Professional Thanksgiving Day football games date back to 1920. But the modern iteration of the tradition dates back to 1934, when Detroit Lions owner George Richards made the holiday game an institution. Richards, a radio executive, helped line up a 94-station radio network to nationally broadcast a showdown in Detroit between the 10-1 Lions and the 11-0 Chicago Bears, the defending champion of the NFL.
“It was a good close game and it certainly helped bring the nation’s attention to the excitement of the NFL,” Professional Football Hall of Fame historian Jon Kendle said of the 19 victory. -16 of the Bears.
With the exception of 1975 and 1977, the Dallas Cowboys have been hosting a Thanksgiving game since 1966. In 2006, the league added a prime-time game. Some Thanksgiving games were classics. Others were turkeys. Here are seven of the most unforgettable NFL games played on Thanksgiving:
1. Ernie Nevers scores 40 points for the Chicago Cardinals
GAME: Chicago Cardinals 40, Chicago Bears 6 (November 29, 1929)
Chicago Cardinals fullback Ernie Nevers. who was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1963.
AP Photo / Professional Football Hall of Fame
The Cardinals and the Bears met at Thanksgiving from 1922 to 1933. The Nevers Cardinals’ performance in his team’s victory in 1929 was among the greatest individual performances in league history. On a snowy field in front of 8,000 fans, the Hall of Fame back scored his team’s 40 points – six touchdowns and four extra points.
“From the moment Nevers dove for the first touchdown until he slipped for his sixth in the final period and then venue kicked the 40th point this crowd screamed for more touchdowns,” wrote on Green Bay Gazette.
Cardinals fans might not have realized Nevers’ effort was a record, but they knew they had witnessed something special. “Ernie left the game and how those southerners cheered. Well they could. Forty points plus nineteen points against Dayton last Sunday gave him 59 in a row, ”wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Wilfrid Smith.
2. Vagabond Dallas Texans wins home game in Akron, Ohio
GAME: Dallas Texans 27, Chicago Bears 23 (November 27, 1952)
In their only year of existence, the Texans struggled to attract fans and corporate support, and so couldn’t make a payroll. This has led the team to return to the league with five games to go in the season. Dallas has played its last two “home” games in various cities, including a Thanksgiving game against the Bears at the Akron Rubber Bowl in front of 2,208 fans, about 12,000 fewer than in the high school championship game. Akron that morning.
Despite the surreal backdrop, the game was a thriller.
“The desperate, homeless, miserable Texans, what have you, humiliated and maimed in the previous nine games and starved enough to eat bear, did just that at the Rubber Bowl on Thursday,” the Akron Beacon Journal’s Bill Girgash.
Perhaps because of Dallas’ incompetence, Chicago coach George Halas started his second string and paid for it. The Texans took a 20-2 lead, only to see the Bears rally to take a 23-20 lead in the fourth quarter. Dallas quarterback Frank Tripucka’s 1-yard touchdown run with 34 seconds left gave the Texans the only win in history. Dallas finished the season with a 1-11 record.
3. Green Bay Packers, QB Bart Starr Fall Flat
GAME: Detroit Lions 26, Green Bay Packers 14 (November 22, 1962)
The Packers were a juggernaut in 1962, winning the NFL Championship and leading the league in both offensive and defensive scoring. At Thanksgiving, however, the champions were fools. The Detroit defense sacked Packers quarterback Bart Starr 11 times and forced him to two interceptions. The game became known as the “Thanksgiving Day Massacre” due to Detroit’s defensive dominance.
“We kicked them off,” Detroit defensive lineman Alex Karras said.
“We will play them at any time,” linebacker Joe Schmidt told Detroit Free Press. “We should be on top, not these guys.”
Roger Brown, the 303-pound Lions defensive lineman, was the star of the game with five sacks. “… the reason why it was not [close] had to be Big Roger, who likes fast sports cars, motorcycles and seems to have a penchant for hunting and catching the stars before dinner, ” Free press wrote.
Packers coach Vince Lombardi made no apologies for Green Bay’s loss, the only one this season. “They just overwhelmed us,” he said.
