Reflecting on the 1957 NFL Championship: A Historic Encounter

As the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

And that's true with National Football League and great football teams as well.

Randy Snow of the World of Football Podcast joins us to tell us all about the National Football League that year and his Detroit Lions.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another edition of our pre Super Bowl NFL championship games.

We are really having a great time with these things, learning a lot about the early NFL players, the teams, the coaches, and some of the history of the NFL that maybe we didn't discuss before.

And as always, we have an expert on from the winning team that, you know, given us all the details.

Randy, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darren.

I'm surprised you didn't use expert when you said I was an expert on the Lions.

No, that, that would, that's Adam's job.

We'll let Adam continue to do that.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

But no, I've had.

I've had a lot of fun doing the research for this.

And I, again, like I say every time, thank you for getting me to do this.

I.

I had to look up a lot of facts on the games.

I mean, as Lions fans, you don't always know your team's history as well as you should, but you wanted to do these.

And I, I've learned so much.

And so I thank you for giving me this opportunity to be on with you.

I've really enjoyed it.

No, we appreciate it.

Because as I'm sure tonight will be the same as the other times where we've learned so much about the Lions and we've learned so much about every team that's been in the championship game so far, this has really been a great experience for myself as well.

So I've learned a lot by guests like you that have this great expertise in doing the research.

Well, let's go back just a few years because the Lions and The Browns played four times.

The Lions beat the Browns 177 in Cleveland.

And before that game, there was a playoff game that had to be played also where Detroit had to go out to Los Angeles and beat the Rams out there.

So this season is kind of the same way.

There was a playoff game before the championship game.

In 53, the Lions defeated the Browns 17 to 16 in Detroit.

So that was a really close game.

So two out of three for Detroit and the 57 game was.

Was really going to be something.

Everybody wanted to win this one against the Browns again.

He was replaced by assistant offensive coach George Wilson.

Parker said the Lions were the worst team he had ever seen during training camp that year, and he really felt like he was losing the team.

The players were out of control when you got Bobby Lane and all his drinking, and he's taken all of his buddies on the team with him, drinking and.

And getting in trouble.

So he just felt that he didn't have any control over the team anymore.

But it wasn't just the players that he didn't think he had control over.

It was also Lions ownership at the time.

They started meddling and making decisions like, we want you to draft this guy.

You know, don't draft this one.

Get this one.

So, you know, they were meddling with him, too, and he didn't like that.

So I think it just all came to a head that night at a banquet when he was getting up there to speak, and nobody expected it.

He just said.

Said, you know what?

I can't take this team anymore.

I quit.

And he walked off.

That was it.

But that's really puzzling that he would sort of say that about Lane, because they hooked up a few years later.

Yes, they did.

Yes, they did.

But, you know, some coaches, you know, they.

They want things go to go their own way, and.

And, boy, when you've got a loose cannon like Bobby Lane on your team, it just doesn't always go that way.

So I.

I think he was just tired of all the Shenanigans that had gone on over the years.

But, yeah, two weeks after he quit the Lions, he signed as the head coach of the Steelers.

And what happened after that?

Well, Parker's first preseason game that season was against the Lions.

The game was actually played in Buffalo, New York, on Sept.

8, and Pittsburgh won that game 20 to 14.

But the Steelers and the Lions didn't play during the regular season at all or playoffs that year.

So let's get into that.

That was a Steelers championship game that year.

They just played at the beginning, in their mind.

I'm sure it was.

They beat the Lions.

Yep.

So let's get into the 57 season.

The Lions had a record of eight and four that year, which is pretty good.

But they did start out with a loss to the Baltimore Colts, 34 to 14.

And a lot of people were thinking, well, maybe Buddy Parker had a point.

You know, maybe this is the worst Lions team, and they're not going to do well this year because we lost the Colts.

The Colts were a pretty good team that year, and it.

It didn't affect anything because the Lions went on to.

To beat the Packers.

They beat the Rams.

They beat the Colts again in a second meeting, and then he wound up losing to the rams and the 49ers out west, and, you know, they just started to steamroll after that.

They beat the packers on Thanksgiving day, and then December 8th, they played the Browns, and they beat the Browns 27.

But in the second quarter of that game, Bobby Lane broke his right leg and his right ankle was dislocated.

He'd only completed two passes that day for 15 yards.

He was replaced by Tobin Rote, who had been acquired in a trade with the packers just before the season started.

And they went on to win the next game under Tobin Road to beat the Bears in the season finale.

And that.

That forced a playoff game because the 49ers also had an 8 and 4 record.

