In years to come, a headline writer trying to capture the essence of what had happened there in a few terse words would call it The Perfect Murder.
But words are not necessary to describe what happened on that long-ago Sunday. All you need is a number.
73-0.
Just say 73-0 to any football fan-even those who were yet unborn on Dec. 8, 1940-and recognition will be instantaneous.
73-0.
Bears over the Redskins. The biggest margin of victory in the history of pro football. And it happened not on any ordinary given Sunday but on the day the two teams were playing for the National Football League championship.
What happened that day could not happen again if they replayed the game every Sunday until eternity. What happened that day was the result of a rare merger between opportunity and desire.
Nearly a half-century later, Sid Luckman, who quarterbacked the Bears to their stunning victory, still recalls the day with perfect clarity. ”I still can`t believe how lucky I was,” he says with characteristic modesty, ”to be at the right time in the right place.”
Then, uncharacteristically, he adds, ”That was the greatest football game ever played. Everything we did was right. Everything they did was wrong.”
The perfect murder. It was three weeks in the planning and three plays in the execution. Before the last strains of ”Hail to the Redskins” had faded away into the bright December air, the Bears were giving hell to the Redskins. The game was all but over after the second play from scrimmage, when Bill Osmanski ran 68 yards for the first of 11 Bear touchdowns.
Before the game would end, after each Bears` touchdown, the 36,034 shocked Redskins partisans in Griffith Stadium would be chanting derisively along with the public address announcer: ”Artoe will kick off for the Bears.”
After the ninth touchdown, referee Red Friesell would come over to the Bears` bench and tell coach George Halas they were now playing with the last football and would the Bears please not kick any more extra points. Halas would graciously order pass attempts for the final two conversion tries.
The most devastating defeat in the history of professional sports had its genesis only three weeks earlier in the Redskins` 7-3 victory over the Bears in the same stadium.
It was one of those days, Luckman remembers, when nothing went right.
”We marched up and down the field,” he recalls, ”but every time we`d get inside the 20-yard line something would happen. We`d fumble or throw an interception. Some days, those things happen in football.
”Finally, on the last play of the game, Bullet Bill Osmanski ran a little curl pattern into the end zone and I threw a short pass to him. It was coming right into his arms when, we felt, a Washington defender knocked his arms down. An official was standing right there but did not call it. Coach Halas was rampant. He ran onto the field as only he could, screaming, and yelling, and throwing his hat down.”
Even though there were still two more regular-season games to be played, the Bears spent the entire next three weeks plotting revenge.
”We knew we had moved the ball at will, and we vowed if we got back to Washington to play them again we would not make the same mistakes,” Luckman says.
The train ride to Washington, Luckman remembers, was not the usual joyride. ”Usually we`d play cards and have fun, but there was none of that hilarity or fooling around. This game meant so much. For many of us, it was the first championship game we`d played in. The boys all studied their playbooks, which was unusual. Everything was building up. The adrenal glands were pumping as they never had before. We had a tremendous practice in Griffith Stadium when we arrived the next morning.”
The Bears had arrived in Washington a loaded gun, and it was Redskins owner George Preston Marshall himself who obligingly cocked the hammer and pointed it at his own head.
”The night before the game,” Luckman says, ”he told some writers that the Bears were front-runners and crybabies, and it came out in big glaring headlines. Through some miracle-and none of us has ever been able to figure out how he did it-Coach Halas had gotten those papers blown up, and they were hanging in the dressing room when we came in the next morning.
”Then he gave us the greatest pep talk we`d ever heard. He told us: `You fellas know you are the greatest football team in America. Now go out there and prove it not only to yourselves but the football fans of America. Prove it to the Redskins. Look what their owner thinks of you.` It`s not easy to motivate people who have played for a long time, but we couldn`t get out the door fast enough.”
Halas had predicated his entire game plan on the premise that the Redskins would use the same 5-3-3 defense they`d employed in the first game.
”We had practiced against other things,” says Luckman, ”but we`d built the whole offense hoping they`d use that defense.”
The first three plays were called by Halas before the team took the field, and they were designed to discover whether the Redskins were, indeed, still in the 5-3-3.
”You played both ways then,” notes Luckman, ”so you couldn`t send in plays. We had to memorize the first three plays, which were all from different formations.”
The first play was a quick-opener by right halfback George McAfee, which went for eight yards. The Bears gleefully noted that the Redskins were in their 5-3-3. Moreover, left tackle Jumbo Joe Stydahar came back to the huddle and reported that his man was lined up square on his nose. He could block him in either direction. In addition, the Bears had learned which Redskin defender would cover the man-in-motion.
The next play would become one of the most famous in football history. Luckman pitched the ball to Osmanski for a smash off left tackle. Stydahar hooked his man to the inside. George Musso pulled and blocked the left side linebacker. Bulldog Turner buried the middle guard and, Luckman remembers, left halback Ray Nolte preceded Osmanski through the hole ”and made a great block on the end. He took him to the inside, and Osmanski, being the great runner he was, came into the hole and swerved around the end.”
But the end, Charlie Malone, rejoined the pursuit, and by the time Osmanski reached the Washington 35-yard line it seemed inevitable that not only Malone, but Ed Justice, would bring him down.
But just as Malone was reaching out to tackle the thundering Bear fullback, right end George Wilson, who had come all the way across the field, launched his body like a missile into Justice.
Justice and Malone came crashing down together, and it was as if a wall had suddenly disappeared. There was nothing but green grass and bright sunlight between Osmanski and the Redskins` goal. ”What a great block that was,” Luckman remembers. ”I saw it again on television just the other night, and it brought back such splendid memories.”
Years later, Green Bay Packer guard Jerry Kramer would become rich and famous because of a single block he threw in a championship football game. He wrote a book about it and called it ”Instant Replay.” Wilson became neither rich nor famous, but still, that block he threw, wiping out two tacklers simultaneously, was one of the most significant plays in football history. If he had written a book about it, he could have called it ”Double Indemnity.” It was a killer block, and already the Redskins were as good as dead.
When the Bears got the ball back, Luckman engineered the only long drive all day, sneaking over from the 1 himself to complete an 80-yard march.
On the first play after the next Redskins` punt, Joe Maniaci ran 42 yards to make it 21-0.
By halftime, Luckman had thrown a 30-yard scoring pass to Ken Kavanaugh and it was 28-0. Luckman did not even play in the second half. Before the game was over, the Bears had intercepted eight passes and run three of them back for touchdowns. They had outrushed the Redskins 372 yards to 31.
In what was truly a team effort, 10 different players scored the first 10 touchdowns. Five players kicked extra points.
When it was over, the ever-gracious Marshall declared: ”It looked as if some of our lads had their fountain pens in their pockets trying to figure out who was going to get what share of the playoff money.”
For the record, the winning Bears each got a record share of $873.99. The Redskins got $606.75. Two years later, the teams would meet for the championship again, and this time the Redskins would win. But they would never live down the memory of that one stunning Sunday, when an aroused and talented Chicago Bears team conspired to commit the perfect murder.