Scores On This Historic Day

George Halas and John Johnson December 29, 1963: The NFL Championship Game is played at a frigid Wrigley Field in Chicago. As with the 1st official title game, 30 years earlier, the opposing teams were the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants. Coached, run, and owned by the man who founded the NFL, George Halas, the Bears had a relatively ordinary offense, led by quarterback Bill Wade and running backs Willie Galimore and Ronnie Bull. But they had Mike Ditka, who practically invented the position of tight end. Only once all season did they score more than 27 points, although that was in a 52-14 clobbering of the Los Angeles Rams in Los Angeles. It was on defense where they were truly dominant. End Doug Atkins, tackle Stan Jones and middle linebacker Bill George -- described after his death by Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly as "the meanest Bear ever," and that's saying something -- would be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. End Ed O'Bradovich, line...

Bronko Nagurski December 26, 1943: The NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. It features the 2 best teams in the League, based not just on recent history, but also on the fact that these are the 2 teams least affected by the manpower drain of World War II. Sammy Baugh had debuted in the NFL in 1937, as the quarterback for the Washington Redskins, coached by Ray Flaherty. That year, they beat George Halas' Chicago Bears in the Championship Game. They faced each other again in the Championship Game in 1940, when the Bears won the biggest blowout in NFL history, 73-0; and in 1942, when the Redskins ruined an undefeated season for the Bears. In 1943, Baugh did something never done before, nor since: He led the NFL in passing yards, interceptions by a defensive player, and punting yards. To put this into a more modern perspective: Imagine that, in the 2000s, Tom Brady, Ed Reed and Sean Landeta were one man doing what all three of those men did. That was "Sli...

According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, the only number Dick Plasman wore during a game for the Bears was 14. December 21, 1941: The NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Chicago Bears make it back-to-back titles, beating the New York Giants, 37-9. It wasn't as demonstrative as the year before, when the Bears beat the Washington Redskins, 73-0 in Washington, earning them the nickname "The Monsters of the Midway." But it was decisive. The Giants actually led 6-3 at the end of the 1st quarter, and forged a 9-9 tie in the 3rd. But quarterback Sid Luckman ran the T formation as well as ever, leading 3 long drives that ended with short touchdown runs, 2 by Norm Standlee, 1 by George McAfee. The Bears also got 2 field goals from Bob Snyder, and a 42-yard fumble return by Ken Kavanaugh. This game was notable for other reasons. It had been 2 weeks since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, so it would be the last NFL game played before the manpower dra...

Hewitt's lateral to Karr December 17, 1933:  The 1st official NFL Championship Game is played. Appropriately, it's between the League's founding team, the Chicago Bears; and its team in the biggest market, the New York Giants. There had been controversies for the League title in 1921 and 1925, so having a definitive title game would have helped. In 1932, the Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans (who became the Detroit Lions in 1934) finished tied for first: The Bears were 6-1-6, the Spartans 6-1-4. (At the time, ties were not counted in winning percentage.) So a playoff game was set, and the Bears won it, 9-0. So, for the 1933 season, the NFL was divided into Eastern and Western Divisions, and the winners were to meet in a Championship Game. The Giants won the East, going 11-3. The Bears won the West, 10-2-1. So the decider was set for Wrigley Field. (Until the Super Bowl began, regardless of which team had the better record, the West winners would host the game in odd-numbere...

December 12, 1965:  The most amazing one-man, one-game performance in NFL history occurs. On November 28, 1929, the Chicago Cardinals beat the Chicago Bears, 40-6 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ernie Nevers of the Cardinals set a single-game record by scoring all 40 points: 6 rushing touchdowns and 4 kicked extra points. On November 25, 1951, the Cleveland Browns beat the Bears, 42-21 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. William "Dub" Jones scored 6 touchdowns, 4 rushing and 2 receiving. His son would also become an NFL star, 1970s Baltimore Colt quarterback Bert Jones. On December 25, 2020, Christmas Day, the New Orleans Saints beat the Minnesota Vikings, 52-33 at the Superdome in New Orleans. Alvin Kamara rushed for 6 touchdowns. But what Gale Sayers did on December 12, 1965 was even more amazing. Not just because, unlike the others, he was a rookie, but because the weather was miserable. * Sayers scored 22 touchdowns in 1965, setting an NFL record that stood for 10 years. Think a...

