52-0 over the defending champion Bears and 34-0 over the Lions. Their only other regular season loss was in the season’s penultimate week, to Detroit, after they had already clinched the division. Despite the dominance, the Baltimore club lost the championship game to Cleveland in disappointing 27-0 shutout fashion.

Vikings’ Tommy Mason finds daylight (Neil Leifer-Getty Images)

When former Cleveland Browns’ founder/coach Paul Brown was awarded a pro franchise for Cincinnati in 1968, and then plunked into the AFC Central Division with those Browns as part of the 1970 merger, an automatic rivalry was destined to happen between the 2 Ohio cities. They renew that rivalry as AFC North opponents on this week’s NFL schedule, so we look back at a contest played between them on December 3, 1989 for this week’s Throwback Thursday feature. It was a week 13 contest and both clubs were fighting to stay alive in the AFC playoff race. In the cold environment of Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium, the defenses took command of the game early, and battled through a scoreless first quarter.

Bengal running back James Brooks finally broke the standoff with a one yard touchdown run in the second quarter. After making some adjustments at halftime, Bengal signal caller Boomer Esaison lit up the scoreboard with touchdown throws of 38 yards to Tim McGee and 9 yards to Rodney Holman. The throw to McGee involved some trickery, as it was the result of a successful flea flicker. With the playing conditions deteriorating and the defenses still forcing things, that gave Cincinnati what amounted to an insurmountable 21-0 lead. That score held up as the final tally, and the Bengals kept their slim playoff hopes alive with the win.

That Ohio rivalry was, and still is, a heated one for both players and fans. In fact, the following week, the Bengals had a home game against Seattle, and things weren’t going real well for the home team. Between blowing a lead and some questionable officiating calls, the fans began to get restless and started to pelt the field with snow balls. Bengal coach Sam Wyche took it upon himself to try and calm the crowd down. He grabbed a microphone and proclaimed “If you see anyone throwing things on the field get them out of here. You don’t live in Cleveland, you live in Cincinnati!” Ah, yes, a little more fuel to the fire that is the Battle of Ohio rivalry.

The late Sam Wyche, former Bengals’ head coach