What was the craziest football game you have ever seen?
Some of the best football is always played at the end of the season when the playoffs are on the line. This was the case when the San Francisco 49ers faced off with a hapless Atlanta Falcons team who had nothing to lose and they were seeking revenge for last year’s loss to the 49ers in the playoffs.
The Falcons came into this game, possibly the last home game at Candlestick Park, with a 4-10 record, while the overconfident 49ers had a 10-4 record.
San Francisco could do nothing in the first half, but ruled the second half by outscoring the Falcons 34 to 14. In the end, the defense could not keep the Falcons from scoring those 14 points in the fourth quarter, which made it a 3-point game going into the final two minutes of the game.
The Navarro Bowman fiasco occurred during an onside kick after Atlanta scored their last touchdown. Bowman is a linebacker for the 49ers and he completely missed the ball on the kickoff and allowed the Falcons to get the ball back. Atlanta got the ball on the 49er 30-yard line. This almost cost SF the game, but the 49er defense stopped quarterback Matt Ryan’s Atlanta Falcon offense just shy of the end zone with a, you guessed it, Navarro Bowman pick-six run to the end zone for the win.
49er’s Coach Jim Harbaugh even said after the game that he couldn’t think of a greater moment in football that he had seen.
“I have never been involved in a game where something that good happened in a game,” he said.
Now, that’s a lot of football for Harbaugh. This great moment put the 49ers in the playoffs and will surely go down as one of the greater moments in the history of football, but was it as great as the other play the 49ers are always talking about?
The Clark/Montana throw at the end of the Dallas Cowboys vs the 49ers for the National Football Conference Championship on Jan. 10 of 1982 is fondly known as “The Catch” by Niner’s fans and will go down as the best 49er game ever. There is no comparison. The 49ers won that game 28-27. I saw that one too on TV.
No, Monday was not as great as “The Catch,” but it certainly had me thinking of some of the greatest plays I have seen in my 45 years of watching sports.
There were two in 1982. One at the beginning of the year, known as “The Catch” and then there was the other one at the end of the year simply known as “The Play.” Ironically, both occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At the end of 1982, John Elway was finishing his collegiate career as a Stanford Cardinal. I was attending my freshman year at Cal and I went to every game because I worked field security.
It was the last game of Elway’s college career against the California Golden Bears on Nov. 20 at Cal. The game really meant nothing, but to Cal and Stanford this was the “Big Game.” The rivalry between these two teams comes to a head each year and is like no other. Yes, the two schools really hate each other. That’s why I always scratch my head at the end of the day thinking, how did I befriend Rod Poteete, the retired Trojans high school teacher? After all, he is a Stanford graduate.
Cal was leading 19-17 in the final minutes of the game and Stanford came from behind to take the lead again, 20-19 on a field goal.
In my mind, this was the craziest thing I have ever seen in sports. With just four seconds left to play in the game, everyone knew at the time that very few games end positively with just that amount of time left. Cal definitely faced the impossible and everyone in the stadium was getting ready to go home. Even the Stanford band was on the field midway through the return and getting ready to take their trophy home, “the axe”. Their band was coming on one side and Cal was getting ready to enter the field, but had not.
After the kickoff, Cal returned the ball down field with five lateral passes.
Did I see the play at all? At the end, I remember asking someone what had happened. I really could not see “The Play” from my perspective on the field. There were just too many people on the field, but to this day I still tell everyone I was there. I just remember when I went home I watched the play over and over on TV and even tried to find myself on the field.
The laterals were quick and short. Kevin Moen had the ball first for Cal. I looked it up. My memory is not that good. The only reason I remember Moen was because I played football with him during high school. He was a senior and I was a freshman. Of course he would not remember me, but I remembered him.
According to the record books, he got the ball first and then got rid of it to Richard Rodgers who then passed it to Dwight Garner who gave it back to Rodgers. Everyone thought Garner’s knee was down at that point and that is when the Stanford band came onto the field. The Cal players were dodging band members who just added to the confusion. Of course, I was supposed to be handling the security and was useless to keep the people from coming on to the field.
Moen had somehow got the ball back from some guy named Ford, and he almost hit a tuba player from the Stanford band and eventually hit a trombone player at the end of his touchdown run.
Mayhem then broke out. The officials really could not see all the laterals because of the band members. They had not signaled touchdown.
The officials had to meet after the game to discuss the “The Play”. They wanted to make sure no whistle was blown for the Stanford band coming onto the field for that would have been a penalty, but there was no time on the clock. It took some time, but the official finally raised his hands to indicate a touchdown. Cal won the game 25-20 and it went into the record books as one of the most chaotic games ever to make the highlight reels.
So, when people ask me about plays after a game and the craziest thing I had ever seen, I talk about this one.
“The Play” is what I measure all games by when the crazy talk starts to come out.
People would ask me today about current games and say, did you see the game this weekend? Wasn’t that the craziest game you had ever seen? I would of course say no, because that would be telling a lie.
