THE COLD, OLD DAYS : Minnesota Wins Are Frozen Moments in Ram History

There’s a 7-letter word that best describes the Rams’ relationship with the Minnesota Vikings over the years.

It’s t-o-r-t-u-r-e, and it’s almost always preceded by 4-letter words. The Dallas Cowboys may think they’re the all-time Ram bashers, but nothing they’ve done compares to the pain inflicted by the Vikings of Minnesota, land of 10,000 aches.

So where were you the day Nate Allen blocked Tom Dempsey’s field goal in 1976, crushing another Ram Super Bowl dream?

Kicker Mike Lansford, who this week will attempt to exorcise the ghost of Christmas past, was a student at Arcadia High School when Viking safety Bobby Bryant picked up the loose ball and ran 90 yards for a touchdown, changing the course of Ram history.

“The all-timer was the Dempsey block,” Lansford said. “It was the all-time heartbreaker. I think I cried. I’ve lived and died like all Ram fans in the playoffs.”

The Rams and Vikings will meet again this week in the NFC wild-card game, and although it has been 10 years since the teams last met in the playoffs, the agony lingers. In 1969, it was Carl Eller sacking Ram quarterback Roman Gabriel for a safety to clinch the Western Conference championship for the Vikings.

In 1988--last Monday night to be exact--the Vikings were at it again, dragging their fingernails across another Ram blackboard. Needing a Chicago win over Minnesota to gain home-field advantage against the Vikings, the Rams watched in shock as linebacker Walker Lee Ashley returned an interception 94 yards for a touchdown with 2 minutes 37 seconds remaining, rescuing the Vikings from almost certain defeat.

Carl Eller, Wally Hilgenberg, Bobby Bryant, Walker Lee Ashley--the names run together after a while.

It started 19 years ago in a frozen Metropolitan Stadium--a redundancy late in any football season--when the Vikings bounced the Rams out of Western Conference title game. Gabriel was the league’s most valuable player that season. The Rams had a wonderful team. Minnesota won, 23-20.

The Vikings also defeated the Rams in the NFC championship games of 1974 and 1976. Both games were lost in agonizing fashion, in freezing weather. Then came 1977, the real killer. The Rams finally got the Vikings in the Coliseum for this one, and watched as the skies opened from above. Minnesota won in a driving rainstorm.

“Me and Jack (Youngblood) have sat and talked about that game for a long time,” said Larry Brooks, former all-pro defensive tackle. “We finally got them in our own back yard, and they beat us with (quarterback) Bobby Lee. They got up on us early and the game turned to slush.”

The Rams finally beat the Vikings in a first-round game in 1978, but by then the damage had been done.

Memories of the road losses were the hardest to die, because you remembered the Vikings every time you opened your freezer. The Rams were 2-10-2 in Metropolitan Stadium. Viking Coach Bud Grant created an aura of invincibility about cold weather, a brilliant psychological ploy that had some believing the Vikings really didn’t mind if their toes turned blue.

While the thin-bloods from the West Coast, the Rams, wrapped themselves in scarfs and huddled around portable heaters, the Vikings stood bravely on the sidelines, bare-armed and smiling, breaking icicles off their face masks.

“You felt you were going back with fingers crossed, even if you had a good team,” said Pat Haden, quarterback in 3 Ram-Viking playoff games. “They did have that aura. Bud Grant didn’t allow heaters on the sidelines or his players to wear gloves. They did play it to their advantage. We constantly got asked about weather, and we constantly said, no, it didn’t bother us. But maybe subconsciously it did.”

Ram fans always figured the Vikings were playing with a few loose nuts.

Linebacker Wally Hilgenberg, who inflicted his share of pain on the Rams during the blunder years, says he never wore an undershirt beneath his shoulder pads during those sub-zero temperature home games.

“I made up my mind I wasn’t going to to overdress,” Hilgenberg said, still getting in his digs. “The fear of the unknown was the worst part. Teams hear about the cold. Once you play in it, it’s not that bad out there.”

After all these years, though, Hilgenberg admitted that the Vikings’ tolerance to cold was largely myth, created and perpetuated by Grant.

Hilgenberg said he once wrapped a hot rock in a towel at halftime and sneaked it out to the sidelines, making sure Grant never saw it. So it can now be told that Hilgenberg was actually cold. He just never let anyone know.

“A lot of guys that I knew would have liked to be on bench with the heat warmers,” he said. “I remember Carl Eller saying once, ‘I may be a Viking on the field, but I’d really like to be a Bear on the sideline.’

“It was all Bud’s idea. He said, ‘You’re going to be cold, so you’ve just got to play through it and not think about it.’ Physically, we were just as cold as the Rams. Psychologically, we’d rather not dwell on that. We had to win the game. But I don’t think it was as much an edge as people made it out to be.”

Larry Brooks agreed: “I don’t think the weather had anything to do with the losses. Most of the guys up there, they got as cold as the visitors.”

Then what happened? Here’s what happened:

Dec. 27, 1969: Vikings 23, Rams 20

This was the year of the double Rammy whammy. George Allen’s team opened the season with 11 consecutive wins, only to have the streak snapped by the Vikings at the Coliseum, 20-13.

In the title game, played in 21-degree weather, the Rams had their chances.

Clinging to a 17-14 second-half lead, the Rams had a third-and-6 on the Viking 20-yard line, but tight end Billy Truax dropped Gabriel’s pass, which would have been enough for a first down. Instead, the Rams settled for a field goal and eventually lost by 3 points.

The Rams complained bitterly about the officiating in the game, questioning a clipping penalty against Bob Brown, pass interference against Jimmy Nettles and piling on called against Jack Pardee.

Grant, though, said the officiating had been just swell.

“It was excellent,” he said afterward. “Just excellent. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Viking quarterback Joe Kapp completed 12 of 19 passes for 196 yards and led his team to a fourth-quarter touchdown for the win.

Dec. 29, 1974: Vikings 14, Rams 10

This is the game guard Tom Mack will never forget, or accept. Trailing 7-3 in the third quarter, the Rams were a half-yard from the end zone when James Harris’ touchdown pass was called back because of Mack’s “illegal motion” on the play. Jack Youngblood said he has seen the film 100 times since and is still waiting for Mack to move.

“When the officials make a flagrant error like that, which prevents a team from crossing that line, the play itself creates its own momentum,” Youngblood said. “If we’d have won that year, we might have gone again. Yes, it’s still aggravating.”

After the penalty, another pass by Harris in the end zone was tipped by cornerback Jackie Wallace to Hilgenberg, killing the drive. