The Minnesota Vikings and Las Vegas Raiders combined to score a total of three points on Sunday.
Minnesota had to pull starter Josh Dobbs for Nick Mullens to generate some sort of spark. Aidan O’Connell looked like a deer in headlights as Brian Flores continued to throw look after look at the fourth-round rookie. It was truly a sight to behold.
The game itself was the first 3-0 win since 2007, the third in the last 40 seasons and just the seventh in the Super Bowl Era.
There are two ways that you can look at this:
- The defenses played out of their minds for 60 minutes, in turn making scoring difficult. Or…
- The offenses played for 60 minutes and could not muster a touchdown or even make the game exciting by throwing a pick-six or anything to keep the fans intrigued.
However you choose to interpret this phenomenon is up to you. I choose to celebrate the beauty of a game where the defense triumphs like they did on Sunday.
Why? Because it’s never supposed to happen. The NFL has done everything to make games entertaining, high-flying and high-scoring. They laugh in the face of those who scream that defense wins championships because the fact that offenses sell tickets is deemed exceptionally more important.
So when the football gods give us a beautiful chaotic miracle in the form of a 3-0 rock fight between two struggling teams, I have no choice but to celebrate it.
How I choose to celebrate it is to analyze the circumstances surrounding the four most recent examples of these beautiful miracles.
November 26th, 2007: Miami Dolphins vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
Our first stop brings us back to the most recent example of a game that ended 3-0. Dolphins vs. Steelers on Monday Night Football in the November rains of Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania known as “The Monday Night Mud Bowl.”
Pittsburgh had just hired this new hotshot coach named Mike Tomlin that was supposed to supplant the Hall-of-Famer Bill Cowher. So far, the Steelers were 7-3 and looking to make a run for the playoffs.
On the other side, the Dolphins were drowning with no end in sight. Coach Cam Cameron was in his first season after the Nick Saban experiment didn’t work and through ten games has yet to pick up his first win as Dolphins head coach. He was hoping that the return of Ricky Williams, suspended for 18 months for substance abuse, could help spark his team to their first victory.
In most of these games, you’ll find that the football gods will do everything in their power to stop these games from occurring. They will throw anything they can at the location of these phenomena before ultimately realizing that to us football fans, it doesn’t matter. We will continue to watch regardless.
Even in this instance, the rain and lightning did not deter those ready to watch this debacle, all it did was delay the inevitable sludge match for 25 minutes. Hank Williams asked the unsuspecting audience watching from home if they were “ready for some football” as he does every Monday night during football season. Little did he know that he was on the precipice of history.
Before the game, the field was recently re-sodded, but it was no match for the heavy rains. As the game continued, it looked like they were playing in quicksand. The beauty of the shape of the football is how it is supposed to be conducive to unpredictable bounces, giving a level of chaos that no other sport could match. This God-forsaken field instead gave us a punt that fans will never forget.
You’d think a game that ended 3-0 would be boring but the Steelers/Dolphins Mud Bowl in 2007 gave us the best punt in Monday Night Football history. pic.twitter.com/JMGpBQESK6
— Daniel Valente (@StatsGuyDaniel) April 18, 2020
The teams went back and forth, trading blows just for a shot at points. There were 16 drives where the two teams either turned the ball over (in various ways) or punted the ball back to the other time before there was a true threat of scoring. The only two attempts at scoring before the fateful three points were Pittsburgh’s 44-yard attempt by Jeff Reed that was not even close and an attempt from Miami kicker Jay Feely that was so bad that after the delay of game penalty that negated the attempt, Cameron decided it would be easier to just go for a 4th and 11 instead.
Reed ultimately did give everyone what they were asking for as he booted a 24-yard field goal through the uprights with just 17 seconds left to go, but this game was everything that a 3-0 game needed to be. Neither quarterback hit over 170 yards and even Roethlisberger’s 165 yards came at the cost of a Joey Porter interception. The most impactful play (the play that added the most expected points) was a six-yard throw to Willie Reid to get the ball to the Miami 12 under two minutes. The analytics rewarded the Steelers for giving them a light at the end of this deplorably dark tunnel.
December 11th, 1993: New York Jets at Washington Redskins
Our next stop drops us off in 1993 as the New York Jets head to Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to face the Washington Redskins in Washington D.C.
After a 4-12 season in 1992, the Jets have won seven of their first 12 games, including six of their last seven heading into this week. On the other side, the Washington Redskins just notched their third win of the season the week before against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but that is little solace in a season that feels wasted. And to top it all off, now the Redskins have to play this team that is obviously more talented in a 38 degree, 20-30 mph, cold humid day in the DMV. What could go wrong?
The answer: Everything.
If you look this game up on the internet, it has been called the worst NFL game ever by anybody that was unlucky enough to watch it live.
