Like any good Thanksgiving dinner, memories of Thanksgiving football games over the years tend to blur together, a hazy collection of seemingly random images running into one another. And a dinner plate at Thanksgiving is precisely like that - turkey on top of mashed potatoes with a heap of stuffing and a few slices of sweet potatoes overlapping the turkey, gravy wandering aimlessly across the plate, splashing starch and sweets without distinction.
There is one memory, though, that cuts through that tryptophan-induced haze.
In 1974, an eager rookie, nicknamed "The Mad Bomber", threw the one perfect pass of his brief NFL career - a 50-yard game-winning strike from the heavens to lift Dallas over their fierce rivals from Washington, 24-23. Howard Clinton Longley Jr. played three seasons in the NFL, threw 68 regular-season passes, completing fewer than half of them, and was out of the league by the time he was 24. However, it was the one TD pass he threw on Thanksgiving Day that was probably the best and worst thing ever to happen to him in his brief pro football life.
Clint Longley had a big arm. And a wild streak. The one always seemed to prevent the other from finding its way. Of course, the game has always had its share of gunslingers. However, the wild, frenetic play of QB's like Kenny Stabler or Brett Favre have always been tempered by moments of precision when they are most needed. Sure, there are wild off-balanced throws into triple coverage, but there are also steely pinpoint passes right between the numbers. The bluster and bravado, ultimately, gets tempered by calm and cool.
With Longley, however, there was nothing to temper the wild side. He would just load up his shotgun of an arm and fire away. Occasionally, he would find the mark, but more often he would just send buckshot spraying across the turf.
A brash rookie from Abilene Christian University, he was a fifth-round draft choice of the Bengals in 1974 before being traded to his home state Cowboys. Whether Dallas head coach Tom Landry saw something in Longley that he thought he could refine or whether he just wanted someone around to push the incumbent QB, Roger Staubach, harder than veteran back-up Craig Morton (who was eventually traded at the start of the season), he brought the Central Texas wild child into camp and likely had no idea of what he was getting himself into.
True to form, Longley could throw the ball a mile but often missed his receivers by as much or more. He was as raw as an uncooked porterhouse, but he had ability. And the siren's call of arm strength seems to delude so many in the game into thinking that everything else can be made to fit around it.
Longley's opposite number, Staubach, had the "everything else". In 1974, Staubach was halfway through an eventual Hall of Fame career and seemed not to do anything wrong on a football field. He could scramble when protection broke down or receivers failed to get open. He could throw short and long. He could read defenses. And most importantly, as a graduate of Navy, he could lead his teammates into just about anything.
So, on Thanksgiving Day, in a nationally televised game against the rival Washington Redskins, Staubach lead his team into Texas Stadium as he always did with little expectation that it would be the wild rookie who would eventually lead them back out with victory in hand. However, that's exactly how things played out.
The Redskins, who were vying for a playoff berth, played brilliantly for two-and-a-half quarters. They had manhandled the Cowboys and, when Staubach was knocked out of the game halfway through the third quarter, it seemed over. Longley's erratic play couldn't possibly bring Dallas back. Except it did. In little more than a quarter-and-a-half, he found time to fire 20 passes, completing 11 of them. Those eleven passes also netted 203 yards.
Longley was simply doing what he did best, throwing long. Only this time, the shotgun was finding its mark more than not. However, many on the field and sidelines - the opposing defense, his own teammates, the Dallas coaching staff, chief among them - likely kept waiting for the erratic rookie's inevitable spiral out of control. The seams that were holding the Cowboys' improbable comeback together had to give. The laws of probability practically demanded it.
However, Longley had led Dallas to within six at 23-17, and the Cowboys had the ball with less than two minutes to go. With no timeouts, a long field, and a touchdown as the only useful outcome, if something were to give, this was when the rookie QB was the most vulnerable. The two-minute drill is the most precise team exercise in football, and precision was a strangling concept to a player like Longley. Befitting that struggle, Dallas was still 50 yards away from the end zone with less than a minute to go. With nothing left to lose, Longley had Washington right he wanted them. He now had to throw long again, and even with the defense knowing it, he sent this great, big looping pass the entire length of the remaining field, and Drew Pearson snagged it for the miracle victory.
However, the dramatic win only fueled his desire to leapfrog Staubach for playing time, and his wild side never really let him settle for backup time. And when a a spring is wound too tightly, it will sprung. It's just the nature of kinetic energy. So, when Longley sprung, it ended his career with Dallas instantly.
In 1976, he threw the now infamous "sucker punch" during training camp, blindsiding Staubach and sending him reeling into a set of scales. And as Jim Croce once said, "You don't tug on Superman's cape." Or hit the Cowboys' most revered player in the face when he isn't looking. At least, not without repercussions. Before the salve on Staubach's wounds had even set, Longley was gone. He'd been traded to the Chargers almost immediately, and a year later, was out of the NFL.
However, in the one moment of Clint Longley's NFL career where high risk and long odds actually gave way to improbably glory, maybe we can all find something to be thankful in that. At some point in our lives, there is a longshot in all of us. And Longley's game-winning pass that seemed to fall miraculously out of the Texas Stadium sky proved that, every once and a while, longshots do come in.
Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Fox bloggers! Be good to your friends and family and keep on bringing insight and perspective to the wild world of sports.
Nooch is a lifelong sports fan who believes that Indianapolis ended up with a slightly better QB than San Diego in the 1998 NFL Draft, the Golden State Warriors may not make the NBA playoffs again in his lifetime (how was I supposed to know that Chris Mullin would make a coaching hire and a mid-season trade that would basically save the franchise?), and that Mike Ivie's pinch-hit, game winning grand slam for the Giants against the Dodgers in 1978 may have been the greatest moment in baseball history.
