The 1940 Chicago Bears, the Monsters of the Midway.
Back row, left to right: 5, George McAfee; 9, Bill Osmanski;
42, Sid Luckman; and 25, Ray Nolting.
Front low, left to right: 4, Harry Clarke; 35, Lee Artoe;
16, George Musso; 66, Bulldog Turner; 7, Edgar "Eggs" Manske;
28, Chet Chesney; and 30, George Wilson.
December 8, 1940, 80 years ago: A score that doesn't seem possible in a sports final happened. Even Bill Belichick and Tom Brady -- together or separately -- haven't been able to cheat their way to this.
George Halas, founding owner, general manager and head coach of the Chicago Bears, had built a new T-formation offense, led by quarterback Sid Luckman. The T had been around for a while, but Halas put in some new features, from a friend, Stanford University head coach Clark Shaughnessy. They got off to a 6-1 start, then dropped 2 straight, away to the Detroit Lions and away to the Washington Redskins.
Redskins owner George Preston Marshall and head coach Ray Flaherty had the other great quarterback of the era, Sammy Baugh. When Baugh was a rookie in 1937, he led the Redskins to victory over the Bears in the NFL Championship Game. He remains the only rookie quarterback ever to win the NFL title, either before or during the Super Bowl era.
In 1940, the Redskins won their 1st 7 games, before losing to the football version of the Brooklyn Dodgers. On November 17, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, the Redskins beat the Bears, 7-3. In one of the earliest examples in sports of what would one day be called "trash-talking," Marshall let it loose with the Washington newspapers: "The Bears are a bunch of crybabies," "They're frontrunners. They can't take defeat," and "rulebook weepers" following an official's call that went against them. He punctuated it all by saying, "The Bears are quitters when the going gets tough."
Halas was a tough and proud man, and he didn't like that. He thought Marshall was a friend. Between the 2 of them, they had done more to make the National Football League what it was -- for good and for ill. But now, Halas was mad.
He put a couple of extra tweaks into the T, and they beat the Cleveland Rams 47-25 and the Chicago Cardinals 31-23, to clinch the NFL Western Division. The Redskins lost their next game, to the New York Giants, before winning their season finale against the Philadelphia Eagles. So they won the Eastern Division title.
The Bears were 8-3, the Redskins 9-2. But home-field advantage was not determined by better record at the time: Under the system then in use, since it was an even-numbered year, the Eastern Division Champions hosted the Championship Game. So it was a return trip to Washington, 3 weeks after Marshall said the Bears had "quit."
Marshall certainly didn't quit: He told the press that teams from the West were "definitely inferior to our brand of football." One of the titles of a newspaper article in the leadup to the game was, "Gutless Bears Hit Capitol."
Halas didn't waste his time talking to the press. He talked to Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy had looked at film of the Redskins, and noticed their linebacker shifts. He gave Halas ideas to counter them. Halas trusted Shaughnessy completely. Shaughnessy was in the process of becoming football's 1st real offensive coordinator, and I don't think he and Halas even met face-to-face during the season.
As the Bears prepared for the rematch, Halas showed his team newspaper articles containing Marshall's comments, then said, "Gentlemen, this is what George Preston Marshall thinks of you. Well, I think you're a great football team! Now, go out there and prove it!"
They went out there, all right: Luckman said the team was so fired up that they broke down the locker room doors on their way to the field for kickoff.
Kickoff was 1:30 PM Eastern Time. The attendance was 36,034. That doesn't sound like much, but that's all that would fit into Griffith Stadium. And moving the game to a larger stadium was not an option: There was no larger stadium anywhere near the District of Columbia. (Georgetown and the University of Maryland had small stadiums at the time. Municipal Stadium in Baltimore seated 70,000, but that was too far away.) There was no television coverage, but the Mutual Broadcasting System sent it coast-to-coast over radio, with Red Barber as the announcer.
On the Bears' 2nd play from scrimmage, Bill Osmanski ran 68 yards for a touchdown. Baugh was unfazed, driving the Redskins to the Bears' 26-yard line. On the next play, he saw Charlie Malone uncovered in the end zone, and threw to him. But Malone dropped the pass that, presuming a successful extra point, would have made it 7-7.
Luckman didn't need a written invitation to capitalize on this gridiron faux pas by Washington. He drove the Bears back down the field, and scored himself on a 1-yard run. The Redskins could do nothing on their next drive, and before the 1st quarter ended, the Bears had a 21-0 lead, on a 42-yard touchdown run by Joe Maniaci.
The 2nd quarter was relatively quiet: The only score was a 30-yard touchdown pass from Luckman to Ken Kavanaugh. But, at 28-0 at the half, the game was pretty much over. Halas recognized that Marshall and his team had been punished enough, so he took his starters out.
But his reserves had their pride, too. Baugh threw 3 interceptions that the Bears returned for touchdowns in the 3rd quarter: Hampton Pool for 15 yards, George McAfee for 35, and Clyde "Bulldog" Turner for 20. And Ray Nolting ran 23 yards for a touchdown. All that was in a span of 14 minutes. Two missed extra points made it 54-0, instead of 56-0.
