Sports Then and Now

Of all the games that were played during Week 14 of the 1980 NFL season, the matchup between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers seemed to be one of the least compelling games.

The 49ers were 5-8 entering this game and appeared headed toward their fourth straight losing season and seventh in the last eight seasons.  San Francisco had started the season 3-0 before losing eight games in a row.

Second-year head coach Bill Walsh was trying to move ahead with second-year quarterback Joe Montana as his quarterback of the future, who had traded starts throughout the season with Steve DeBerg.  Montana would get the start against the Saints.

While the 49ers’ recent history had been rather bad, the history of the New Orleans Saints had been all bad.

Ever since their inception in 1967, the Saints had never recorded a winning season.  However, the Saints had high hopes for the 1980 season as they were coming off an 8-8 season the year before and were favorites to win the NFC Western Division, thanks to Pro Bowlers Archie Manning and Chuck Muncie.

But things went bad from the start as the Saints as they lost their first 13 games of the season, and during the stretch they traded Muncie to the San Diego Chargers after the fourth game of the season.

The losing continued and after a 27-7 Monday night loss to the Los Angeles Rams, head coach Dick Nolan was fired and replaced on an interim basis by Dick Stanfel.

The Saints were so bad that New Orleans sportscaster Bernard “Big D” Diliberto encouraged all Saints fans to wear paper bags over their heads at the Saints’ home games at the Louisiana Superdome.  One of the fans that wore a bag on his head wrote “Aints” on his bag on the nickname stuck to the franchise.

But the Week 14 game against the 49ers in San Francisco appeared to be the Saints’ day as they jumped out to a 35-7 halftime lead, thanks to an impressive first half by Manning as he completed 14 of 22 passes for 248 yards and threw three touchdowns, two in the first quarter, Ike Harris for 33 yards and Henry Childs for 21 yards, and one more right before the end of the half to Harris again, this time for 41 yards. Read the rest of this entry →

Tom Brady hopes the 2010 season has a better ending than occurred a year ago.

There I was the other morning, just trying to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, when through the sound of my own frantic chewing I hear that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has been involved in some sort of car accident in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, near the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Gloucester Street.

I nearly choked on my Lucky Charms, as phrases like “New England star sidelined with broken arm,” and “Patriots head into bye week 0-4,” danced through my head, and visions of Brian Hoyer, unable to make Brady’s signature quick reads at NFL speed, getting folded like paper money by oncoming pass rushers flashed before my terrified eyes.

I cowered at the thought of how “unwanted” Randy Moss would feel after several weeks of Hoyer at the helm, and the memory of what things can get like when Moss decides he isn’t happy (just ask a Raiders or Vikings fan).

There was only one thing I could do. Manipulating the marshmallows in my spoon until there was nothing but green clovers for luck, I swallowed the talismanic mouthful and began to feverishly search the internet for details of the incident. It didn’t take long to find out that it was a relatively minor affair, and Brady had suffered only the most superficial of injuries, although a passenger in the other vehicle needed to be freed from the wreckage using the jaws of life and later underwent back surgery.

It would be pure folly for me even to attempt and explain the relief that I felt when I heard the news of Brady’s continuing structural integrity. The incident provoked a staggeringly oppressive feeling of anxiety that had started to swirl through my chest cavity and spread gradually throughout the rest of my body before finally dissipating and leaving me spent and broken, a shell of myself, clutching the edge of the kitchen table and gasping to regain my breath.

Just when I thought I was out of the woods, I began to recover my auditory senses and heard the rest of the morning’s sporting news, and before I knew what hit me, I was on the floor and being beckoned towards an ultra-white light by a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Morgan Freeman.

Read the rest of this entry →