Holiday Game(s) Notes

The first of three games on tomorrow’s holiday is the usual “Detroit hosts” tilt that in this alternate year brings Jim Nantz and the AFC Buffalo Bills to Detroit.

Buffalo with a (7-3) record is a 10 point “fave” vs (4-6) Detroit (Lions), which has won 3 straight games while the Bills broke a 2 game loss skein last week.

Neither team has ever won a Super Bowl. The Bills are (0-4) in such games, the Lions, who won NFL crowns in 1935 (the year of Detroit teams and hometown hero, Joe Louis, pronounced Looie on a great British version of “This is Your Life” Muhammad Ali, when Mr. Louis paid tribute), 1952, 1953 and last in 1957 have never been in a Supe and only in 1991 (one of the Super Bowl loss seasons for the Bills, they were in 4 straight seasons, (1990-1993), went as far as an NFC title game/NFL semi-final game.

In the middle game, a pair of (7-3) teams with a combined 9 Super Bowl wins, the Giants (4-1) in “such” visit the Dallas Cowboys (5-3) in Supes. The Cowboys, as is the case with the Bills, the team they beat decisively in both the ’92 and ’93 season Supes, are 10 point “faves” in the tilt tomorrow.

Only in the 1990 season Supe loss, a heartbreaking one to the Giants, were the Bills competitive in their 4 Super Bowl defeats.

Both the ’92 and ’93 season Supes were on one network (unprecedented, the first two were on CBS but NBC also telecast the first and its Charlie Jones said we will be ok/not nervous after the “first verb”), NBC.

That network “has” New England (6-4) this season and (6-5) all-time in Supes, (all 6 wins under current coach Bill Belichick) at (8-2) and the very likely/current NFC “2” but alas the “2” no longer is afforded a wild-card round bye, Minnesota (Vikings).

As is the situation with Buffalo, the Vikings are (0-4) in Supes and did not have the lead in any of those games.

So much slimmer than in his great playing days, Roger Brown, is pictured above.

He had a great game in the most famous of Detroit “holiday” games, now so long (60 years) ago.

Oh time and seeing Brown played high school football in Nyack, New York brings a regret that  coincidental?/serendipity brought the fact  David Goldstein, one I knew well before ’62, had died in June 2022.