The reserves couldn't stop scoring. Harry Clarke scored on a 44-yard run, to make it 60-0, before another PAT attempt was missed. Now, referee Red Friesall made a request of Halas that no referee had ever had to ask of a coach before -- and, with this game in mind, provisions were made so that the request would never have to be made again: He told Halas that the officials were running out of footballs; so, in the event that they scored any more touchdowns, they should run or pass for the PAT, instead of kicking the ball into the stands. Halas, always with an eye on saving money, agreed.
And, at that point, it wasn't a ridiculous request. Gary Famiglietti scored on a 2-yard run. For the conversion, Solly Sherman threw a pass to Maniaci. (Sid Luckman and Solly Sherman: The 1940 Bears remain the only team in NFL history to have 2 Jewish quarterbacks play in a single game. Finally, Clarke scored another touchdown, on a 1-yard run.
The Bears had 501 yards of total offense, including 382 rushing yards. They intercepted Baugh 8 times. The final score was 73-0. That is not a typographical error: The Bears scored seventy-three points, and the Redskins scored none.
When Friesall fired his gun to signal the end of the game, a sportswriter yelled, "Marshall just shot himself!" Nevertheless, Marshall was man enough to face the press, and he said, "We needed a 50-man line against their power."
Baugh also faced the media after the game. He was asked if the game would have been different if, when it was still only 7-0 Bears, Malone had not dropped a sure touchdown pass. Baugh said, "Sure. The final score would have been 73-7."
One more note about the game: Dick Plasman played in this game for the Bears, without a helmet. It was the last time an NFL player played without a helmet. Plasman played 4 more seasons, with a helmet, and eventually became one of the earliest recognized examples of football-related head injuries causing permanent damage, in his case both blindness and dementia. He died in 1981.
And Clark Shaughnessy's Stanford? They used the T formation to finish 9-0 and beat Nebraska in the Rose Bowl, to win the National Championship.
The Bears' 73-0 win was the biggest, most shocking win in NFL history. The biggest previous win in the League's history was a 64-0 win by the Philadelphia Eagles over the football version of the Cincinnati Reds on November 6, 1934. And it's worth repeating that the Bears' starters scored 28, and their reserves scored 45. The media, which had called the Bears all kinds of uncomplimentary things after their 7-3 loss to the Redskins, now gave them the nickname "The Monsters of the Midway."
John Siegal, a rookie that season, became a 3-time Pro Bowl end, and lived until 2015, making him the last surviving player from the 1940 NFL Championship Game.
The Bears won the NFL Championship again in 1941, defeating the Giants in the Championship Game. In 1942, they went undefeated during the regular season, but the Redskins got revenge in the Championship Game.
In 1943, Baugh had the single greatest season any player has ever had. He led the NFL in passing yards, interceptions by a defensive player, and punting yardage. He got the Redskins into another Championship Game. The Bears had lost several players to the World War II draft, but they had Bronko Nagurski, 35 years old and 6 years after a back injury led to his 1st retirement, coming back, and they beat the Redskins.
Neither team made it to the Championship Game in 1944. The Redskins made it in 1945, but lost to the Cleveland Rams, who still couldn't draw fans in a football city, and moved to Los Angeles the next season. In that 1946 season, the Bears won another title, beating the Giants.
From the 1940s Bears, Sid Luckman, George McAfee, Danny Fortmann, Bulldog Turner, George Musso, Joe Stydahar, Bronko Nagurski and George Halas were eventually elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. For the 1940s Redskins, Sammy Baugh, Wayne Millner, head coach Ray Flaherty and owner George Preston Marshall were elected -- although Flaherty was elected for his playing with the Giants.
There have been 2 other examples of an NFL team scoring 70 or more points in a game. On October 22, 1950, the Los Angeles Rams beat the Baltimore Colts, 70-27 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The '50 Rams set a record for most points per game in an NFL season: 38.8. And the '50 Colts set a record for most points allowed per game in an NFL season: 38.5. Both of those records still stand, so we know what would happen if "the best offense in NFL history" met "the worst defense in NFL history."
The Colts went 1-11, while the Rams -- coached by 1940s Bear Stydahar -- reached the NFL Championship Game, losing it to the Cleveland Browns, a loss they would avenge the following season, almost breaking their record for most points per game.
And on November 27, 1966, the Redskins beat the New York Giants, 72-41 at Griffith Stadium's successor, District of Columbia Stadium (now Robert F. Kennedy Stadium). Since then, the highest point total for a single team in a single game is 62, on 5 occasions: By the 1972 Giants, the 1973 Atlanta Falcons, the 1985 New York Jets, the 1999 Jacksonville Jaguars and the 2011 New Orleans Saints.
The most points scored in an NFL Championship Game since? 59, by the 1957 Detroit Lions. The most in a Super Bowl? 55, by the 1989-90 San Francisco 49ers. Biggest margin of victory in an NFL Championship Game since 1940? 46, when the 1954 Cleveland Browns beat the Lions, 56-10. In the Super Bowl era? 45, when the aforementioned 49ers beat the Denver Broncos 55-10.
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