So Detroit had to go out to Kezar Stadium in San Francisco in front of 60,000 ravenous 49ers fans to.

To win that game in order to get to the championship game against the Browns again.

And this.

This game was pretty much all San Francisco in the first half.

The halftime score was 24 to 7.

Lions were losing.

And early on in the third quarter, the 49ers kicked a field goal to make it 27 to 7.

It was looking pretty bad for Detroit, but that was all the points that San Francisco was going to score that day.

The Lions, right after that they, they scored a touchdown from Tom Tracy.

It was a one yard run.

Tom Tracy had a 58 yard run, Gene Gedman had a two yard run.

And finally Jim Martin kicked a 13 yard field goal for the final score, making the, making the final 31 to 27 in favor of Detroit.

A lot of people say that this is the greatest comeback in Lions history and I can't argue with that because when you're down that much in a, in a game that means so much a playoff game to get to the championship game.

You know, they've had great comebacks during regular season many times, but in a game like that, in a hostile territory, man, it's, that's got to be one of their greatest comebacks ever.

Yeah, and it's kind of ironic because you talk about the Lions, you know, lose their coach before the season starts, at the preseason banquet, they lose their first preseason game.

I'm looking at, I'm looking at a chart online that shows the 57 season each division out who was leading it week by week.

Detroit did not have sole possession of the Western division all year long until they beat the 49ers in a playoff.

Playoff game.

It was the Colts and the 49ers or Detroit might be tied with them here and there, but you know, they're really not in picture where you look at the other side.

Cleveland read it from, you know, the word go.

They like the whole season.

So they, it's sort of a comeback season for them all year long.

You know, they got behind the eight ball a little bit and had to put on some moves and mustard a little bit at the end.

Yeah, and yeah, behind all season long and losing their starting quarterback.

It looked bad for Detroit, but they came through, that's for sure.

Looking at some of the stats from that 49ers game, Tobin wrote was 16 to 30 passing for 214 yards.

He had a touchdown, an interception and a fumble.

Running back Tom Tracy ran the ball 11 times for 86 yards and scored two touchdowns.

Wide receiver Steve Junker had eight catches for 92 yards and a touchdown for Detroit.

Looking at San Francisco, YA Tittle and had some comparable stats to Tobin road.

He was 18 of 31 passing for 248 yards.

He threw for three touchdowns, but he also had three interceptions and three fumbles in the game.

And that I think Was the difference right there.

You can't, you can't do that in a championship game.

Let's see.

Running back Hugh McElhenney ran 14 yards for 82 yards.

I'm sorry, 14 times for 82 yards.

And wide receiver Billy Wilson had nine catches for 107 yards and a touchdown to lead the receivers.

So, so that set up the 57 championship game in Detroit against the Browns.

The Lions were 9 and 4 at that time and the Browns were 92 and 1.

Cleveland was actually a three point favorite to win the game because like you said, you know, they, they didn't have any challenges all season long like Detroit did.

And so everybody thought Cleveland was, was going to beat Detroit again, especially after beating them a few years ago, you know, 56 to 10.

So nobody was giving Detroit any hope even though they were at home.

So let's see the.

Oh, you'll love this.

The most expensive tickets to the game were $10 for box seats at Brigg Stadium.

The cheapest ones were $4 for bleacher seats.

Man, I wish we had those, those kind of tickets again.

Sign me up for the luxury seat there for 10.

Yeah, yeah.

Really?

Oh my gosh.

But this, this game was just, was all Detroit.

They, they got out to, to a 17 to nothing lead until the second quarter.

They're up, yeah, they're up 17 nothing at the end of the first quarter.

And at the first play of the second quarter they handed off to their rookie running back Jim Brown who ran for 29 yards and a touchdown making it a 177 game.

Brown's touchdown.

Yeah, was the first play of the second quarter.

I already told you that.

Let's see.

Lion Steve junker had a 26 yard pass from Tobin wrote to make it 24 to 7.

Junkers touchdown was the result of a fake field goal.

Coach George Wilson had called for a field goal but wrote called for a fake in the huddle without telling the coach.

It was a play the team had been working on in practice the week before.

So maybe Buddy Parker had a point that the team was out of control.

They weren't listening to the coach.

This was a play that, you know, had it not worked, it could have been disastrous.

I mean they were, they were only up 177 at the time and luckily it did work.

I mean it caught everybody off guard and Steve Junker was wide open and just kind of walked in the end zone from there.

So it worked perfectly.

But George, George Wilson had no idea they were going to do that because he told him to kick A field goal.

