Eventually, the Greatest Game Ever Played made its way to Colorado. It came in the form of the player who had arguably the greatest performance in that greatest game, Raymond Berry.
The meticulous, honey-fingered receiver had 12 catches for 178 yards while helping the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants 23-17 in the NFL championship game classic that was played 50 years ago today at Yankee Stadium.
Three of Berry’s catches came on three consecutive plays, netting 66 yards, during a two-minute drive engineered by Johnny Unitas that set up the game-tying field goal and the first overtime in NFL history.
Two more catches, for 33 yards, set up Alan Ameche’s overtime plunge into posterity.
“It’s totally unexpected that 50 years later people would give a flip,” Berry said. “I’ve had a hard time grasping that. Fact of the matter is we were making history without knowing it.”
Berry came to Colorado in 1992 to replace Mike Shanahan, who had just been fired as Broncos quarterbacks coach by Dan Reeves. Shanahan rebounded nicely, and after Reeves was fired as head coach a year later, Berry and his wife, Sally, retired to Genesee, where he stayed until 2005. He must have laid low during his 13 years here because few realized a Pro Football Hall of Famer had been living in our midst.
“I don’t know about laying low,” Berry said. “We were 7,500 feet high.”
The Berrys have since been lured by their daughters to Murfreesboro, Tenn., where their quiet existence was disrupted in recent months by scores of notebook- or microphone-toting members of the football media.
Unlike Major League Baseball, the NFL rarely demonstrates a romantic interest with its past. The baseball legends of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio are larger today than during their playing days, but the NFL’s idea of history seemingly begins with Super Bowl I.
The so-called Greatest Game Ever Played is an exception.
Hall of Famers on both sidesThere were 17 future Hall of Famers directly involved in that game, including the greatest assistant coach tandem ever — Giants offensive coordinator Vince Lombardi and defensive coordinator Tom Landry.
The biggest star going into the game was Giants running back Frank Gifford, who scored a heroic, go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, but also fumbled the ball away twice in the first half.
“I beat us,” Gifford said during a recent conference call. “Once, it would have given us a touchdown, probably, going in, and once, coming out, that they converted into a touchdown.”
Coming out of that game, Gifford was still among the league’s biggest stars, but he had company in Unitas, Ameche and Berry.
“When you’re playing, you understand you’re going up against good players,” said Bob Mischak, a Giants right guard in that game who later served three stints as an Oakland Raiders assistant coach, most recently in 1994. “But some you recognize as exceptional. They’re clever at what they do. They know their location on the field. They have an instinct.”
It’s no stretch to say the 1958 championship was won two years before. During training camp of 1956, Berry was coming off a seldom-played rookie season when he found an after-practice partner in Johnny U. One night, during one of their after-dinner film sessions in Unitas’ apartment, they spotted an unusual defensive formation where a linebacker split out to chuck a receiver off the line of scrimmage, then released the coverage to the safety.
Berry and Unitas vowed then, with the film projector between them, that if they went up against such coverage, they would without signaling or speaking to each other understand that Berry would run a slant away from the linebacker and beneath the safety.
It never came up again until there was 1:15 remaining in the 1958 championship. The Colts were on their 25-yard line, down 17-14, when Landry ordered linebacker Harland Svare to jump out on Berry. The receiver remembered the film session from two years prior. Would Unitas? Instead of running the 10-yard square-in pattern that was assigned, Berry slanted.
Unitas hit him in stride for a 25-yard gain.
“It was the most important play of my entire career,” Berry said. “Because the successful execution of that particular play opened the door to the next completion and the next completion.”
The slant on one play set up a sideline pattern on the next. Unitas to Berry again for a 15-yard gain. Very next play, Unitas to Berry for a 22-yard gain to the Giants’ 13 with seven seconds left. Steve Myra kicked the game-tying field goal, giving the NFL its first sudden-death game.
The film footage everyone has repeatedly seen from that game was Ameche’s goal-line plunge that gave Baltimore its first world championship while an estimated 45 million watched on national television.
“It was the most unusual experience in my pro career, to catch three passes in a row on a two-minute drive,” Berry said. “We never would have got No. 2 and No. 3 if we hadn’t got No. 1. And we never would have gotten No. 1 if we hadn’t paid attention to detail and small things and talking and preparation and rehearsing things. It just so happened that one time the situation came up and we both remembered what we had agreed on, that we would convert a 10-yard square pattern into a slant.”
Football was made for TV
Ironically, The Greatest Game Ever Played helped usher in an ubiquitous critical media that today would have never described that game as great, much less the greatest ever. An exciting game of momentum swings, yes. But the first six possessions of the game ended with three turnovers, two three-and-outs and a blocked 27-yard field goal.
Gifford then fumbled away the Giants’ first two possessions of the second quarter. The Colts, leading 14-3, could have put the game away in the third quarter but failed to score on three consecutive plays from the Giants’ 1.
In all, there were six turnovers, two failed field goals and a goal-line stand. This was no more the greatest game ever played than cooked beets are the greatest vegetable.
“What a lot of people overlooked is you had the two best defensive teams in pro football in this game,” Berry said. “And anybody who follows the game knows it’s not going to be any offensive Rembrandt when you have that kind of defensive muscle. I was watching the Ravens and the Steelers the other day slug it out — it was not pretty. This game wasn’t pretty because these defenses were the best.”
But collage of the game playing out in New York, ending in sudden death, and the NFL realizing that more than any other sport, football was made for television, it would have been fair to have called it The Most Significant Game Ever Played.
Among those who watched the game was Lamar Hunt, who became so inspired and determined to control his own franchise, he co-founded a new league, the American Football League.
Hunt eventually came up with the idea of the Super Bowl. It may not have been the greatest, but the Colts and Giants played a game 50 years ago that helped make football the greatest game today.
Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com
Collection of stars
The 1958 NFL championship game featured 17 future members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as well as Giants QB Charlie Conerly, who was portrayed as the Marlboro Man; Giants kicker Pat Summerall, who became a legendary sports announcer; and backup Giants QB Jack Kemp, who later became a Buffalo Bills star and U.S. congressman. The Hall of Famers:
Giants
Tim Mara, owner
Wellington Mara, owner
Vince Lombardi, coach
Tom Landry, coach
Frank Gifford, RB/WR
Sam Huff, MLB
Roosevelt Brown, DL
Don Maynard, WR
Andy Robustelli, DE
Emlen Tunnell, S
Colts
Weeb Ewbank, coach
Johnny Unitas, QB
Raymond Berry, WR
Lenny Moore, WR/HB
Art Donovan, DT
Gino Marchetti, DE
Jim Parker, LT
