They were the days of muddy fields and bundled players, simple gray facemasks and low-tech scoreboards that were little more than a cluster of golden lightbulbs.
It all lives on YouTube, this grainy footage of the NFL’s yesteryear, and two opponents who repeatedly faced each other in the playoffs were the Los Angeles Rams and Minnesota Vikings.
The Rams and Vikings will square off yet again Monday night, this time at State Farm Stadium, where the NFC wild-card game was relocated because of the L.A. wildfires.
Before any of these players were born — before either of these head coaches were born — the Rams and Vikings waged some of the league’s most epic postseason battles, with Minnesota almost always emerging victorious.
The defensive lines sounded like comic-book superheroes — the Fearsome Foursome, the Purple People Eaters — and so many of the combatants would wind up with bronze busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Bud Grant, Fran Tarkenton, Carl Eller, Alan Page, Paul Krause, Ron Yary, Mick Tingelhoff and the like. Deacon Jones, Tom Mack, Merlin Olsen, Jackie Slater, Jack Youngblood, on and on…
The hits were brutal — the kind that would draw multi-game suspensions in the modern NFL — and the comments were just as direct.
“I love Fran,” Rams defensive end Fred Dryer said once of Tarkenton, his former New York Giants teammate. “But I hate those Viking uniforms.”
That’s right, purple made the Rams see red, especially after the Vikings beat them in the 1969 Western Conference Championship, NFC title games in 1974 and ’76, and a divisional matchup in 1977. It wasn’t until the divisional round in 1978 that the Rams exacted a measure of revenge with a 34-10 thumping.
Vin Scully called that game with Hall of Fame coach George Allen providing color commentary.
The Rams’ Jack Youngblood attempts to block the pass of Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton in Minneapolis. The teams met in 1974 at Metropolitan Stadium for the NFC championship.
(Focus On Sport / Getty Images)
When the team captains met at midfield for the coin toss, Scully noted with some surprise: “Coach, they’re shaking hands.”
Allen, almost sounding relieved: “That’s a good sign.”
In truth, a lot of these guys were friends off the field. There was huge respect flowing both directions, and many of the players got to know each other at Pro Bowls.
The cities they represented were polar opposites, emphasis on polar.
“I remember they had those heater blowers behind us,” recalled Slater, a rookie tackle on the 1976 Rams. The temperature at kickoff for that championship game in Bloomington, Minn., was 14 degrees. “If you got too close, it would burn you. It was kind of old fashioned, but at the time I remember thinking, `Man, it’s a good thing they thought about us with these heaters.’ I was just a backup so I was over on the sidelines freezing.”
Heading into that championship, the Rams were 0-6 in postseason games in cold-weather cities.
After the 24-13 loss, they were 0-7.
The Rams were still steamed about a controversial call in Minnesota that might have cost them
a trip to the Super Bowl in 1974.
Trailing 7-3, the Rams had the ball on Minnesota’s one-yard line on second down. Page, a fixture on the vaunted Vikings defensive line, fired into Mack claiming the Rams left guard had flinched before the snap. Mack pleaded his innocence, and the footage later revealed that he indeed was still as a statue.
Nonetheless, the Rams were flagged for illegal procedure and pushed back five yards. Two plays later, Rams quarterback James “Shack” Harris was intercepted in the end zone and the Vikings went on to win, 14-10.
“I never moved,” said Mack, recounting the play 50 years later. “The line judge said, ‘Somebody moved on the inside. It must have been the guard.’ That’s literally what they said. I’m sitting there going, ‘Come on, gimme a break. I didn’t jump offsides.’ Alan Page actually moved and jumped offsides. But he ended up being the hero.”
Metropolitan Stadium, home to the first three postseason meetings of the teams, had a unique configuration. Both the home and visiting bench areas were placed along the same sideline.
The Rams’ James Harris throws a pass against the Vikings during the NFC championship game in Minneapolis on Dec. 29,1974.
(Focus On Sport / Getty Images)
“When we would run off the field, we could hear their coaches yelling things and vice versa,” Slater said.
Back then, there were 28 teams in the NFL, as opposed to the current 32, and regular seasons were 14 games until they increased to 16 in 1978. Although they were in different divisions, the Vikings and Rams typically faced each other during the regular season. They were quite familiar.
“Being in L.A. was a big deal, it was a fun city to be in,” Tarkenton recalled. “We’d fly out there on Friday and we’d play a game on Sunday, but all day Saturday we’d go out to Disneyland. Can you imagine that? We wore ourselves out at Disneyland and we’d play a game the next day.
“Disneyland was a `wow’ experience. It wasn’t like anything we’d ever experienced. None of us came from any money, but it was a hoot. It was fun riding those rides.”
Vikings running back Chuck Foreman said playing at the Coliseum was a head-spinning experience. The Rams were a favorite of movie and TV stars. James Garner was on the sideline. Comedian Buddy Hackett was there too, as was Ross Martin, who played Artemus Gordon on “The Wild Wild West.”
“It was L.A., Tinseltown,” Foreman said. “You come out there and all the glitz and glamour. It’s like, if we’re going out there to play the Rams, I’m definitely going to be on my A-game. Not only did they have some great players, so you had to be on your A-game but you also wanted to showcase your skill set up there in front of all those people in California, Hollywood. They were all watching.”
Slater will never forget a snowy Christmas in Minnesota, the day before the 1976 NFC title game. It was his first year in the league, and he was invited to join a group of his teammates for dinner in the countryside. It was at the home of right tackle John Williams’ in-laws. Left tackle Doug France was with them, as was running back Lawrence McCutcheon and receiver Dwight Scales.
They all piled into a rental car, drove to have a home-cooked meal and then headed back to the team hotel for an evening meeting.
The players were driving on a two-lane country road and the snow was coming down. They were going about 50 mph. Suddenly, a couple pulled out in front of them.
“It was a lady and a man and they were intoxicated,” Slater recalled. “They were going about 10 or 15 mph. We couldn’t go past them on the left because the snow was so heavy we might have gotten into a head-on collision. We couldn’t go around them to the right because there was a ravine.”
Williams tried pumping the brakes, and the car began to skid. With nowhere else to go, he rear-ended the couple.
“The hood popped up and smoke started coming out of the car,” Slater said. “Doug France, we had to pry his door open on the right. John threw up all the food he’d eaten.”
Everyone was shaken but alive and relatively unscathed. The cars were totaled. The highway patrol dealt with the intoxicated couple. The players pushed their demolished rental car to the side of the road and hitched a ride back to the team hotel.
“I don’t know about those other guys,” Slater said, “but when I got back [coach] Chuck Knox fined me for being late to the meeting.”
Still stings after all these years.