That's amazing.

And just, just to clarify, this is.

This is a famous George Wilson in football, but it's not George Wildcat Wilson.

They sort of played in the same era.

Some people get confused by that.

But this George Wilson attended Northwestern.

And where the other one attended, Was it Washington?

Somewhere out west?

Steve?

Yeah, I'm not sure on that.

Yeah, I could.

I think it was Washington or Oregon or somebody like that in the Northwest.

So sorry about that.

Okay.

Okay.

So after that, Lions rookie defensive back Terry bar had a 19 yard pick, 6, making the score 31 to 7.

And after that play, Browns quarterback Tommy O' Connell was replaced by rookie quarterback Milt Plum.

So after halftime, the Browns did score a touchdown to start.

It was a Lou carpenter on a five yard run that brought the score to 31 to 14 in favor of Detroit.

And then after that, just like the San Francisco game, it was all Detroit.

Jim Doran caught a 78 yard pass from Tobin Road.

Steve Junker caught another 23 yard pass from Tobin Road.

Lions wide receiver Dave Middleton had a 32 yard pass from Tobin Road that made the score 52 to 14.

But they weren't done yet.

They took out Tobin wrote, because he'd had such a great game and it looked like they were going to win.

So they put in their backup quarterback and he threw a 16 yard touchdown pass to Howard Hopalong Cassidy.

The quarterback's name was Jerry Reich.

Reichow.

It's spelled really weird.

I had to write it out phonetically.

But Jerry Reichow was the backup.

Just a.

Just a great day all around for Detroit.

You know, I guess that's.

That was their motive.

They.

They'd get behind in the first half and then they'd make a big comeback in the second half.

So they did that two, two games in a row at the end of the season to win the championship.

Yeah.

Isn't it funny how it seems there's teams, they have like a stigma like that, and they just sort of stay true to that all season long.

It's just their modus operandi, you know, they're.

Yeah.

And they just, maybe they're not, you know, it's not that they're not ready for the game, but maybe they're just not motivated until, you know, halftime and some rousing speech or they say, oh my God, we might lose this game.

And the angst gets into them.

It's just an odd occurrence.

And I, it must have worked.

I don't think he was big into giving, you know, the big rah rah speeches at halftime, but he just reminded them, you know, think about what we did in 54 and how that turned out.

And I guess that's all he needed to say.

And the team responded.

But looking at some of the stats from this game, Tobin wrote was 12 of 19 passing for 280 yards and four touchdowns.

He also ran seven times for 27 yards and a touchdown.

He had one fumble, but single handedly between his passing and his rushing, he accounted for 307 yards of total offense just by himself.

Not bad for a backup quarterback.

Jerry, Jerry Reich, Ray Claw, right claw, was one of two passing for 16 yards and one touchdown.

He was mainly a receiver, but he became the pack up the backup quarterback in Detroit after Bobby Lane was injured.

And he wore number 80.

So it's, it's weird to see that, that touchdown play, number 80, goes back and throws a touchdown pass for the Lions.

Just a little strange.

And he may have one of the greatest stats for a quarterback in championship history of the National Football League.

Well, it was his only, the only touchdown of his eight year NFL career.

He never threw another touchdown again and it came in a championship game.

So that's, I'm sure that's, I don't know if he still has that football or not or save that football, but he should have if he didn't, right?

Right.

Now Howard, hop along, Cassidy.

He ran eight times for 48 yards and he caught two passes for 22 yards and a touchdown for Cleveland.

Tommy O' Connell was 4 of 8 passing for just 61 yards.

I think that's why they replaced him with Milt Plum.

Milt Plum on the other hand was 5 of 12 passing for 51 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions.

He was a rookie out of Penn State.

They had just selected him in the draft.

In the second round of the, of the 57 draft that year, Jim Brown ran for 20, ran 20 times for 69 yards and a touchdown.

But he also returned four kicks in the game for 106 yards.

It seems strange to think of Jim Brown returning kickoffs and punts, but he did and he did a fine job at it too as a rookie.

And finally Cleveland had seven turnovers in the game, so you cannot do that.

In a championship game.

That's painful.

Yep.

Yeah, there were 55,200 in attendance in Detroit that day.

And they all went home pretty happy, I'm sure from, from the cold.

I'm sure they had to keep warm that day, but they went home happy.

Weren't too many cars getting built in Motor City that day.

Probably, though, for the next few days.

Probably.

I think there was probably a lot of celebrating going on.

The winning players received almost $4,300 for winning that game.

So it was pretty good money for the, for the players that day.

