November 25, 1993: The Leon Lett Game

November 25, 1993, 30 years ago: Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas is hosting its annual Thanksgiving Day game. The Dallas Cowboys are hosting the Miami Dolphins. These are 2 teams used to warm weather all year long.

Not today: It's snowing, and the weird roof at the stadium means that the fans are covered and protected, but the field is not, and it's a mess. The temperature at kickoff was 26 degrees Fahrenheit. With the wind-chill factor, it was zero. This remains the worst set of home-game weather conditions in the 1st 64 seasons of Cowboys history.

The Cowboys, coached by Jimmy Johnson, are the defending NFL Champions, having won Super Bowl XXVII thanks to a well-balanced team, featuring an offensive attack with "The Triplets," 3 future Hall-of-Famers: Quarterback Troy Aikman, running back and eventual NFL all-time rushing yards leader Emmitt Smith, and receiver Michael Irvin. They are 7-3, and, despite having lost to the Atlanta Falcons the previous week, are favorites to repeat.

The Dolphins were in their 24th season coached by Don Shula. Two weeks earlier, against the Philadelphia Eagles, Shula won his 325th game as a head coach, surpassing George Halas as the NFL's all-time leader. With Steve DeBerg filling in at quarterback for an injured Dan Marino, the Dolphins were 8-2, and among the favorites in the AFC. This game, broadcast nationally on NBC, was being talked about as a possible Super Bowl preview.

In spite of the slick field, Keith Byars ran 77 yards for a Dolphin touchdown, for the only score of the 1st quarter. The Cowboys struck back with 2 touchdowns by Kevin Williams, one on a 4-yard pass from Aikman, the other on a 64-yard punt return. It was 14-7 Cowboys at the half.

In the 3rd quarter, Pete Stoyanovich, a son of North Macedonian immigrants, and a native of the Detroit area, so he was used to watching the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, kicked a 20-yard field goal. In the 4th quarter, he kicked a 31-yarder, to pull the Dolphins within 14-13. The Dolphins launched a late drive, and, with 15 seconds left, set up a 41-yard field goal that, barring a miracle kickoff return by the Cowboys, would have won it. But, given the weather conditions, the field goal wouldn't be easy.

Among the players that Johnson sent out to defend the kick was defensive tackle Leon Lett, a 25-year-old native of Fairhope, Alabama, outside Mobile. The previous January, Lett had been one of the players who helped the Cowboys win the Super Bowl, beating the Buffalo Bills, 52-17. Late in the game, Lett picked up a fumble, and had nothing but green real estate between him and the end zone. It could have been 59-17, which would have topped the 55 that the San Francisco 49ers had scored 3 years earlier, and become the most points by a single team in Super Bowl history.

But Lett decided to count his chickens before they hatched: He waved the ball in the air well before reaching the goal line. He had no idea that Bills receiver Don Beebe was running like hell behind him, and managed to knock the ball out of his hand at the 1-yard line. The Cowboys entire team came out of that game looking like one of the greatest teams of all time, except for Lett, who came out of it looking like a fool.

But Lett was otherwise a good player, who went on to make 2 Pro Bowls. Despite missing the 1st 5 games of the '93 season due to injury, he had played all 4 defensive line positions, and was leading all NFL defensive linemen with 4 deflected passes. He seemed like a good choice to defend against a potential game-winning field goal.

As it happened, another lineman, Jimmie Jones, blocked Stoyanovich's kick. The ball spun harmlessly to the snow-covered artificial turf. Everyone from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who had come down to the sideline to stand with the team, to the crowd of 60,198 (about 5,000 short of a sellout, understandable due to the weather), was celebrating what looked like a Cowboys win.

Everyone, it seemed, except Lett. Had he done nothing, the play would have been whistled dead as soon as the ball stopped, and the Cowboys would have had the ball at the previous play's line of scrimmage, the Cowboys' 24. Instead, the ball came to a stop at the Cowboys' 10, spinning upright on one of its points. And a Cowboy player slid in, trying to recover what he thought was a fumble, and instead slipped, and kicked the ball forward, toward the Cowboys' end zone.

The Dolphins quickly realized what had happened, and went after the still-loose ball. Offensive tackle Ron Heller recovered it. At first, Cowboys radio announcers Brad Sham and Dale Hansen couldn't tell who the blundering player was. Then, they saw the replay. Sham: "Oh, no! Leon Lett! Leon Lett!" Hansen, really, really wanting it to be anybody else: "Not Leon Lett!"

The NBC cameras caught Jones pumping his fists in the air, and then realizing that the game hadn't been won after all. He looked like a kid on Thanksgiving who'd been promised the turkey's drumstick, and then it had just been snatched by his big brother.

