Catch : One Play, Two Dynasties, and the Game That Changed the NFL

Veteran sports journalist Myers presents an amazing retelling of one of football's greatest moments, when an improbable catch leads to the San Francisco 49ers' victory--and to the Dallas Cowboys' fall from grace. bw photo insert.

GARY MYERS started covering the NFL in 1978 and was in the press box at Candlestick Park for The Catch on January 10, 1982, as the beat writer covering the Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News. In 1989, he not only joined the New York Daily News, but also began a thirteen-season run as the inside information reporter for HBO's popular Inside the NFL. Myers has also hosted the YES Network's This Week in Football since 2002.

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"RESPECT THAT . . ."


 Bill Walsh stood on the sidelines minutes before the kickoff of the 1981 NFC Championship Game and pulled his headset into place, the biggest moment of his professional life about to play out in front of him. Tom Landry's dark gray fedora sat so perfectly on his bald head that it looked permanently attached. Landry's stoic game-day demeanor and public image were a source of constant ridicule--he was emotionless, a stone face, or "plastic man," as Duane Thomas once called him--but he truly had an underrated, though not life-of-the-party, personality.

Walsh possessed a huge ego, and once he became a Super Bowl champion, he never protested too hard when he was declared The Genius. So what if he spoke as if he'd invented football rather than just advanced the game with his innovative offensive system? He retired with three Super Bowl rings in ten seasons and could have won at least a couple more if he didn't walk away less than one week after winning his third championship. He lived the final twenty years of his life regretting that emotional decision to leave with his career and his team in its prime. Coaching was still a part of him. That's why he returned to Stanford in the early nineties and coached three more years. That core group of 49ers won two more championships for George Seifert, completing the run that Walsh set the foundation for when he was hired in 1979.

Landry had a rather large ego himself, but it was much more understated. His self-assuredness came through in his stubbornness. It was the Landry way or go play in purgatory for the Falcons or Cardinals. He was slow to adapt to the changing game and a new generation of players through the eighties, one of the main reasons for the Cowboys' demise. Either way, these two Hall of Fame coaches were outwardly calm moments before Ray Wersching kicked the ball off to Timmy Newsome, setting off three hours of frantic football and putting an exclamation point on a week with some of the best trash-talking the NFL had ever seen.

The Cowboys were the establishment. They were in five of the first fifteen Super Bowls, winning two of them. And when the 49ers followed up their two championship-game losses in the early seventies with another loss to the Cowboys the next year in the divisional round, they went into a free fall, failing to make the playoffs for the next eight seasons and only once managing to win more games than they lost. They switched coaches as often as Landry had changed his fedora. And Landry had a lot of fedoras. When Walsh was hired, he was their sixth coach in five years, including interims.

This was not a true blood-and-guts, down-and-dirty NFL rivalry. The 49ers played in the NFC West, and the Rams were the team they went into overdrive working themselves up to play twice a year. Dallas showed up on their schedule every now and then, but when one team is good and the other is bad, the game doesn't generate much passion. The Cowboys played in the NFC East. They faced snowballs in Philly. In Washington, the two most popular souvenirs were Fuck Dallas pins and T-shirts that said, I Root for Two Teams: the Redskins and Whoever Is Playing Dallas." In New York, the fans would drop an f-bomb or two, but a noticeable chunk of Cowboys fans still managed to scoop up tickets every year when Dallas played at Giants Stadium.

The Cowboys were more insulted than impressed when Montana and the 49ers tarnished the glitzy star on their helmets with a 45-14 beating in the sixth game of the 1981 season. It was 21-0 after the first quarter. The 49ers had 440 yards offense and held the Cowboys to 192. The 49ers ran 80 plays. The Cowboys just 53. It was a complete butt-kicking. That didn't make the Cowboys respect the 49ers or even hate them, which infuriated the Niners. All Dallas did was rationalize the loss by saying the real 'Boys didn't show up. From that point forward, the

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Excerpted from The Catch: One Play, Two Dynasties, and the Game That Changed the NFL by Gary Myers
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