Before Dallas ruled Thanksgiving, the NFL tried St. Louis
For nearly a half-century, Americans have watched the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions host games on Thanksgiving — it’s as etched into the holiday as the Macy’s parade and sweet potatoes.
But if things had turned out differently during a mid-1970s scheduling test run, St. Louis could have supplanted Dallas as one of those Thanksgiving hosts. Back then, the St. Louis Cardinals were one of the NFL’s most dynamic teams, routinely storming back to win games behind a highflying offense that earned them the nickname “Cardiac Cards.”
Commissioner Pete Rozelle sought to take advantage of the Cardinals’ popularity by giving them a national platform at home on Thanksgiving in 1975 and 1977, as the Arizona Republic reported in 2017. But they got blown out both times, quickly putting an end to the experiment. The second of those games, a 55-14 drubbing at the hands of the Miami Dolphins on Nov. 24, 1977, also marked the implosion of a once-great team. Not only did it snap a six-game winning streak, but it launched a 12-game skid that extended into the next season.
The Cardinals never made the playoffs again in St. Louis, except for the strike-shortened 1982 season, when a 5-4 record was good enough to reach an expanded postseason that included more than half the league’s teams. (The Cardinals promptly lost by 25 points to the Green Bay Packers in the first round.) The franchise moved to Phoenix following the 1987 season.
Spectacular ’70s
Mostly forgotten today, the mid-70s Cardinals were a terrific team under Coach Don Coryell, who helped revolutionize the sport with his “Air Coryell” offense. St. Louis won consecutive NFC East Division titles in 1974, when it went 10-4, and in 1975, improving to 11-3, although the Cardinals lost their first playoff game both seasons. They just missed another playoff berth in 1976 despite a 10-4 record. Over the three-year period, the Cardinals posted a .738 winning percentage.
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Quarterback Jim Hart led a high-octane offense that featured standouts such as wide receiver Mel Gray, running backs Terry Metcalf and Jim Otis and offensive linemen Dan Dierdorf and Conrad Dobler. The coaching staff included a young Joe Gibbs, the offensive backfield assistant, who would go on to lead Washington to three Super Bowl titles.
But it was Coryell who set the tone with his aerial attack mind-set.
“Air was his ally,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Benjamin Hochman wrote in an appreciation in August, after Coryell was belatedly and posthumously inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “Football was a run-first game — and definitely a run-on-first game — until Coryell started tinkering with the sport’s parameters and possibilities.”
St. Louis hosted its first Thanksgiving game in 1975 and got crushed by the Buffalo Bills, 32-14. When the Cowboys beat the Giants three days later, Dallas and St. Louis were tied for first place at 8-3. But the following week, the Cardinals thumped Dallas, 31-17, which proved to be the decisive game for the division title.
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The Cardinals played on Thanksgiving again the next season, but this time as visitors in Dallas, losing, 19-14. They finished a game behind the Cowboys in the division (along with Washington, which also finished 10-4 and took the wild-card spot).
Leading up to their 1977 Thanksgiving game, the Cardinals had been on a roller coaster of a season. They started 1-3, but then stormed back with six straight victories, including two mid-November wins that seemed to reinforce Rozelle’s instincts to feature the team on Thanksgiving. The first took place in Week 9, when the 5-3 Cardinals took on the 8-0 Cowboys in a “Monday Night Football” showdown in Dallas. They rallied from a 17-10 fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Cowboys, 24-17.
The next week, they fell behind the Eagles 16-0 but came back to win, 21-16. In those days, there was only one wild-card berth per conference, and had the season ended that day, St. Louis would have claimed it in the NFC. The Cardinals, who were just one game behind the 8-2 Cowboys, also had a shot at the division title. Two decades before the St. Louis Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf,” the Cardinals led the league in offense heading into their Thanksgiving showdown with the Dolphins.
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As Sports Illustrated put it in a 1977 postmortem, the Cardinals “had a right to be dreaming Super Bowl on Nov. 20 after they had beaten Philadelphia 21-16 for their sixth straight win. Their record was 7-3, they had defeated Dallas, and the NFC’s wild-card playoff berth seemed a cinch.”
That all came to a screeching halt four days later against the Dolphins, who were also 7-3.
