by Howie Mooney
If you don’t live in the United States, you may or may not know that as the calendar moves from October to November, the anticipation builds towards that special Thursday close to the end of the month. Yes, Thanksgiving Day is a special holiday that is meant for family, food and celebration. Originally, it was a day to give thanks for the harvest, and it was still kind of that.
Nowadays, it’s one of the biggest travel days in the country. People look at the calendar and get in their cars or on a plane and fly home to wherever home is so they can enjoy the day – and the turkey with all the fixings, and the weekend – with their families, their significant others and a bunch of little people at a kids’ table.
Oh. Did I mention football?
There are football games on the television on Thanksgiving Day. Three of them now. There used to be a pair of games, but, as the networks realized that there was an appetite for more (there’s always an appetite for more), there is now a third game on that magical Thursday. And now, too, there’s a Friday game as well.
Back in the early 1980s, there were just a pair of games on that special Thanksgiving Thursday. It really doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but damn……it’s more than four decades ago now.
Please let me take you back to 1980. There were just two games on the Thursday schedule. There were no Friday games. That year, Thanksgiving fell on November 27. The first game took place at 12:30 Eastern on CBS and it was between the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions at the old Pontiac Silverdome. The afternoon capper would see the Seattle Seahawks heading down to Texas Stadium to play the Dallas Cowboys.
Going into that day, the Cowboys were a very good team at 9-3. They were two games behind the Philadelphia Eagles in the tough NFC East. The Seahawks played in the AFC West at that time and were in the basement of the division at 4-8. Their quarterback was a former Cowboy prospect, Jim Zorn. CBS’ Jimmy the Greek had the Cowboys installed as ten-point favourites going into the game. They demolished the Seahawks 51-7. The earlier match was somewhat more intriguing.
Both the Bears and the Lions resided in the NFC Central back in 1980. Parity was the word of the day in that division. Detroit sat in first place at 7-5. Right behind them were the Minnesota Vikings at 6-6. The Green Bay Packers were a half-game behind them at 5-6-1. The Packers tie had come in one of the ‘Battle of The Bays’ against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who had compiled a record of 4-7-1. The lowly Bears resided in the last spot of the division at 4-8.
Given their positions in their division standings, one might be excused if they were somewhat surprised to see that the Lions were favoured by just three points over Chicago in this game. Going into this one, Detroit was one of the teams in the postseason. They wanted a win to consolidate that playoff spot. They were coming off a 24-10 win over the Bucs the previous Sunday. The Bears had given up a couple of fourth quarter touchdowns in a 28-17 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
The Lions were led by their amazing rookie running back, Billy Sims. Not only did he show himself to be an elite ball carrier, but he was also very adept at catching the ball out of the backfield. Freddie Scott was the Lions’ leading receiver with 834 yards in 1980, but Sims was second on the team with 621. Leonard Thompson was the next man up with 511 yards.
Gary Danielson was the quarterback and facilitator on the Lions. Danielson had missed the entire 1979 season after he tore a knee ligament in the team’s final exhibition game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It would have been his fourth season with the club. He had to wait until the following year to try to prove himself. He had been the leader and the guy for the Lions in 1980. And having a catalyst like Billy Sims didn’t hurt either.
The Bears were led by their All-World running back Walter Payton. By 1980, Payton was 27 years old, and he had been an All-Pro for four consecutive seasons, and 1980 would be his fifth. He was in his athletic prime and one of the highlights of Thanksgiving Day football was Walter Payton doing Walter Payton things. (The same would later be said about Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions, but that’s a subject for another story at a later time.)
The man who handed the ball to Walter Payton was the Bears’ quarterback, Vince Evans. Evans had been drafted in the sixth round of the 1977 draft. He played his college ball at the University of Southern California. He had been strictly a backup before this season. But by November of 1980, he was the Chicago Bears’ first-string quarterback. He was 25 years old and had taken the reins from Mike Phipps, who, at 33, was in his eleventh NFL season and his fourth in the Windy City.
While Payton was the crown jewel in the Chicago offense, the man who was the prime aerial target in that system was James Scott. He was not the star that Payton was, but he was basically the best the Bears had in their receiving corps. After all, this was a last place team. And they were playing the top team in the division on this very special Thursday, the Detroit Lions.
The Bears were visiting Pontiac to face the Lions. The only scoring in the first fifteen minutes was a field goal on Detroit’s first possession and it came from the foot of a Haligonian, Detroit’s place kicker, Eddie Murray. Halfway through the second quarter, Danielson tossed a ball into the flat to Billy Sims at the Chicago 45. He broke at least three tackles on his way to the end zone. His touchdown made it 10-0 for the home side.
Just before the half ended, Bears’ kicker Bob Thomas booted one true and through the uprights to put Chicago on the board. It was a 10-3 game going into the intermission. In the third quarter, the Lions put a drive together on their first possession and eventually, Danielson went into the end zone from a yard out to make it 17-3 for the Honolulu Blue and Silver. The big play on that scoring drive was a pass on fourth down from punter Tom Skladany to running back Dexter Bussey for 19 yards that allowed them to keep moving. As the quarter came to an end, the score remained 17-3 for Detroit.
