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Two old NFL rivals, the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions, meet this week on the league schedule, and for this week’s Throwback Thursday feature we’ll harken back to the penultimate week of the regular season of 1954 for a game played between these franchises. It took place at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on December 12 of that year. Although the Lions are showing signs of life in the 2023 season, they have been NFL doormats for most of the last 60 years. That wasn’t the case in the 1950s, however. Detroit was a powerhouse club in those days, and going into this contest they had already clinched the Western Division title and a spot in the upcoming championship game. Coach George “Papa Bear” Halas’ Bears were also a force to be reckoned with in this era, but the Lions had gotten the best of them recently, winning 4 straight and 5 of the last 6 meetings.

The determined Bears came out fighting in the first half. Quarterback Zeke Bratkowski threw a 26 yard touchdown pass to Jim Dooley, then the other Chicago QB, Ed Brown, came off the bench and found Harlon Hill for a 35 yard score. Doak Walker got Detroit on the scoreboard with a field goal, but before halftime Bratkowski and Dooley hooked up again for a short TD pass and the Bears went into the locker room with a comfortable 21-3 lead. Being a proud club, the Lions didn’t die easily. Subbing for starter Bobby Layne, quarterback Tom Dubinski got his team back into the contest in the fourth quarter with a pair of touchdown hookups to Jug Girard to bring the score to 21-17. John Hoffman gave the Bears some breathing room, and the Bears’ final score, with a 19 yard touchdown run to put his team ahead 28-17.  Detroit closed the gap to 28-24 on a Dubinski touchdown toss of 40 yards to Jim Doran, but Halas’ forces hung on for the 28-24 win, breaking their losing streak against their Western Division rivals.

The Lions had one more regular season game to play after this one, as they traveled to Cleveland to meet the club they would face for the NFL championship a week later. They prevailed 14-10 to finish 9-2-1 for the year. That game didn’t mirror what would happen when those 2 teams met the next week, again in Cleveland, for the title. The Browns won the crown handily 56-10.

Bears-Lions game program from 12/12/54

The NFL is entering week 10 of it’s regular season schedule beginning tonight, and a game featured on the slate is between the Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots. We’ll throw it back to January 21, 2007 for this week’s Throwback Thursday post, for a contest that pitted 2 of the era’s top quarterbacks, the Colts’ Peyton Manning and the Pats’ Tom Brady, in a duel for the 2006 AFC Championship and a trip to the Super Bowl.

In the first of what would be a day full of freakish touchdowns, New England’s Logan Mankins recovered a fumble in the end zone to give his team a 7-0 lead. Former Patriot Adam Vinatieri got the Colts on the board with a field goal to close out the opening quarter, but the Patriots surged in the second. Corey Dillon scored on a 7 yard run, then Asante Samuel added another off the wall TD when he picked off Manning and returned it 39 yards to the end zone for a 21-3 New England lead. It was beginning to look like another case of Brady getting the best of Manning in their rivalry. After Vinatieri closed out the first half with another field goal, another odd scoring play got the Colts to within 21-13 when Manning scored on a play he never ran, a 1 yard sneak. Indy then tied the game with a 1 yard touchdown pass from Manning to defensive tackle Dan Klecko, of all people, who was a tackle eligible on the play, and a successful 2 point conversion.

New England went the traditional route to go ahead 28-21 when Brady found Jabar Gaffney open for a 6 yard touchdown pass, but the Colts squared the score again to start the fourth quarter on another freak play – center Jeff Saturday’s end zone recovery of a fumble. The placekickers took over at that point, with Vinatieri sneaking in a 36 yarder between a pair of three pointers from New England’s Steven Gostkowski from 28 and 43 yards out. With a minute left in the contest, the Colts completed the comeback when Joseph Addai ran in from 3 yards out to give his club a 38-34 win and a trip to the Super Bowl. Although he didn’t figure in any of the scoring, Colts’ tight end Dallas Clark was an unsung hero, catching 6 passes from Manning for 137 valuable yards. Indianapolis would finish the job with a rain-soaked 29-17 win over the Chicago Bears in the big game to give Manning and coach Tony Dungy their first titles.

QB Manning at work against Pats’ defense

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans clash on this week’s NFL schedule, and for Throwback Thursday we’ll travel back to the AFC Championship game of the 1979 season, played at Three Rivers Stadium on January 6, 1980 between these 2 franchises. The Steelers were defending champs and seeking their fourth trip to the Super Bowl in the decade of the ’70s, while their opponents were still located in Houston as the Oilers. The 2 teams were fierce division rivals at the time in the old AFC Central, and were meeting in the title game for the second straight year.

The Oilers were humiliated 34-5 in the previous season’s title game, and coach Bum Phillips and his squad were determined to get revenge this time. They got off to a rousing start when Vernon Perry picked off a Terry Bradshaw pass and returned it 75 yards for the opening touchdown. The teams traded field goals before Bradshaw got back on track and tossed scoring passes of 16 yards to tight end Bennie Cunningham and 20 yards to John Stallworth to lift his team to a 17-10 halftime lead.

The defenses stiffened in the third quarter, but late in that period a play occurred that would change the course of future NFL games. Houston quarterback Dan Pastorini hit receiver Mike Renfro with an apparent game tying touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone. None of the officials originally signaled a TD, or any other call for that matter. After one of their annoying little “conferences”, the call was made that the pass was incomplete because Renfro had not gotten both feet down inbounds. There was no official instant replay at the time, but television replays clearly showed that the play should have been a touchdown. Phillips vehemently argued the call but there was no recourse at the time, and the Oilers settled for a field goal to cut the lead to 17-13. The Steelers tightened up on defense after that, and the Oilers seemed to lose their momentum. Bradshaw engineered drives that led to another field goal and a 4 yard Rocky Bleier touchdown run to earn their Super Bowl trip 27-13.

The Renfro play wasn’t forgotten, however. It was the impetus for the league to begin serious discussion about using replay as a tool to get calls correct, and since change moves slowly among tradition-bound NFL owners, it was finally implemented in 1986.

Mike Renfro’s non-catch in AFC title game