January 17, 1999: Atlanta Falcons 30, Minnesota Vikings 27 (OT)
This was supposed to be a coronation for Dennis Green’s Vikings. An offense designed by Brian Billick and quarterbacked by Randall Cunningham, with Randy Moss and Cris Carter as its primary receivers, set a then-single season record with 556 points. The only game they’d lost was a 27-24 nailbiter to the Buccaneers. And in the conference championship game, they faced a Falcons team that did go 14-2, and was balanced on both sides of the ball, but was nowhere near as explosive. The Vikings were 11-point favorites, which the Falcons apparently ignored — they busted out to a 7-0 lead, and fought back from deficits of 17-7 and 27-17 to force the game to overtime. Gary Anderson’s missed fourth-quarter field goal assured that, and Morten Andersen’s 38-yard game-winner sent Dan Reeves’ Falcons to Super Bowl XXXIII, where Reeves was outdone by former pupil John Elway in Elway’s last game.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”