You've probably been wondering what was on TV the last few nights of 1971. I'll get back to that in earnest; for now, I'll just say here's one of the things that was on Friday night, Sept. 17, about "the sport with the flash, dash and thrills custom-made for the new America ... the now America ..."
The new NFL season opened Sunday, Sept. 19, 1971, and the Baltimore Colts are the defending champs. Here are how the NFL70 division races played out ...
AFC East
Baltimore Colts (11-2-1, NFL champs)
Miami Dolphins (10-4, lost in first round of AFC playoffs)
New York Jets (4-10)
Buffalo Bills (3-10-1)
New England Patriots (2-12)
AFC Central
Cincinnati Bengals (8-6, lost in first round of AFC playoffs)
Cleveland Browns (7-7)
Pittsburgh Steelers (5-9)
Houston Oilers (3-10-1)
AFC West
Oakland Raiders (8-4-2, lost in AFC championship)
Kansas City Chiefs (7-5-2)
San Diego Chargers (6-6-3)
Denver Broncos (5-8-1)
NFC East
Dallas Cowboys (10-4, lost in the Super Bowl)
New York Giants (9-5)
St. Louis Cardinals (8-5-1)
Washington Redskins (6-8)
Philadelphia Eagles (3-10-1)
NFC Central
Minnesota Vikings (12-2, lost in the first round of the NFC playoffs)
Detroit Lions (10-4, lost in the first round of the NFC playoffs)
Chicago Bears (6-8)
Green Bay Packers (6-8)
NFC West
San Francisco 49ers (10-3-1, lost in the NFC championship)
Los Angeles Rams (9-4-1)
Atlanta Falcons (4-8-2)
New Orleans Saints (2-11-1)
I'm for the Zangers and the Dolphins ...
God, help me; I love it so ...
NFL71 Week 1:
ReplyDeleteDallas at Buffalo, noon
Houston at Cleveland, noon
Oakland at New England, noon
Philadelphia at Cincinnati, noon
San Francisco at Atlanta, noon
Pittsburgh at Chicago, 1 p.m.
Los Angeles at New Orleans, 1 p.m.
Giants at Green Bay, 1 p.m.
Washington at St. Louis, 1 p.m.
Jets at Baltimore, 3 p.m.
Miami at Denver, 3 p.m.
Kansas City at San Diego, 3 p.m.
Minnesota at Detroit, 8 p.m. Monday
The Falcons debuted their new red jerseys in style with a 20-17 upset of the defending NFC West champs. Tom Brookshier: "(Bob) Berry to (Ken) Burrow looks like a combination to look out for. Maybe the Falcons are ready to step up this year."
DeleteIt's so weird that NFL71 had wide receivers named both Ken Burrow (of Atlanta) and Ken Burrough (of Houston).
I so loved those depth chart pictures.
ReplyDeleteI inserted that one for you.
DeleteThe NFL71 Bills are fantasy-football darlings--"a young, point-a-minute" machine with O.J. Simpson, second-year quarterback and some intriguing receivers in young Haven Moses and rookies J.D. Hill and Jan White. But Dallas is 1-0 after a 49-37 victory in Buffalo.
ReplyDeleteDallas traded Duane Thomas to New England in the offseason, along with offensive lineman Halvor Hagen and receiver Honor Jackson, for running back Carl Garrett. But then Thomas left the Patriots shortly after coach John Mazur reportedly ranted that he didn't want any free spirits, and the trade was mostly canceled. The Patriots earlier had acquired linebacker Steve Kiner from Dallas after Kiner, Thomas's roommate with the Cowboys, sided with Thomas in his salary dispute with Schramm. The Cowboys also reportedly tried to trade Thomas to Kansas City, but Chiefs coach Hank Stram would not give up rookie runner Mike Adamle in exchange.
It looked for a long time that Thomas was going to simply sit out the entire season, but he is active with the Cowboys. Calvin Hill was the star of the Week 1 win over Buffalo, though.
The quarterback was Dennis Shaw.
DeleteAnother weird story that came out of Dallas this past offseason was that Bob Hayes reportedly said he paid $200 to deter an extortionist from kidnapping his daughter and bombing the homes of Tom Landry and Tex Schramm.
ReplyDeleteI was sorry to see my main man from Paris, Blanton Collier, call it quits this offseason, but I'll still be rooting for the Browns as long as new-coach Nick Skorich keeps wearing these great beanies. Browns 31, Oilers 0.
ReplyDeleteWhat a strange quirk of NFL history that Jim Plunkett quarterbacked the new "New England" Patriots to an upset of the visiting, old-AFL-power Oakland Raiders in his regular-season debut, 20-6. I'll bet Al Davis never forgets Plunkett after that one.
