A seminal second within the collection got here on New Year’s Eve 1972, when Washington and Dallas met at RFK Stadium with a visit to the Super Bowl at stake. Washington walloped the defending champion Cowboys, 26-3, earlier than 53,129 jubilant followers, giving the area loads to have fun as 1972 turned to 1973. Fifty years and three Super Bowl titles later, it stays one of many biggest video games in franchise historical past.
Such a dominating efficiency was surprising from Allen’s “Over the Hill Gang,” which was coming off the franchise’s first playoff win in a quarter-century. Washington and Dallas cut up their common season collection, with every crew successful at house and with a unique quarterback from the one who would begin the NFC championship game. Sonny Jurgensen led Washington to a 24-20 win over Dallas at RFK Stadium in Week 6, however he tore his Achilles’ tendon the next week. Billy Kilmer changed Jurgensen and guided Washington to the NFC East title.
Craig Morton crammed in admirably for Roger Staubach after the Cowboys’ beginning quarterback separated his proper shoulder in the course of the preseason. Morton began all 14 common season video games and the Cowboys’ divisional playoff showdown at San Francisco, however he was benched after Dallas fell behind 28-13 within the third quarter. Staubach got here on in aid and led a 30-28 comeback victory, incomes the beginning towards Washington.
The week main as much as the game featured some back-and-forth about Cowboys broad receiver Lance Alworth’s crackback block on Washington linebacker Jack Pardee at Texas Stadium three weeks earlier. Cowboys heart Dave Manders informed reporters that Washington was “the only team and Allen is the only coach in this league we don’t like.”
“I feel more emotion when we play the Redskins than when we used to play Green Bay for championships,” Manders defined. “It’s a personal thing. When we beat them in Dallas a few weeks ago, they just couldn’t say, ‘We got whipped.’ They had to come up with an excuse, like Jack Pardee bitching about a block. When we lose, we lose.”
The mutual dislike between the groups solely added to the anticipation of their most necessary assembly but.
“In years past, the Cowboys have been criticized for being mechanical and unemotional,” the Dallas Times-Herald’s Frank Luksa wrote forward of the game in a visitor column for The Post. “Tom Landry wound them up, after the computer sorted them out, and they performed without thought or feeling, it was said. But no more. … Being riled to the core by an opponent is a unique experience for the Cowboys. It may be important, because observers long have wondered how well they might play in a controlled fury.”
The reply, observers would quickly come to seek out out, was fairly poorly.
Washington took a 10-0 lead within the second quarter on Kilmer’s 15-yard landing cross to broad receiver Charley Taylor on a slant route in entrance of cornerback Charlie Waters. Two performs earlier, Taylor beat Waters for a 51-yard achieve.
Dallas, which didn’t handle a first down for the first 24 minutes of the game, obtained on the board within the second quarter with a 35-yard area objective by Toni Fritsch after operating again Calvin Hill overthrew a large open Walt Garrison on an possibility cross. The Cowboys had an opportunity to chop Washington’s result in 10-6 earlier than halftime, however Fritsch hooked a 23-yard area objective try broad left.
Washington’s lead remained 10-3 halfway by means of the third quarter when Kilmer fumbled a snap deep in his personal territory. Cowboys defensive again Cornell Green and linebacker Lee Roy Jordan each had alternatives to recuperate the ball, however it slipped out of their grasps, and Washington tight finish Jerry Smith fell on it across the 20-yard line.
On the second play of the fourth quarter, Kilmer dropped again and regarded Taylor’s means once more. Mark Washington had changed Waters at left cornerback after Waters broke his arm on a punt return within the third quarter. No match for Taylor’s pace, Washington was left diving at air as Kilmer’s cross landed within the broad receiver’s arms for a 45-yard landing.
“Those passes by Kilmer were perfect,” the Cowboys’ Jordan informed reporters afterward. “You know he doesn’t always throw spirals. Sometimes he throws them end over end. He had two spirals in a row, and that’s good for him.”
Taylor, who completed with seven catches for 146 yards and two scores, would later recall the game as “a mirage, when everything we tried worked, when every pass was on the money, when we could do no wrong.”
That included the kicking game. Washington’s Curt Knight, who made solely 14 of his 30 makes an attempt in the course of the common season, drilled three fourth-quarter area targets, giving him a then-playoff report 4 within the game. The Post reported the group chanted “We’re No. 1” within the last two minutes, and the band performed “California, Here I Come” over the last tv timeout, when a visit to Los Angeles for Super Bowl VII was all however secured.
“Dallas is going to remember this one a long time,” Washington operating again Larry Brown mentioned after he rushed for 88 yards on 30 carries. “In the offseason when somebody mentions the Washington Redskins and RFK to them, they’re going to shudder.”
“We’ve got a bunch of guys people wrote off as too old, too slow and too heavy,” Allen mentioned after gamers carried him off the sector on their shoulders. “Nobody wanted ’em.”
The 32-year-old Kilmer was amongst them. The former New Orleans Saints quarterback, who was the first participant Allen acquired after arriving in Washington, completed 14 for 18 for 194 yards and two touchdowns.
“Kilmer was viewed as a workaday type who might get the job done if it didn’t require putting too many points on the board,” The Post’s Shirley Povich wrote. “In the best 60 minutes of his professional life, Kilmer turned the whole thing around.”
Staubach had a efficiency to overlook, finishing 9 of 20 passes for 98 yards. He additionally was sacked 3 times as Washington’s protection restricted the Cowboys to 169 whole yards.
“We were glad to see Staubach at quarterback instead of Craig Morton,” Washington defensive deal with Diron Talbert mentioned. “We knew Staubach would be rusty when he got in there. Most of us thought Morton should be the No. 1 quarterback.”
After their humiliating defeat, the Cowboys had nothing however reward for Washington.
“They wanted it,” Lilly mentioned. “They played good today and just beat the hell out of us. Just beat the hell out of us.”
The Post celebrated the largest triumph by a D.C. sports activities crew since Washington received the 1942 NFL title with a front-page headline declaring: “Happy 1973! We’re a Winner at Last!”
“For the first time since World War II, Washington is a winner,” wrote The Post’s David S. Broder, who would win the Pulitzer Prize for political commentary in 1973. “The Nation’s Capital ended 30 years of sports humiliation and heartbreak when it welcomed the New Year last night as the home of the National Football Conference champion Redskins.”
“Winning in Washington means more than in other places,” Allen informed reporters. “These fans have had enough losses.”
After receiving a congratulatory cellphone name from President Richard M. Nixon, Allen and his spouse made a cease at Duke Zeibert’s legendary restaurant in D.C. on the way in which to a New Year’s Eve get together on the Shoreham Hotel. Zeibert reported “the place went mad” when crew proprietor Edward Bennett Williams jumped on a chair and led three cheers for the NFC champions.
“I’ve seen kings and queens in here, but I’ve never seen anything like it,” Zeibert mentioned.
Washington went on to lose to the undefeated Miami Dolphins, 14-7, in Super Bowl VII, however the win over Dallas cemented its arrival as a crew to be reckoned with over the subsequent 20 years. Washington went 5-0 in NFC championship video games at RFK throughout that span, together with one other rout of the Cowboys in January 1983. The first one won’t ever be forgotten.