4. Quarterback replacement Clint Longley lifts the Dallas Cowboys
GAME: Dallas Cowboys 24, Washington 23 (November 28, 1974)
Clint Longley, who left the field after blowing Washington away, only played three seasons in the NFL.
AP Photo
Trailing 16-3 in the third quarter and with starting quarterback Roger Staubach knocked out of the game with injury, things looked grim for Dallas. But Longley, a rookie from Abilene Christian University, shocked Washington with two touchdown passes, including the 50-yard game winner against Drew Pearson with 28 seconds left.
“They told me to take my helmet and get in there,” said Longley, nicknamed the “Mad Bomber” by his teammates for his many stray passes at training camp. “I had to find my helmet first… I wasn’t nervous, but I was definitely excited.
Before the game, Washington defensive tackle Dyron Talbert said: “If you hit [Staubach] outside you have this rookie Clint Longley in front of you. This is one of our goals. If we do that, it’s great.
These words made the victory even more enjoyable for Staubach. “It’s almost more satisfying to win with Longley because of what Talbert said,” he said. Cowboys offensive lineman Blaine Nye called Longley’s performance “a triumph of a clean mind.”
5. Leon Lett’s Gaffe Condemns the Dallas Cowboys
GAME: Miami Dolphins 16, Dallas Cowboys 14 (November 25, 1993)
“It was the most disappointing loss I have ever seen,” Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson said after Leon Lett’s blunder led to the loss.
AP Photo / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
With Texas Stadium blanketed in a rare blizzard, the Dolphins were down 14-13, with seconds left. Miami kicker Pete Stoyanovich’s 41-yard field goal attempt was blocked. Under the rule, the ball would have been declared dead and awarded to the Cowboys once it stopped moving. But the Dallas Lett made a clumsy, slippery attempt to get it back, and in the chaos that followed, Miami recovered at the 1-yard line. Then Stoyanovich made the easy move for the win.
Lett’s teammates subsequently did not rush to his defense. “If you work in a chemicals plant, you have to know your chemicals,” cornerback Kevin Smith said. “If you’re a doctor, you have to know medicine. We are paid a lot of money to read the fine print.
Or, as Dallas special teams coach Joe Avezzano said, “There were 11 guys on the field, and 10 of them knew what to do.”
6. The draw fiasco costs the Pittsburgh Steelers
GAME: Detroit Lions 19, Pittsburgh Steelers 14 (November 26, 1998)
Pittsburgh and Detroit fought for a 16-16 regulatory tie. For the overtime toss to determine who gets the ball first in overtime, Steelers running back Jerome Bettis clearly called “face”. The coin did indeed land on tails, but referee Phil Luckett insisted Bettis said “heads” and gave the Lions the chance to kick off.
Detroit then led the field for a winning placement – overtime was still a sudden death in 1998 – and Pittsburgh suffered the first of five straight losses to end its season.
The Steelers subsequently fumed. “How to blow up the draw? Linebacker Earl Holmes wondered. From Luckett, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ron Cook wrote: “We have no choice but to assume he has a hearing loss as well as a problem with his eyesight.”
When asked if maybe Luckett had made a mistake, Robert Porcher of the Lions replied, “All I can say is ‘Happy Thanksgiving’.”
7. The New York Jets’ Mark Sanchez ‘Butt Fumble’ Mistake
THU: New England Patriots 49, New York Jets 19 (November 22, 2012)
After the “Butt Fumble,” Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez had nowhere to hide.
Rich Graessle / Icon SMI / Corbis / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Jets were trailing 14-0 in the second quarter when Sanchez, on a failed play, dashed headlong into rear guard Brandon Moore and fumbled. Steve Gregory of New England recovered the ball and returned it for 32 yards for a touchdown, the third of five Patriots touchdowns during the quarter.
“If there was a game that summed up MESS, which is the Jets, it was a second-quarter back-to-back game that ended with Sanchez as the target of the Jets’ offensive joke,” Boston Globe columnist Christopher L. Gasper wrote.
“I don’t believe much in luck,” Sanchez told the New York Daily News about the blunder, almost immediately dubbed the “Butt Fumble”. “It was pretty unlucky.”
Jets coach Rex Ryan had a saltier description of the classic blooper-reel: “[Expletive] unbelievable.”
