Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I'll be attending this game Sunday afternoon. The Washington Post had a nice article on the last playoff game between the two teams. They went to their archives for the info. I was 5 at the time and have no memory of the games but it touches on the fact that the game was locally blacked out. We lived in a part of the D.C. suburbs where you could pick up Baltimore stations so I'm sure my dad watched on T.V. Thought I'd share.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc- ... e-in-1972/

Not a bad article, and the part about the TV blackout was particularly interesting. I'm pretty sure I remember watching that game, plus the one against Dallas a week later, but I guess we must've seen it on the Baltimore channel, which came in fairly well at our house.

Bob Gill wrote:Not a bad article, and the part about the TV blackout was particularly interesting. I'm pretty sure I remember watching that game, plus the one against Dallas a week later, but I guess we must've seen it on the Baltimore channel, which came in fairly well at our house.

Back then all home games were blacked out. That weekend was also the famous or infamous Immaculate Reception game which was blacked out here in Pittsburgh but shown later that night. Maybe that's why you guys remember watching the Redskins game that day.

MatthewToy wrote:

Bob Gill wrote:Not a bad article, and the part about the TV blackout was particularly interesting. I'm pretty sure I remember watching that game, plus the one against Dallas a week later, but I guess we must've seen it on the Baltimore channel, which came in fairly well at our house.

Back then all home games were blacked out. That weekend was also the famous or infamous Immaculate Reception game which was blacked out here in Pittsburgh but shown later that night. Maybe that's why you guys remember watching the Redskins game that day.

The Redskins game was the day after the Immaculate Reception game. It was quite a weekend of NFL playoff football; the Cowboys beat the 49ers 30-28 with a wild comeback and the Dolphins beat the Browns 20-14 in a weird game that saw the Browns leading going into the 4th quarter.

There reportedly was some big brouhaha between Dan Devine and QB coach Bart Starr about playcalling. Starr apparently wanted to pass more. Maybe, but Hunter passing to an ancient Carroll Dale, Leland Glass, and Len Garrett was about as weak an attack as the NFL has ever seen. They still wound up passing 24 times. I don't think Hunter was going to burn anybody.

Hunter wound up sticking around until 1979, which says something about his game management skills.

I think if they had seeded the teams as they did 1975 and later, the Packers would have gotten Dallas in Green Bay and I would have favored the Packers in that game. The Redskins weren't a good matchup for that Packer team as they negated a lot of the Packers' edge in special teams.

Does anyone here know if any of CBS' telecast of the 1972 playoff game between Green Bay and Washington has survived? I can't help but be curious. Not long ago I saw broadcast footage from the Browns-Dolphins game that aired the same day on NBC. If anything from that NFC Divisional Playoff telecast is still around, I hope some of it shows Ray Nitschke, who was playing the final game of his 15-year Hall of Fame career that day.

NFL500 wrote:Does anyone here know if any of CBS' telecast of the 1972 playoff game between Green Bay and Washington has survived? I can't help but be curious. Not long ago I saw broadcast footage from the Browns-Dolphins game that aired the same day on NBC. If anything from that NFC Divisional Playoff telecast is still around, I hope some of it shows Ray Nitschke, who was playing the final game of his 15-year Hall of Fame career that day.

Didn't Nitschke catch a pass for his only offensive stats in his career in his last game - or was that in his last regular-season game?

Something I noticed a few years ago watching the 1972 Redskins NFL Films highlight film (who is also shown in the article) is that they intertwined highlights of the week 11 regular season game vs. the Packers with the divisonal playoff game, since both games were played at RFK Stadium (for instance, the referee for the regular season game was Fred Silva, no.81; the referee for the playoff game was Bernie Ulman, no. 6).

According to Wikipedia, in his last regular-season game just before this 1972 NFC Divisional Playoff Game, Nitschke caught a pass for a 34-yard gain after a field-goal attempt he was providing protection for was blocked.

As for NFL Films inserting film of a regular-season game into its coverage of a playoff game between the same two teams, I certainly don't condone it but I have some sympathy for it given that this happened in 1972. Perhaps it was done out of necessity to have enough quality footage. It can't have been easy to film games back then, and I still marvel how NFL Films was able to supply ABC Sports with those halftime highlights for Monday Night Football, having barely more than 24 hours to develop, edit and package those highlights for Howard Cosell to announce them. It must have been quite an arduous task, particularly in the early days of Monday Night Football.

This is another reason why I'm so curious to know what videotape still exists of AFL and NFL games from the 1960s and 1970s, particularly playoff games. I love the as-it-happens sound and look of pro football broadcasts, something NFL Films can approximate, but never duplicate.

Lastly, I took a quick look at the 1972 Washington Redskins highlight film myself. I noticed another way to differentiate some of the film from the regular season game and footage from the playoff game between these two teams: Packers quarterback Jerry Tagge. He wore No. 17 and played in the Week 11 game but not the playoff game.

Here's an article from today's Washington Post about Lombardi's move to Washington in 1969:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/r ... story.html

Shipley wrote:Here's an article from today's Washington Post about Lombardi's move to Washington in 1969:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/r ... story.html

Tom Dowling, who covered the Redskins at the time, wrote an interesting book about Lombardi's one year with the team; it's titled "Coach: A Season with Lombardi."