It doesn't sound like a whole lot now, but that was really, really good.

Paycheck for one day.

This was the fourth meeting of the season for the Browns and the Lions.

They met twice in the preseason with each team winning one of those two games.

And they met once in the regular season, which was won by Detroit.

This was a much different lineup for both of these teams since they.

Since they met in 54.

The Lions now had running back John Henry Johnson, and this was his first season in Detroit after spending three seasons with the 49ers as part of their million dollar backfield.

Of course, you know, no Bobby Lane in the game.

That's, that's a name that, you know, a lot of people have probably heard, but they don't know much about him.

But what another colorful character for Detroit, as always, quarterback Tobin wrote.

Played three seasons in Detroit from 57 to 59.

A lot of people don't, don't think of Tobin Road going anywhere else but in Detroit with that 57 game.

But went up in Canada and went, went to the afl.

Yeah.

So that's got to be pretty rare to have a championship in the NFL and the afl.

True, true.

I hadn't thought about that quarterback.

Probably the only one that did.

Well, maybe, maybe somebody when.

After the merger or something.

But yeah, probably.

Like I said, it was a very different team for Cleveland as well.

No Auto Graham, no Marion Motley.

Both of those guys retired after the 55 season.

They did have rookie running back Jim Brown, who ran for 942 yards and nine touchdowns during the regular season, again also returning kicks that year.

And you know, Paul Brown, I think, really, really wanted him.

And what Paul Brown wants, Paul Brown gets.

So he signed with the Browns.

Well, I think we had George Bazik on a couple years ago and he was talking about that relationship.

And Brown, as the head coach of Ohio State, faced Otto Graham, who was with Northwestern, I believe.

Yes.

Gave his defense all kinds of fits.

And he said to himself at that point, hey, someday I need this guy on my team, whatever I'm doing.

So, yeah, that's sort of how that relationship came about.

Paul Brown knew a good player when he saw one, especially when they, when they beat his team.

Right.

Let's see.

Yeah, he was, he was a great quarterback for the, for the Lions in the early, early 60s.

And I think a lot of people only know him as a Lions quarterback and they don't know that he got his start with the Cleveland.

Cleveland Browns.

They both played their college football at Arkansas.

So I, I did not know that going into my research for this game that the two brothers played for the Browns in the championship game.

Yeah, that is interesting.

Now, a sad thing about Lou Carpenter.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this before.

I had not.

He was in a.

That's not a very, very happy ending there, but hopefully that.

That research will.

Will help other players in the future.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Now.

Now everybody talks about the curse of Bobby Lane.

And, you know, you.

Everybody has heard the story that when Lane was traded to the Steelers in 58, that he cursed the team, saying that they would never win another title for 50 years or something like that.

Coming near.

I don't know where that came from, but everybody just seems like that's.

That's a documented fact.

I don't know if that's true or not, because I had never heard about it.

And.

But Peyton Manning and Jeff Daniels evidently broke that curse on Peyton's show, Peyton's Places on ESPN plus.

I don't know if you ever saw that episode.

The show Peyton's Places is awesome.

I just love Peyton Manning and the shows that he does.

And they.

They were at Ford Field and they.

They had a bathtub full of gin or something.

I forget.

And they.

They exercised the curse, and right after that show aired, the lion started winning, and they've been winning ever since.

So I do think if there was a curse, it's broken, and it's just a matter of time before Detroit gets in a Super bowl and wins it all.

That's.

That's my feeling.

Look at all the other curses.

I mean, Boston's curse, that was broken.

You know, the versa.

The Bambino.

The Cubs had the curse with the Cubs.

Yes.

Yeah.

So they end up breaking that.

So, Detroit, you're due.

Yeah.

Another interesting fact about the 57 game that I.

That I read about.

And he was actually in attendance on the sidelines during that 57 championship game.

I did not know that either.

No kidding.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now here's.

Here's some interesting facts.

I looked at.

I was looking at my.

Seven.

Seven out of the eight NFL championship games featured just three teams.

The Browns, the Rams, and the lions.

Get this.

1950, Browns defeated the Rams 51.

The Rams defeated the Browns 52.

The Lions defeated the Browns 53.

The Lions defeated the Browns 54.

The Browns beat the Lions, and in 55, it was the Browns over the Rams again.

So seven out of eight championship games featured one of those three teams, either the Browns, the Lions, or the Rams.

Yeah, that's just, that's really.

That blows your mind, you know, especially how many Cleveland had in that, that span, you know, being in the championship game.

Ten straight years of going to a championship game.

Yes.

Amazing.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Yeah.