Given Chicago’s inability to put points on the board through the first three quarters, it might have been reasonable to presume that this game was all but over. But as the third was winding down, the Bears had the ball and began to move on the ground, led, of course, by the incredible Walter Payton. They had the ball as the teams changed ends and after eight plays in the drive – six of those were runs by Number 34 – the Bears found themselves on the Lions’ 20.
All those running plays set up the play action and after Evans faked a handoff into the line, he rolled out and found reserve tight end Bob Fisher in the end zone for a touchdown to bring Chicago closer with the score at 17-10. Time was ticking away though and after both sides exchanged futile possessions, Detroit punted on fourth and inches, and the result was that the Bears had the ball on their own six-yard-line with 3:37 remaining.
Punting in that situation may have been the prudent thing to do, but it wasn’t necessarily what the guys on the offense wanted to do. As their third-down play had come up short, Danielson and Sims were both gesturing toward their bench that they wanted to gamble and go for the first down from the Bears’ 43. The coaching staff were standing together trying to figure out what they wanted.
“I wanted to go for it,” Billy Sims told reporters after the game. “I’d have died for an inch. I wanted to go for it. We were trying to kill the clock. It was a good punt. I felt like we were going to hold them.”
On this possession, the Bears took to the air as Evans connected with James Scott on four passes to move into Lions’ territory and then some. They had the ball on first down at the Lions 19. Evans then couldn’t find a target and went for a 15-yard scamper from the pocket to get the ball down to the Detroit 4.
On first down, an Evans pass went astray and incomplete. On second down, another Evans pass failed to find a receiver. Time was dwindling down and after failing to spot an open man on third down, Evans escaped the pocket and made it to the end zone for a touchdown with no time left on the clock.
The extra point was good. The game was now tied. Fans at the Silverdome were treated to some free football – even though the 75,397 there probably wanted no part of it.
The captains met at mid-field and after the coin flip, which the Bears won, they elected to take the ball first. Eddie Murray’s kick sailed to about the Chicago 5-yard-line and was caught by returner Dave Williams on the right side of the field. He then ran it forward and to his left toward the hash marks. By the time he reached the 50-yard-line, he was heading closer to the left sideline. He went untouched into the end zone for the game-winning score. He had no one near him the last twenty yards.
Williams had played his college ball at Colorado and had fought to make professional teams ever since he was drafted by Dallas in the seventh round in 1976. He failed to make the Cowboys and, instead found playing time with the San Francisco 49ers for a couple of seasons before joining the Bears in 1979. He was 26 during the 1980 season and still playing on special teams. This moment was one of his career highlights.
“The play was a middle return,” Williams told the press. “I started up the middle, saw it was jammed up, spotted an opening and went for it. My job is to bring it up the field as fast as I can, read the blocks and after that, it’s a foot race. A couple of guys had an angle on me, and I thought maybe they might catch me. It wasn’t until I was fifteen yards from the end zone that I thought, ‘Hey, it’s too late now – touchdown.’ I’m just tremendously happy. We needed this game as much or more than the Lions and I’m happy to help the team.”
Neill Armstrong was the Chicago coach, and he was feeling a mix of joy and relief. The Bears had not had a lot to celebrate in 1980. In the opening game of their season against Green Bay, the Packers’ kicker, Chester Marcol, had lined up to try to kick a field goal. His kick was blocked but he then picked up the ball and ran it to paydirt to give his team the win and hand the Bears an ignominious loss. Failure seemed to follow them after that.
“I’ve been in a lot of games,” Armstrong told reporters after this one was over, “but I’ve never felt as good after a win as I do after this one.” He claimed that his only real input came after regulation time had ended and the teams were waiting for the extra period to begin. “You know, that was the only real coaching I did today. I told them to go out there and win the toss.” The Bears did win the coin toss, and then they won the game.
For Lions’ coach, Monte Clark, his emotions were exactly the opposite of Armstrong’s. “That was the bitterest loss I can remember as a coach. We had them where we wanted them but couldn’t finish them off. We missed a lot of tackles. We were just grabbing instead of tackling,” Clark told whoever might be listening in the despondent Lions’ locker room.
There was some discussion with Clark about his decision to punt the ball on fourth and inches. “It was late in the fourth quarter. I thought it would be better if we had to make them go 95 yards for it. I thought it would be smarter to do that than try for it. But that didn’t lose the game. You’ve got to stop them sometime. That (the punt) gave them bad field position. We just didn’t get the job done.”
Indeed, Monte. The Lions lead in the NFC Central was now in major jeopardy. Their record was now 7-6 with the loss to Chicago and the Bud Grant-led Vikings were facing the New Orleans Saints on Sunday in the Superdome. By the way, the Saints had not won a game in 1980. They had twelve losses in their twelve games. That explains why the attendance for that contest was just 30,936.