December 12, 1937: The National Football League has been holding Championship Games, under the name "NFL Championship Game" from seasons 1933 to 1965, and the name "Super Bowl" from seasons 1966 onward. Only twice has it been won by a team with a rookie starting quarterback. Sammy Baugh nearly led Texas Christian University to the National Championship in 1935. In 1937, in their 1st season in the nation's capital after 5 ill-attended seasons in Boston, the Washington Redskins drafted him. With team owner George Preston Marshall presenting the professional team in the same manner as a college team, complete with a marching band and a fight song, "Hail to the Redskins," and coach Ray Flaherty and Baugh leading the most-passing offense the NFL had ever seen, the Redskins did very well at the box office, and equally well on the field. They split their 1st 4 games, then won 6 of their last 7 to finish 8-3, winning the NFL Eastern Division. The season befor...

Fritz Pollard (left) and Paul Robeson December 12, 1920: The Akron Pros and the Decatur Staleys play to a 0-0 tie at Cubs Park in Chicago. This was the last game of the season for each team. The Pros finished with a record of 8-0-3, while the Staleys finished 10-1-2. This made the Pros the Champions of the American Professional Football Association in its 1st season. In 1922, the APFA would be renamed the National Football League. So the Akron Pros were the 1st-ever NFL Champions. The Pros also had the 1st black head coach in any major league sport -- if, that is, the APFA could be defined as "major league." It would be many years before the NFL could be taken seriously as such. Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard coached the Pros, and was also their star end, making the 1st All-Pro team. Also making it from Akron were fullback Andrew "Rip" King, guards Alf Cobb and Brad Tomlin, and end Bob Nash. The Pros, playing their home games at League Park in Akron, ...

December 4, 1921:  The Chicago Staleys beat the Buffalo All-Americans, 10-7 at Cubs Park in Chicago. The Staleys thus win an NFL Championship that the All-Americans thought they had already won. It becomes known as the Staley Swindle. The Buffalo All-Stars were a professional football team founded in 1915. They became the Buffalo Niagaras in 1918, the Buffalo Prospects in 1919, and the Buffalo All-Americans in 1920, as charter members of the American Professional Football Association. The APFA was founded by the owners of the member teams, including George Halas, a former University of Illinois end who was now the head coach, general manager, and starting end on both offense and defense, for the Decatur Staleys, as they were a "company team" (in English sport, they would say "works side") for the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company of Decatur, Illinois, makers of starchers and sweeteners. And Halas was then employed by them. After playing the 1920 season in Decatur, H...

November 26, 1925: Red Grange, just 5 days past his last game for the University of Illinois, plays his first professional football game. (That was within the rules at the time, as there was no NFL Draft, let alone restrictions connected to it.) I don't think I can underestimate how big an event this was considered to be. This was "The Golden Age of Sports," and, what Babe Ruth was to baseball, Jack Dempsey to boxing, Man o' War to horse racing, Howie Morenz to hockey,  Paavo Nurmi to track,  Bill Tilden to tennis, and Bobby Jones to golf, Red Grange was to football. He had Peyton Manning and Tom Brady levels of hype at a time when the only real form of mass media was newspapers. Radio broadcasting was in its infancy, television was still in the experimental stage, and newsreels weren't much yet. It is the annual Thanksgiving Day tussle between Chicago's NFL teams, the Bears and the Cardinals, and Cubs Park -- which was renamed Wrigley Field the next season --...

November 25, 1934: The Chicago Bears beat their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cardinals, 17-6 at Wrigley Field. They move to 11-0 on the season. Beattie Feathers, a rookie running back out of the University of Tennessee, rushes for 42 yards, giving him 1,004 rushing yards on the season. This makes him the 1st player in the NFL's history, 15 seasons thus far, to rush for more than 1,000. Unfortunately, Feathers was injured in the game. He would miss the Bears' Thanksgiving Day win over the Detroit Lions, their season finale against the Lions, and the NFL Championship Game against the New York Giants, which the Bears lost, ruining what had been, up until then, an undefeated season. William Beattie Feathers was born on August 20, 1909 in Bristol, Virginia, on the State Line with Tennessee. He led Tennessee High School to a State Championship, but turned down Virginia, Virginia Tech, and every other football-playing college in the Old Dominion to play for Bob Neyland at the Univer...