The Browns.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Well, I was going to say there's another tie in that.

I learned last year I had the opportunity to, to interview Dick LeBeau, coach of the Steelers, and I didn't realize this.

I did after he told me he was actually drafted by Paul Brown and the Browns, they cut him.

He drove around the lake and went to the Lions camp and made the team, and, you know, the rest is history for, for his career.

So another tie in.

But.

So he wasn't 57, but he did play at Ohio State, where Paul Brown.

Coach.

Right.

Coached.

Yep.

The Browns would go on to win one more NFL title in 64, but the 57 title was the last for the Lions.

And we're, we're so close.

We're kind of like the curse of Oak Island.

They're so close to finding what they're looking for, and Detroit is just that close to, to winning it all.

And I'm.

I'm hoping it's going to be this year, but we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

Some kind of bad news recently, though, losing their center.

You know that.

Yeah.

Kind of surprising, at least to me.

It was on maybe other.

No, it, it took us by surprise, too.

Frank ragnow, after only seven seasons and 29 years old, decided that it was time for him to retire.

He's, he's been, uh, such a great, uh, anchor on that offensive line for us at center, calling the plays and whatnot.

He's going to be missed, but I think, I think Detroit has.

I don't know if they were expecting this, but they were preparing for it.

And that's, that's what good teams do they, they prepare for people leaving or getting hurt.

So you've got to have depth.

They've.

They've got a good center now, and they just, they just drafted another good one this year.

So hopefully we'll be fine.

Hopefully it won't hurt us too much.

But again, we'll have to wait and see, right?

Yeah, most definitely.

Okay.

From.

Yeah.

I just got through saying that the, the 57 game was the last for the Lions.

I don't know if you remember this, but the Detroit Lions won the first three of these games.

The second place teams from the east and the west met after the NFL championship game to decide who was the third best team in the league.

This was really a bad idea.

It was a meaningless game.

It meant nothing.

It was just a way to showcase and get, you know, get one more game out there.

They were trying to get some of the attention away from the new afl, so they threw in another game after the championship game.

But even though it was meaningless, it meant a lot to Lions fans.

Most of these games were played in the Orange bowl in Miami.

I'm sorry, they defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 38 to 10.

So I just think it's ironic that Detroit and Cleveland did get to meet again in some sort of a postseason game, even though it meant nothing.

But Detroit still won.

So I'm happy about that.

Yeah, that's.

It's amazing that they, they were never really in the same division, never in the same conference and.

Because they're really not far from each other.

I mean.

Right.

Yeah.

And I'm sure probably you.

Detroit sometimes can pick up Cleveland television stations over the lake and vice versa.

I know we can get both here in Erie.

We're.

We're further east than Cleveland.

Yeah.

So.

Well, if you look back in the 30s and 40s, the east or the west division was Detroit, Green Bay and Chicago, you know, and the, the Cardinals and the Bears.

So that's as far west as they went, was, you know, Green Bay.

So it's weird to think of that as the west division in the NFL?

Yeah.

It's kind of blows your modern mind, but.

Yes.

Is we're so used to having teams out west and in the desert and Texas and everything else, but wasn't always like that in the NFL, that's for sure.

Yep.

Yep.

And thank you, Darren, for.

For helping me put this all together and get it out there to people because, yeah, there was a time when the Browns and the Lions were kings of the.

Of the NFL.

Not so much anymore, but that could happen again.

That damn Bobby Lane, I'll tell you.

Well, it's funny, you know, we were at the PFRA convention in Pittsburgh a few years ago and, and you know, Bobby Lane, of course, he's.

He's on the.

The pride of the Lions, which is the.

The names on the.

On the stadium for great players in Lions history.

And you go to the Steelers hall of Fame or, you know, they're.

They're equivalent to that.

And Bobby Lane is in that too.

So he's in both teams, you know, greatest players ever on the team.

So that's pretty incredible accomplishment for him.

Yeah, it definitely is.

He was.

He was a great player.

You know, maybe not the.

The most ethical and, you know, following all the rules, but there's a lot of guys that did that back.

That was the.

It was a rowdy period in football history.

Yep.

He.

He was a character bigger than life and.

And people will always remember him for that.

Yeah, most definitely.

Marini, I.

I really appreciate you doing this diligent work here.

What four.

Four times of these episodes we had.

And yeah, you're.

And your passion shows through and your fandom as well as your great research and being a historian of the game.

So we appreciate you and all the hard work you did to share with us this great history.

Thank you, Darren, for.

For inviting me to do this.

I appreciate it.

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