All that said, Minnesota was just a six-point favourite going into the game. At halftime though, the Vikes were up 16-0 on the ‘Aints. A ten-yard touchdown run by halfback Doug Paschal made it 23-0 in the third quarter. (It was his only touchdown all season.) But then Archie Manning (father of Peyton and Eli) went to work as he fired three touchdown passes to make it 23-20 before the clock betrayed him and his New Orleans teammates. (The Saints did win in their second-last game of the season against the New York Jets. The final score was 21-20.)
The Minnesota win pushed them into a tie with Detroit with matching 7-6 records. The Lions and Vikings sat a game-and-a-half ahead of both the Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and two games ahead of the happy-for-the-moment Bears. The fact that there was no dominant team in the NFC Central meant that the only way for a team to reach the postseason was to win the division. There would be no wild-card team coming out of the Central.
The Lions had the St. Louis Cardinals, Buccaneers and Packers left on their schedule. None of those teams had a winning record. The Vikings had Tampa Bay, the Cleveland Browns and the Houston Oilers on their docket. Cleveland was in first place in the AFC Central with a 9-4 record and Houston was a game behind them at 8-5. If Minnesota was going to take the division away from the Lions, they would certainly have to earn it.
So, in Week 14, when the Lions went into St. Louis to play the 4-9 Cardinals, they ended up coming from ahead and allowed ten fourth quarter points to the feeble Cards and lost 24-23. Meanwhile, the Vikings went into Tampa and overcame a halftime 10-0 deficit to take a 21-10 win and commandeer the division lead away from Detroit.
Those Bucs would be heading to Pontiac in Week 15 to face the Lions. Detroit would come away with a 27-14 win in that game. But the Vikings were holding their own against the very good Browns and they won an impressive 28-23 decision to maintain their hold on the lead over the Lions. The Vikings win over the Browns gave them the division. Minnesota held the tiebreakers if they lost to Houston and Detroit beat the Packers in the final week of the season.
That was exactly what happened. Both teams finished 9-7. The Vikings moved on but lost in the divisional round to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Lions went home. It merely underlined the importance of the Lions’ loss to Chicago on Thanksgiving Day. The loss to the Cardinals compounded the ugliness of the situation for them.
For the Bears, the win over Detroit got the ball rolling for them and, although they were in last place going into Week 13, they went 3-1 in their last four games to finish 7-9 and pass the Packers and Buccaneers.
Over the decade of the 1980s, the Lions would only have one other season in which they finished over .500. They went 9-7 again in 1983. Their next positive season would be 1991. They went 12-4 under Wayne Fontes that year and won a playoff game over Dallas before losing to Washington. Fontes led them to a 10-6 record in 1993 and 9-7 in 1994. They went 10-6 again in 1995. Then, after the team went 5-11 in 1996, Fontes was let go. Bobby Ross took over and in 1997. There wasn’t a lot of good after that.
It took the Bears a little time, but they would eventually become the Monsters of the Midway again. Their first winning season after that 1980 campaign was 1984 when they went 10-6 under Mike Ditka. In 1985, they went 15-1 and won Super Bowl XX 46-10 over the New England Patriots. The 1986 season saw them go 14-2 and then lose their first playoff game 27-13 to Washington. Ditka and the Bears had some great seasons but after going 5-11 in 1992, he was done there, and Dave Wannstedt took over.
The Bears and Vikings had good times and some bad but at least they were able to celebrate some playoff wins, and in the Bears’ case, a Super Bowl victory. The Lions remained mired in the swamp of ignominy more often than not over the years. The pain of their two losses at the end of the 1980 season could have been tempered by the fact that it was their first season over .500 record since 1972. But between 1972 and 2000, they had just eight seasons where they had a winning record.
After 2000, they were just short of pathetic!!
They posted more losses than wins every year from 2001 to 2010. In 2008, they lost all sixteen of their games.
I take absolutely no pleasure in saying that they won one playoff game between 1958 and 2022.
It’s no wonder that the city is absolutely head over heels in love with the current Lions’ coach Dan Campbell. He has given Detroit fans a reason to feel hope for the first time in a long, long while. His first year was a bit of a trial in 2021, especially after his introductory media availability in which he exclaimed the desirability of his players to bite kneecaps. The Lions went 3-13-1. After that, it’s been a torrent of winning.
The Lions have become the darlings of Detroit and all the counties around it. In fact, they have attracted fans from all over the football world. It’s the best period in the club’s existence since they were winning titles back in the 1950s. The hope is that their locker room will be filled with joy and happiness after their final postseason game in early 2025 and not at all like the morgue where Monte Clark gave reporters his comments back on Thanksgiving Day in 1980.
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Howie’s latest book The Consequences of Chance, seventeen new and incredibly detailed stories of outlandish and wild events that occurred in sports over the last fifty years,is available on Amazon. It’s the follow-up to his first books, Crazy Days & Wild Nights and MORE Crazy Days & Wild Nights! If you love sports and sports history, you need these books!
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