John Madden left this world still disputing the “Immaculate Reception”
… Tatum did indeed touch the football
John Madden did indeed leave an indelible print upon the game of football. He was indeed an enigmatic figure who would not fly but yet had no problems leaving his likeness on video games for kids.
His winning percentage was one of the best in history, yet he suddenly left the profession of coaching and never returned.
He was an Irishman who was the proverbial motormouth, but people listened to him for decades.
Nevertheless, when he left this world on December 28, he remains unconvinced that his football team, the Oakland Raiders, lost the AFC playoff game to the Pittsburgh Steelers on December 23, 1972.
The game is iconic. The catch was iconic. The finish was iconic.
Madden, however, was hardly laconic when asked whether his team was cheated out of a win.
Until his final breath, he insisted that Jack Tatum had never touched the football — and that his team was cheated out of a playoff win because the NFL hated the Raiders.
Background
The Steelers had electrified the city of Pittsburgh on December 23, 1972, when the Raiders came to town. Madden, who was selected over Chuck Noll when owner Al Davis hired his coach in 1969, giving the Steelers the iconic coach who would win four Super Bowls in six years in the 1970s, felt that his team would defeat the Steelers, who had never played a playoff game in history.
In the first game between the two teams earlier that year, the Steelers had won in a shootout, 34-28. This time, the offenses were stagnant. With the Steelers winning 6-0 late in the fourth quarter, Madden benched starting quarterback Daryle Lamonica in favor of Ken Stabler.
The left-handed gunslinger led the Raiders on their only scoring drive of the game, and he did the honors himself. Trapped in the backfield, Stabler broke free and race 30 yards for a touchdown with just a:33 remaining on the clock. The PAT gave the lead, and what appeared to be the game, to Oakland.
Steeler QB Terry Bradshaw tried to lead his team back, but they faced a fourth-and-ten from their own 40 with just 22 seconds remaining.
The Oakland rush came at Bradshaw, who eluded them and threw a bullet to running back Frenchy Fuqua, who was the secondary receiver. Here is the part that is not disputed.
Tatum and Fuqua reached the ball at exactly the same time.
This part is also not disputed. The ball ricocheted backwards about seven to eight yards.
The rest is fuzzy, at least according to Madden, who used a couple of arguments over the years to make his case — futilely.
First, the NFL rule
The NFL at the time had a rule that two offensive players could not touch a pass in succession unless a defensive player had hit the ball in-between. Here is the way the Noll biographer Michael MacCambridge explained it,
Who touched the ball before Harris was vital. If it was Fuqua, the pass would have been ruled incomplete, owing to an archaic NFL rule forbidding two players from the same team consecutively touching a forward pass. If it was Tatum, there was no foul and the touchdown had to stand.
Michael MacCambridge, “Chuck Noll: His life’s work,” 2016, p. 180.
Madden insisted that Tatum had not hit the ball, and somehow, Fuqua had knocked the ball backwards.
That never made sense.
His other argument
The other argument makes a little more sense, but not really. He insisted that the referee and the other officials did not signal touchdown until about ten minutes after the play.
He is right about that, but that was the correct choice by the official. Once the referee signals touchdown, at that time, there was not going back. It was a TD.
Fred Swearingen, the referee, called the head of officials, Art McNally, who was in the press box, before signaling touchdown. They both agreed that it was a TD.
Here was Madden’s argument from back in 1980,
“In the history of football, when a guy crosses the goal line, it’s either a touchdown or it’s not," Madden said when asked about the play during a 1980s interview. "They didn’t know if it was a touchdown. I went out, they said, ‘Get away, we don’t know what happened.’ So now, the referee leaves the huddle and he goes over to the dugout, on the Pittsburgh Steelers side, and gets on the phone, and he makes a call to someone.
Then he hangs up, and then he walks out the middle of the field and signals touchdown, some five or ten minutes later. They said that they didn’t look at replay, they didn’t do anything. I still don’t know who they made the phone call to because they won’t admit it…that question has never been answered to this day."
Bryan Deardo, “John Madden will never get over the Immaculate
Reception,” Steel City Insider, December 7, 2018
John Madden never resolved that issue in his life, and despite a great winning percentage, finally left coaching at the age of 42 and made his mark elsewhere in the game.
RIP, John. Maybe God can now explain to you what actually happened that day. He has a great instant replay system — from what I have heard.
Comments
Post a Comment