Because it was off a blocked kick, the rule said that the ball had to be given back to the offensive team at the defensive team's 1-yard line. The Dolphins set up again, and, this time, Stoyanovich nailed the kick. Final score: Miami 16, Dallas 14.

Lett immediately went down in history. Comparisons were made to Bill Buckner of the Boston Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Sure, Buckner's error was in a much more important game. But the thing everyone says about Buckner is that he shouldn't be judged by one awful moment in an otherwise sterling career. Now, Lett had two such moments.

In 2013, on the game's 20th Anniversary, Lett was interviewed, and said, "I have been trying to think back for, what, 20 years now, and I don't know what happened. It was a brain freeze."

With a result like that, a fan might have been forgiven for thinking it at the time that it would have ruined the Cowboys season, and sent the Dolphins on a great run. Just the opposite happened. The Dolphins lost their last 5 games, including in overtime to a terrible New England Patriots team in the regular-season finale. As of the conclusion of the 2022 season, the '93 Dolphins remain the last NFL team to start a season 9-2 and not make the Playoffs.

In contrast, the Cowboys never lost another game, winning the NFC Eastern Division, facing the Bills in Super Bowl XXVIII, and beating them again, 30-13. The following year, they lost the NFC Championship Game to the San Francisco 49ers. The year after that, they won Super Bowl XXX, beating the Pittsburgh Steelers. The count for Leon Lett: Super Bowl rings 3, big-game gaffes 2.

A graduate of Emporia State University, an NCAA Division II school in Kansas, Lett played until the 2001 season, and went into coaching, spending time on the staffs at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) and the University of Louisiana at Monroe (formerly known as Northeast Louisiana University).

Since 2011, Lett has been the assistant defensive line coach for the Cowboys, first under Jason Garrett, a backup quarterback to Aikman in the game in question, now under Mike McCarthy.

It seems silly to say that Lett had to redeem himself for one play in a Super Bowl won by his team, and another play in a season in which his team won the Super Bowl again. Clearly, he had something to do with all 3 of those Super Bowl wins.

The play will be shown on television, and looked up on YouTube, every Thanksgiving, and every time someone puts together a list of NFL mistakes, for as long as TV and YouTube exist. But Leon Lett deserves to be remembered for more than a moment which made him a "turkey."

*

In the other NFL game that Thanksgiving Day, on CBS, the Chicago Bears beat the Detroit Lions, 10-6 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.

There were 3 college football games played that day. The University of Louisville beat the University of Tulsa, 28-0 at Skelly Stadium in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That was not, and still is not, a major rivalry. Texas vs. Texas A&M was, and will be again when Texas joins the Southeastern Conference, as A&M did a few years ago. At this point, they were both still in the Southwest Conference, and A&M beat Texas, 18-9 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas.

The other game was Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, at Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta. The original structure was built in 1913, making it the oldest stadium in NCAA Division I-A (now FBS, the Football Bowl Subdivision), but so much has been built around it that it looks like a modern stadium.

This game was televised nationally on ABC, and the lead announcer was Keith Jackson, the greatest of all college football announcers. In his opening, Jackson said, "This is the day when the waistline takes a whuppin', and ancient rivalries are replayed." He was from Georgia, so he knew both programs well; but he graduated from Washington State, so he could be completely objective with this rivalry, known as "Clean Old-Fashioned Hate."

Georgia led only 16-10 at the start of the 4th quarter, but ran up the score. Late in the game, the Bulldogs scored to make it 43-10, and coach Ray Goff, who had quarterbacked them to the 1976 SEC title, decided to go for a two-point conversion. Echoes of former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, who, on an occasion when he needlessly went for two in a blowout, was asked why, and said, "Because I couldn't go for three." The Yellow Jackets didn't like this decision, and a fight broke out on the field. The conversion was unsuccessful, and 43-10 was the final. This was one of many times, in many rivalries, that Jackson said, "These two teams just... don't... like each other!"

In recent years, the NBA and the NHL have chosen not to schedule games on Thanksgiving Day, to avoid competing for TV viewers with the NFL and the NCAA. On this day, however, 1 NHL game was played.

Fittingly, it was in Canada, which celebrates its Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday in October: The Quebec Nordiques beat the Los Angeles Kings, 8-6 at the Colisée de Québec. That's only slightly less than the 10-6 by which the Bears beat the Lions. For the Nords, Joe Sakic and Valeri Kamensky each had 2 goals and an assist. For the Kings, Luc Robitaille had 4 goals, and Wayne Gretzky had a goal and 3 assists.