When Bills quarterback Josh Allen took the Week 13 lateral from wide receiver Amari Cooper and carried the ball he had originally thrown into the end zone, he completed two-thirds of a rare NFL trifecta. That one play gave him both a passing and receiving touchdown in Sunday night’s game, but Allen wasn’t finished. He followed it up by rushing for another score in the fourth quarter to ice the game for Buffalo.
In so doing, Allen became just the 14th player (and the first quarterback) in league history to notch a passing, rushing, and receiving touchdown all in the same game. Christian McCaffrey did it most recently, in 2022. LaDanian Tomlinson did it in 2005. Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Frank Gifford are in the ultra-exclusive club. too.
And so is one Cowboy.
Dan Reeves was listed as a running back during his eight-year playing career and remains the 17th-leading rusher (in yards) in Cowboys history. But he was also a dangerous pass-catcher; his 1,693 receiving yards are still in the franchise’s all-time top 40. He returned a few punts and kicks in his day, and Reeves even booted an extra point in a game in 1971.
But he had also started at quarterback for three collegiate seasons at South Carolina, graduating in 1965 as the school’s leading passer. And that experience made him a unique weapon within the Dallas offense, a weapon that head coach Tom Landry wasn’t afraid to deploy.
Josh Allen is the FIRST QUARTERBACK EVER to have a passing touchdown, rushing touchdown and receiving touchdown in the same game.
He is the 14th player to achieve the feat and 7th in the Super Bowl era. #mvp pic.twitter.com/Vja5t5S4je
— Nick Veronica (@NickVeronica) December 2, 2024
The halfback option pass was just one of Landry’s favorite creative innovations. But to really pull it off, he needed a legitimate ball carrier who had the smarts to read a defense and a strong throwing arm, too.
That exact skill set earned the undrafted Reeves a roster spot in Dallas.
Reeves attempted at least two throws in every single NFL season he played. He recorded a career-high seven passes in the 1967 regular season and completed four of them, also a career best. That campaign also saw Reeves log his only touchdown passes, a 74-yarder to Lance Rentzel in a Thanksgiving win over the Cardinals, and a 45-yarder two weeks later, again to Rentzel to put the final dagger in a 38-17 win over the Eagles.
But Reeves had also been in the end zone on two previous occasions that Dec. 10 afternoon, first catching a five-yard toss from quarterback Craig Morton in the second quarter, and then adding a one-year touchdown plunge in the third.
Reeves’s stat line for the day: 10 rushes for 47 yards and a touchdown, four receptions for 28 yards and a touchdown, 1-for-1 passing for 45 yards and a touchdown.
At the time, he was the eighth player in league history to complete the triple-TD feat.
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The Georgia native finished the 1967 season as the league’s 15th-ranked rusher and a top-30 receiver, not even leading the Cowboys in either category. But the multi-purpose Reeves was No. 10 leaguewide in scrimmage yards, beating out the likes of Bobby Mitchell, Charley Taylor, Dallas teammates Bob Hayes, Don Perkins, and Rentzel, and even Gale Sayers.
He also ended the regular season with the NFL’s highest passer rating (101.8) for all players who had attempted five or more throws.
Reeves would go on to heave just one more touchdown pass in his career, and it was his most memorable of all.
Three weeks after his trifecta, Landry and the Cowboys ran the halfback option again, this time in the playoffs against the Green Bay Packers, on a frozen Lambeau Field where the temperature that New Year’s Eve afternoon was 13 degrees below zero.
Down 14-10 on the first play of the fourth quarter, Reeves took a pitch from Don Meredith near midfield and lumbered to his left on the iced-over grass. But after a half-dozen steps, he stopped and fired the ball, flat-footed, 35 yards to a wide-open Rentzel, who practically walked into the end zone from 20 yards out.
The strike was a massive surprise given the arctic conditions and gave Dallas their first lead of the day, a 17-14 edge that lasted all the way until the game’s final, fateful seconds. If not for Bart Starr’s famous goal-line dive to win the now-iconic “Ice Bowl,” that unlikely 50-yard touchdown pass from the team’s RB2 might still stand today as the single most famous moment in Dallas Cowboys history.
Reeves would go on to a successful coaching career, on staff in Dallas for a decade and then running the show as head coach of the Broncos, Giants, and Falcons. Reeves passed away in 2022 at the age of 77.
Reeves unquestionably enjoyed a long and storied football career, winning Super Bowl VI as a player and Super Bowl XII as an assistant coach. He’s in the Broncos Ring of Honor and was a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame ‘s Class of 2025. But perhaps none of his days on the gridiron ever quite matched when Reeves found the end zone three different times, in three different ways, and cemented his place- alongside Payton, Gifford, Tomlinson, and now Allen- on one of the most exclusive lists in the sport’s history.
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