“On Thanksgiving Day in St. Louis, Miami quarterback Bob Griese did for eyeglasses what Clark Gable did for ears. He made them quite fashionable,” Harry Kalas recounted for NFL Films in a dated reference to a movie star over an equally dated groovy ’70s soundtrack. “Peering through windshields, all Mr. Griese did was throw six touchdown passes in leading his team to a 55-14 romp over the Cardinals, who were busy giving up the most points in their 58-year NFL history.” The Dolphins amassed 34 first downs, eight touchdowns and 503 yards.
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“The Miami Dolphins sent shock waves through the National Football League today with an incredible 55-14 upset of the St. Louis Cardinals,” The Washington Post reported.
It was the Cardinals’ third Thanksgiving defeat in three seasons, including two at home as part of Rozelle’s plan to showcase St. Louis. That embarrassing 1977 performance apparently soured Rozelle on the city. He asked the Cowboys — who had hosted a Thanksgiving game every season from 1966 to 1974 — if they would host games again, Dallas GM Tex Schramm recounted years later.
“It was a dud in St. Louis,” Schramm told the Chicago Tribune in 1988. “Pete asked if we’d take it back. I said only if we get it permanently. It’s something you have to build as a tradition. He said, ‘It’s yours forever.’ ”
After the ’77 Thanksgiving fiasco, the Cardinals and Cowboys went in opposite directions. The Cardinals didn’t win another game that season, while the Cowboys never lost again, culminating with a victory in Super Bowl XII. The next season, NFL Films dubbed them “America’s Team,” a nickname that has stuck over the past 45 years. Within a decade, the Cardinals wouldn’t even be St. Louis’s team.
A steep decline
Two weeks after their 1977 Thanksgiving embarrassment, a 26-20 home loss to Washington extinguished the Cardinals’ postseason chances. Coryell went off on ownership and the fans after the game, ensuring he wouldn’t return the next season. It was a family affair — his wife left during the game because she couldn’t take the abusive comments fans made about her husband, and his 16-year-old daughter tried to punch a fan who had criticized her dad.
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“I’m not staying in a place I’m not wanted,” Coryell said. “I’d like to be fired. Let me have a high school job.” He complained that owner Bill Bidwill wasn’t willing to invest in the team and predicted the team would win just four games the next year. (Several stars wound up leaving after the season, such as Metcalf, who signed with the Canadian Football League’s Toronto franchise, while Dobler, dubbed the NFL’s “dirtiest player,” was traded after saying he wouldn’t return the next season.)
After their loss to Washington, the Cardinals traveled to Tampa for a meaningless game against the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had just won their first game after starting out 0-26. In the final indignity of the season, St. Louis lost, 17-7, to finish with a .500 record just four weeks after looking like a Super Bowl contender.
Early in 1978, the team announced that through “mutual agreement,” Coryell wouldn’t be returning. He went to the San Diego Chargers, where he arguably had more success. Coryell’s coaching tree includes Gibbs and John Madden, both of whom worked as Coryell assistants.
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For the ’78 season, the Cardinals hired legendary former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson, who once won 47 games in a row. So it must have been quite jarring when he started his NFL coaching career with eight straight losses. By the time the Cardinals finally won on Oct. 29, 1978, it had been nearly a calendar year since their previous victory — one game before their final turn as Thanksgiving hosts. Wilkinson lasted less than two full seasons and finished with a pro record of 9-20.
Before moving to Phoenix, the Cardinals did play twice more on Thanksgiving, but as the road team in Dallas. They lost both games by a score of 35-17. The Thanksgiving jinx continued in Arizona, when the visiting Cardinals got creamed by the Philadelphia Eagles, 48-20, in 2008.
The team’s 1977 Thanksgiving loss proved to be a turning point for a franchise that looked to be on the ascent. Had the team won that game, the Cardinals would have had an 8-3 record with three games left and probably would have made the playoffs. And a victory might have convinced Rozelle to stick with St. Louis as a Thanksgiving showcase city. Since then, St. Louis has lost two NFL franchises — first the Cardinals, then the Rams, who moved back to Los Angeles after the 2015 season.
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The Cardinals have made the playoffs a few times since moving to Arizona, but they lost their only Super Bowl appearance, following the 2008 season. The franchise, which started in Chicago, has the longest championship drought of any team in the four major North American sports leagues, at 76 years. The last one came when the Chicago Cardinals won the 1947 NFL championship game.
And as another Thanksgiving arrives, things don’t look great for them. The Cardinals are 2-9.
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