By Brian Boone
Are you ready for some football? Of course you are, and the NFL season is about to start back up again. Get ready with these tales of the strangest, most unlikely, silliest, and most unforgettable things to ever happen in a pro football game.
FAN ASSIST
By the ninth week of the 1961 AFL season, the Boston Patriots and the Dallas Texans were both looking to lock up a playoff spot. In the final seconds of the game, Boston led, 28 to 21, but Dallas’s offense was just off the goal line and needed a short pass from QB Cotton Davidson to bring on a tie. Davidson unloaded and instead of finding one of his receivers, his pass was blocked… by a visibly intoxicated Patriots fan who ran onto the turf at Nickerson Field. Game over; Texans lose.
SORRY, NO MORE BALLS
The 1940 NFL championship game (this is pre-AFL merger, and before the Super Bowl) saw Chicago defeated Washington by a score of 73 to 0, the biggest winning margin in a game in league history, a record that still stands. The Bears scored 11 touchdowns, which means kicked points-after-touchdowns. Those balls all went into the stands (no nets around the goals) and by the fourth quarter, the ill-equipped league had run out of extra pigskins. The referees asked the teams to stop kicking PATs, and to opt for the running-in conversion instead.
Get Uncle John's Action-Packed Bathroom Reader Today!
LESS THAN PURRFECT
During a December 1996 home game, the Carolina Panthers punted a ball after scoring to kick off the Pittsburgh Steelers’ next scoring drive. The ball traveled so far that it bobbled and bounced into the end zone. Before a referee could call the play over, a member of the Panthers squad jumped on the ball to decidedly end the play. But it wasn’t a Panthers player — it was the fully costumed team mascot, Sir Purr. And it was dressed in a Santa Claus costume. No penalties were assessed; the Steelers immediately scored a touchdown.
HOT POTATO
On December 21, 2003, the New Orleans Saints could have secured a playoff spot with a road win against the Jacksonville Jaguars. In the fourth quarter, down 20 to 12, the Saints made a miraculous, quirky, throwback of a drive on the final down of the game as the time clock expired. Rather than have the quarterback throw or hand off the ball once, as is customary in modern football, members of the offense tossed the ball to each other a total of three times, in a lateral, old-fashioned football pattern, meaning parallel or even backward. But they somehow got it over the goal line, with the score 20 to 19. All kicker John Carney had to do was go through the relatively easy formality of knocking the extra point through the uprights to send the game into overtime… and he missed. Final score: Jaguars 20, Saints 19. And the Saints missed the playoffs that year.
THAT WAS QUICK
The onside kick is sometimes used to confuse and bewilder the team on the receiving end. Instead of knocking it across the field, the kicker barely touches the ball, allowing for his own team to recover it and thus steal the offensive drive. On the opening kickoff in a 2003 game against the Dallas Cowboys, the Philadelphia Eagles attempted the onside kick tactic… and failed. Cowboys wide receiver Randal Williams caught the ball, lightly kicked from just over the Eagles’ goal line. He ran it back the few yards and scored a touchdown. Only three seconds had gone off the clock, making this the fastest touchdown ever in an NFL game.