ReplyDeleteThe Saints also turned an upset with a rookie quarterback, as Archie Manning led New Orleans to a come-from-behind victory at Los Angeles. The guy I want to talk about here, though, is J.D. Roberts, the Saints' coach.
ReplyDeleteJ.D. Roberts is in his first full season with New Orleans. He was hired at midseason in NFL70 from the minor-league Richmond Saints of the Atlantic Coast Football League, and, in his first game, he was the guy who sent Tom Dempsey onto the field for a last-second, 63-yard-field-goal attempt with the Saints trailing the Lions by a point. Dempsey's kick was good; it stood as the long-distance NFL record for years and years; the Saints put Dempsey on the cover of its NFL71 media guide, and then Roberts cut Dempsey in the preseason. Also, in the preseason, J.D. Roberts may or may not have known who O.J. Simpson was in a Saints exhibition against the Bills, per Archie Manning, via Jeff Duncan's book, Tales from the New Orleans Saints Sideline: A Collection of the Greatest Saints Stories Ever Told. But, think what you will about this dude's football acumen or qualifications for the job, now he has coached the Saints to their first-ever season-opening victory, and it came at the Rams.
I would say this is all as if the Carolina Panthers hired Rob, head coach of the NCFA Burlington Bees, as their head coach in 2003 or whatever, but at least Rob actually was successful in the minors. J.D. Roberts' Richmond Saints were 1-7 when he was hired away by New Orleans in NFL70.
Pardon ... this game was at Tulane Stadium, not the Los Angeles Coliseum. Final was 24-20, New Orleans, and it's so great that there was no instant-replay review to jeopardize Manning's last-second run for the winning touchdown.
DeleteBears 17, Steelers 15. Dick Butkus intercepted Terry Bradshaw in the first quarter. The down was replayed because of a Chicago penalty, so Butkus intercepted Bradshaw on that play, too.
ReplyDeleteHalftime in San Diego: Chiefs 14, Chargers 0.
ReplyDeleteFinal from San Diego: Chargers 21, Chiefs 14.
But despair not, Chiefs fans! That linked NFL Films movie, A Year To Remember, opens with these rich, reassuring words of John Facenda: "Municipal Stadium, Kansas City, 1971—the ninth and final season of pro football in a stadium filled with memories for every Kansas City fan and every Kansas City player. And, in 1971, the miracle of television brought to the entire nation many more stirring memories of the Kansas City Chiefs, a pro-football team whose history is synonymous with success."
TV really is great.
Here's a really pretty home movie shot from the stands of San Diego Stadium (which would eventually come to be known as "Jack Murphy Stadium"). I would really like to see TV mix in more full-field shots of football games--it's neat to see all of the players moving at once in relation to one another.
Delete"Half a loaf": Dolphins 10, Broncos 10.
ReplyDeleteBurl Ives reports that (Three Cheers for) the Redskins came from behind to win, 24-17, at St. Louis.
ReplyDeleteWhat a crazy game in Green Bay! The Packers' new coach, Dan Devine, formerly of the University of Missouri, had his leg broken as ex-Packer Bob Hyland is rolled out of bounds and into his old team's sideline on a play. Green Bay ends up coming back from a huge deficit, but New York holds on to prevail, 42-40.
ReplyDeleteTwo more things ...
-- One, the new Packer quarterback is not old Zeke Bratkowski, who most writers expected to start in Bart Starr's place after coming out of retirement as a Bears assistant coach. It's Scott Hunter, a sixth-round rookie out of, like Starr, the University of Alabama. My dad loved Scott Hunter. We went to see a couple of Falcons exhibition games in the late 1970s, and Dad was always saying that he thought Atlanta would probably give up on (long-haired) Steve Bartkowski and turn the team over to Scott Hunter.
-- The NFL70 Giants went 9-5, finished second in the NFC East and appeared to have identified a couple of young stars in second-year running back Ron Johnson (the franchise's first-ever 1,000-yard rusher and an All-Pro picked up from Cleveland in a preseason trade) and rookie middle-linebacker Jim Files (New York's first-round draft choice out of the University of Oklahoma). So there's a lot of sense of promise around the Giants of the new decade, and they show up on some covers of some preseason publications, etc. But then some strange things happen in the offseason. Fran Tarkenton has this lengthy holdout from the team, and it reportedly has something to do with the Giants not granting Tarkenton some kind of loan for some kind of big business venture. And then Tarkenton's backup quarterback, Dick Shiner, simply disappears from the squad during some preseason trip. New York ends up losing all six of its exhibition games in an era where exhibition games are absolutely treated more consequentially as win-loss affairs than they are today. Now I haven't checked to see whatever happened with Dick Shiner, but Fran Tarkenton did come back. And he and Ron Johnson and Jim Files and the rest end up getting the regular season rolling with a road win in Green Bay.
