Sports Then and Now

In week 3 of the 2005 NFL season, the New England Patriots traveled to Heinz Field to face the Pittsburgh Steelers in a rematch of the AFC Championship Game from the season before.

Eight months earlier, the Patriots traveled to Pittsburgh and knocked off the Steelers 41-27 and advance to Super Bowl XXXIX where they would win their third Super Bowl in four years.

Led by head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, the Patriots had a dynasty and the top dog in the NFL.

Entering the 2005 season, the Pittsburgh Steelers were seen to be one of the favorites to knock k off the Patriots.

The Steelers were led by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who in his rookie year won his first 14 starts as he led the Steelers to a 15-1 regular season record before losing to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.

One of the Steelers’ wins in the 2004 season was a 34-20 beat down of the Patriots on Halloween in Pittsburgh, which ended the Patriots’ 21-game winning streak.

For the third time in less than a year, the Patriots and the Steelers met in Heinz Field. Read the rest of this entry →

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In week 12 of the 2005 NFL season, the Seattle Seahawks and the New York Giants met in an important match-up between NFC division leaders seemingly on a collision course for the post season.

The New York Giants entered this game as leaders of the NFC East division with a 7-3 record, thanks in large part to the number one overall pick of the 2004 NFL Draft, quarterback Eli Manning, who the Giants traded for after Manning refused to go to the San Diego Chargers.

In his first full season as the starting quarterback, Manning led a potent offense that included running back Tiki Barber and wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who the Giants acquired from the Pittsburgh Steelers in the offseason.

Their opponent, the Seattle Seahawks entered the game on a six-game winning streak and an 8-2 record.

Like the Giants, the Seahawks had a potent offense, which was the league’s best, lead by quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and running back Shaun Alexander who had scored 19 touchdowns prior to this game.

At this point in time, the Seahawks had been a team that had the talent to be among the best, but just could get over the hump. Read the rest of this entry →

Since their arrival into the National Football League in 1967, the New Orleans Saints had earned the reputation as the most notorious loser in the league.

In their first 20 seasons, the Saints had never had a winning season or been to the postseason with their best seasons being in 1979 and 1983 where the team finished 8-8 in both seasons.

In 1986, Saints owner Tom Benson hired Jim Finks to become the team’s new general manager, who then proceeded to hire Jim Mora as head coach.

Mora came from the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars where he coached the team to two championships in the league’s three-year history.

As the league folded in 1986, Mora was able to convince former USFL players such as quarterback Bobby Herbert and linebackers Sam Mills and Vaughn Johnson to join him in New Orleans.

Mills and Johnson joined veteran linebacker Rickey Jackson and rookie Pat Swilling to form the famous “Dome Patrol”.

The Saints went 7-9 in 1986, and then split the first two games of the 1987 season before the NFL players went on strike.

Week 3 games were cancelled and never made up, but games in weeks 4-6 were played by replacement players.

The Saints’ replacements went 2-1, giving the team an overall record of 3-2 when the regular players came back for their week 7 showdown against the San Francisco 49ers.

The Saints lost the game 24-22 as Morten Andersen missed a last-second field goal that would have won the game.

In his postgame press conference, Mora proclaimed that the Saints “ain’t good enough” to beat a team like the 49ers.

The speech seemed to light a fire under the Saints as they won their next four games, including a 26-24 win over the 49ers in San Francisco.

The Saints were 7-3 and had five games to go in the regular season to give their long-suffering fans a winning season.

For week 12, the Saints traveled to Pittsburgh to face the Steelers, who were 6-4 entering this game despite the fact they had the lowest-rated quarterback in the league, Mark Malone. Read the rest of this entry →

Most football fans know how Tom Brady became the starting quarterback of the New England Patriots, but when do they and the Patriots know that he would become a successful NFL quarterback?

Perhaps that moment occurred in the Patriots week 5 game against the San Diego Chargers where Brady lead the Patriots back from a ten-point deficit in the fourth quarter to come away with an overtime victory.

Brady was forced into the role of starting quarterback when longtime starter Drew Bledsoe was injured in the Patriots’ second game of the season, a 10-3 loss to the New York Jets.

Brady’s first start was a successful one as he led the Patriots to a 44-13 rout of the Indianapolis Colts in week 3, but was unsuccessful the following week as the Patriots were defeated by the Miami Dolphins 30-10 as Brady threw for only 86 yards.

With zero touchdown passes in his two starts, some observers felt that Brady was a liability and that the Patriots would go nowhere in the second season under head coach Bill Belichick.

The Patriots opponent in Week 5 was the San Diego Chargers, one of the early surprises in the 2001 season.

In 2000, the Chargers finished with a 1-15 record, the worst in the league.

After the season, Chargers owner Dean Spanos hired former Bills general manager John Butler to the same position, who brought several players from the Bills roster to San Diego, including quarterback Doug Flutie.

The Chargers held the first pick in the NFL Draft, but they traded it away to the Atlanta Falcons for the #5 pick in the first round and the first pick in the second round, which the Chargers used to pick running back LaDainian Tomlinson and quarterback Drew Brees.

The new-look Chargers won their first three games before losing to the Cleveland Browns 20-16 the week before they traveled to Foxboro to face the Patriots.

Both teams scored field goals in the first quarter as the Patriots drove 60 yards in 13 plays on their opening drive, leading to a 26-yard field goal by Adam Vinatieri, while the Chargers got a 21-yard field goal by Wade Richey on the final play of the quarter. Read the rest of this entry →

In 1978, the National Football League expanded not only its regular season from 14 to 16 games, but also its playoff format from eight teams to 10. With the inclusion of one extra playoff team per conference, a game between the two wild card teams would be played one week before the three divisional winners began their postseason.

Thus, the Wild Card playoff round was born and in the very first NFC Wild Card Game the Atlanta Falcons would host the Philadelphia Eagles in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.

The Eagles were making their first postseason appearance since they won the NFL championship back in 1960.  Following that season, the Eagles went into freefall as the franchise had only two winning seasons from 1961-75.

After a 4-10 season in 1975, the Eagles hired UCLA head coach Dick Vermeil, whose team had just defeated #1 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, to the same position.

By his third season, Vermeil had turned the Eagles into a winner as the team finished with a 9-7 record to clinch one of the two NFC Wild Card spots for the team’s first playoff appearance in 18 years.

While the Eagles were returning to the postseason, the Atlanta Falcons were making their first foray into the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry →

Many fans were hoping for a shootout when two of the most high-powered offenses in the NFL, the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers, got together for a week 7 Monday night game in Lambeau Field.

The Redskins were the defending Super Bowl champions and entered this game with a 5-1 record, their only loss being a 31-30 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in week 1.

Washington’s offense had been outstanding though the first six games as it averaged nearly 30 points and 356 yards per game,

Quarterback Joe Theismann had all sorts of his weapons with a backfield that consisted of running backs John Riggins and Joe Washington to go along with a great corps of receivers known as the “Fun Bunch” for their end zone celebrations, Art Monk, Charlie Brown, and Alvin Garrett.

But the heart of the Redskins’ offense was in its offensive line, known as the “Hogs”, who were able to dominate the line of scrimmage to provide huge holes for their running backs and allowed Theismann the time to find his receivers.

The Packers had a high-powered offense as well as it averaged nearly 27 points and 389 yards per game through the first six games, thanks to quarterback Lynn Dickey. Read the rest of this entry →