Holy crap, the Jets-#Redskins game in 1993 was the worst football game I saw
— https://linktr.ee/thispersonstinks (@tracytran) December 4, 2011
Redskins-Jets
December 11, 1993
The WORST https://t.co/CkaUlkL0va— Adam Comarow (@ComarowsCorner) November 24, 2017
It was so bad, in fact, that there is a thread on the official site recounting the war stories of those in attendance.
What made this game so frustrating was not the fact that the teams didn’t score but that the score came so early in the game. It was on the first drive, the Jets drove down and put the only points of the game on the board with one minute and eighteen seconds left on the clock. Those poor souls sat
Washington’s Rich Gannon was pulled for Mark Rypien, similarly to how Dobbs was pulled for Mullens, to try to get a spark in the Washington offense. The only problem was that Rypien played worse than Gannon and ended the day 2-of-8 for 17 yards. Gannon started the day 6-for-6 and was on his way to at least an efficient day, instead, he ended his day 7-of-15 for 62 yards. Boomer Esiason went 12-for-22 for 105 yards on the day but coach Mike Ditka, who was on the call with Bob Costas, kept alluding to how badly Esiason wanted to throw the football more. Instead, running back Johnny Johnson was the focal point of the offense as he gained 155 yards on 32 carries.
December 12th, 1982: Miami Dolphins at New England Patriots
Our next game has so much controversy that The National Weather Service, a government website, found it necessary to discuss it.
December 12th, 1982, gave us the game that is so eloquently called “The Snowplow Game.” The weather was officially clocked in at 26 degrees with a 16 mph wind and a wind chill of 14 degrees. I grew up in north Florida and know that there is no true winter in Florida. There are actually only two seasons once you cross the border from the rest of the United States to Florida: There is summer, and then there is January. So, a game where the temperature is at 26 degrees and it feels closer to the teens after spending most of your days in beautiful Miami is essentially Hell.
The snow had taken its toll on the numbers in the crowd as Foxboro Stadium had a season-low 25,716 people attend despite the freezing temperatures.
The playing conditions made the game virtually unwatchable. The National Weather Service outlined that the heavy rains the night before helped with the deterioration of the Astroturf, and the freezing temperatures finished it off. To make matters worse, a snowstorm also occurred during the game, a cherry on top of this flurry of Mother Nature mishaps.
The game was a farce to watch as the two teams had, as our friends at the NWS called it, “several failed plays and field goal attempts leading to a 0-0 tie heading into the 4th quarter.”
Then, with under five minutes to go, New England found themselves in field goal range yet again, but this time head coach Ron Meyer had a plan. During a timeout, Meyer had the snow plow driver and anti-hero of this story, Mark Henderson clear a path for kicker John Smith to kick the eventual game-winning 30-yard field goal.
Miami head coach Don Shula was irate after the game, calling it “the most unfair act ever perpetrated in NFL history.” Meyer was so proud of Henderson’s contributions to the Patriots that he gave him a game ball afterward. When asked about the incident, Meyer, who was released to the Patriots through a work release program through the local prison, stated “What are they going to do, throw me in jail?”
On this date in 1982, "The Snowplow Game"… Patriots coach Ron Meyer orders a convicted burglar to clear a path in the snow, enabling John Smith to kick a field goal for a 3-0 win over a very pissed off Miami team. pic.twitter.com/5u3oPesixb
— Funhouse (@BackAftaThis) December 13, 2019
December 16th, 1979: Kansas City Chiefs at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
This next game was another natural phenomenon that the National Weather Service wanted to highlight. This game is known as “The 1979 Monsoon Game.”
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were a relatively new franchise with a legitimate chance at reaching the playoffs in just year four of their existence. The Kansas City Chiefs had one job for December 16th, 1979. Just lose.
They already had nine losses on the year. The playoffs were an afterthought. Just lose. Let Doug Williams and this newly minted Florida-based franchise have their first taste of the playoffs.
But before that can happen, the football gods decided to give them a send-off fitting for a buccaneer. They surrounded the field with as much water as they could without the game being called.
The game was not fun to watch, a common theme with these matchups. There were seven fumbles and five total turnovers. The lone bright spot was the play of Tampa Bay running back Ricky Bell, who ran for 137 yards on 39 carries. Kicker Neil O’Donoghue already had one field goal attempt go completely wrong as the snap got botched, and he had to pick up the ball and attempt to get the first himself. He did not.
But when he had a chance from 19 yards out to put the game away, he nailed it and pushed the Bucs into their first-ever playoff appearance.
OTD, 1979
The Monsoon Game #Buccaneers win their first division title when O’Donoghue kicks a 19 yard field goal.
3-0 #Buccaneers
pic.twitter.com/7RQSkpgdRO— Old Time Football 🏈 (@Ol_TimeFootball) December 16, 2022