Whenever Odell Beckham does one of those one-handed touchdown catches again, I'm going to refer to him as "a modern-day Rich Houston."
DeleteSo I think that's a wrap for the opening Sunday of NFL71. The Monday-night game is an NFC Central delight: Vikings at Lions. These are almost certainly the teams who will be slugging it out for the division championship, and Minnesota strikes a stunning early blow, coming from 13-0 behind in the first half at Tiger Stadium to win, 16-13.
ReplyDeleteI know that somebody else might've written the script, but I love it how Pat Summerall hails Viking Bill Brown, the NFL's 10th-leading active rusher, for accepting and excelling in a diminished, special-teams role. I'll bet that's the kind of thing Summerall genuinely did respect. In fact, Bill Brown is going to keep right on playing a pivotal role on Bud Grant's special teams, through at least NFL74.
NFL71 spoiler alert: "This was to be a year of almost for the Lions."
I wonder if Detroit is going to have a new kicker by Week 2.
DeleteYes, Johnny, we are approaching World Series time.
ReplyDeleteBut, first, here are Tom and Pat to tie a bow on Week 1.
ReplyDeleteAnd, now, Week 2 ...
ReplyDeleteNo way! Pat opens by reporting that the Cowboys, the Redskins, the Browns and--shockingly to me, having read about them all summer in the Chicago Tribune--the Bears (!) each remain unbeaten through two weeks.
ReplyDeleteOne can really see why people who had watched the NFL through the 1960s thought O.J. Simpson was a near-perfect merging of Jim Brown and Gale Sayers.
ReplyDeleteMiami 29, Buffalo 14. Rah!
ReplyDeletePatriots rookie Jim Plunkett, by the way, is on the cover of the league's game program, Pro!, this week. Here's the Buffalo edition, with an absolutely gorgeous International House of Pancakes ad.
ReplyDeleteAgainst Denver, the Packers face the former heir apparent to Bart Starr in Bronco quarterback Don Horn. In addition to enduring a vicious sack in which his helmet goes flying, Horn yields six interceptions to his old teammates, and Green Bay wins, 34-13. Dan Devine appears to be playing both Scott Hunter and Zeke Bratkowski at quarterback.
ReplyDeleteChiefs 21, Oilers 16. Rookie Dan Pastorini is the quarterback in Houston.
ReplyDeleteRaiders 34, Chargers 0. John Hadl sure looked littler than the 6-foot-1 and 214 pounds he is said to have played at. Something about his uniform number, 21, accentuates a smallishness, in the same way that Doug Flutie's 22 did at Boston College.
ReplyDeleteCowboys 42, Eagles 7. Dallas has totaled 91 points through two games.
ReplyDeleteRedskins over the Giants, but I'm not sure because the sound went down. Washington's 1971 uniforms, especially with the "R" helmets, are spectacular.
ReplyDeleteLions 34, Patriots 7.
ReplyDeleteOh, my, the Bears came up with 17 fourth-quarter points to beat the Vikings, 20-17. And for the second-straight week, Kent Nix came off the bench to quarterback Chicago to victory. This is crazy. This must be great to read about in the Chicago Tribune, but I discovered today that, in just the last couple of days, the newspaper has put up a paywall in front of its archives.
ReplyDeleteSteelers 21, Bengals 10. Terry Bradshaw seems to be settling in and developing chemistry with his fellow good, young skill-position Steelers such as running back Preston Pearson and wide receivers Dave Smith and Jon Staggers. It'll be interesting to see what Chuck Noll is able to do with those guys over the next decade.
ReplyDeleteThe Browns are 2-0 in Nick Skorich's first season as Cleveland's head coach, as ex-Western Kentucky University Hilltopper Dale Lindsey comes up with a key interception in a 14-13 victory over the defending-champion Baltimore Colts.
ReplyDeleteThe Falcons and Rams tied, 20-20, as, with a three-point lead in the fourth quarter, Atlanta coach Norm Van Brocklin elected to try for the first down on a fourth-and-1 from near the Los Angeles 20. The Rams held, then drove for a last-second, 47-yard field goal. Pat suggests that Coach Van Brocklin "must be kicking himself," and Tom adds that "The Old Dutchman won't soon forget that play--or what you just said, I'm sure."
ReplyDeleteWith the Rams in their just-blue-and-white uniforms and the Falcons in their almost-just-red-and-white uniforms, never has a real NFL game looked more like an electric-football game than that one.
49ers 38, Saints 20. It's weird that the NFL has had prominent receivers named "Danny Ambramowicz" and "Danny Amendola."
ReplyDeleteSoul Train got rolling as a national show on Oct. 2, 1971.
ReplyDelete