The question of who was going to start for the Los Angeles Rams was a mystery. John Wolford got the call but wound up in the hospital with a neck injury after taking a shot from Seattle’s Jamal Adams early.
On came Jared Goff and his surgically repaired thumb from 12 days ago to lead the Rams to a 30-20 victory over the Seahawks in an NFC Wild-Card game on Saturday.
Goff was 9-of-19 for 155 yards with one TD pass in the road triumph.
So, how common is it for a team to lose its starting quarterback in a postseason game and win it via the backup?
It doesn’t seem to happen that often in the Super Bowl era, at least. In fact, the one game that jumped out happened in 1972 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the San Francisco 49ers.
The game occurred on Dec. 23 at Candlestick Park. Craig Morton was ineffective, going 8-for-21 with two interceptions before Tom Landry pulled him and inserted Roger Staubach, trailing 28-13.
And Staubach led a Dallas comeback. A huge one.
“They were laughing at us. Making fun of us during the game,” Cowboys safety Charlie Waters told ESPN. “They were really enjoying having the upper hand on us. They didn’t think there was any way (we’d come back) — because our offense was sputtering. We were doing absolutely nothing.”
Staubach completed 12-of-20 passes for 174 yards and two touchdowns. The Hall of Famer led Dallas to 17 unanswered points in the fourth quarter as Dallas won 30-28.
Staubach threw a 20-yard scoring pass to Billy Parks and Dallas needed to recover an onside kick.
“We had this foreign kicker from Australia, Toni Fritsch,” Waters told ESPN. “He used to try all these tricky ways of kicking the ball. And he used to do this thing where he’d run up to the ball and run past it. And he’d kick it behind his back.”
Sure enough, Fritsch fooled the 49ers. He lined up to kick to the left, but Fritsch instead squibbed the ball to the right, bouncing it off the 49ers’ Preston Riley. Mel Renfro recovered the ball for the Cowboys.
“Once we got that onside kick, the momentum definitely turned,” Staubach said.
Staubach delivered the game-winner to Ron Sellers, a 10-yard pass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx3PKijM6Rw&feature=emb_logo
Any other instances jar memories of this happening?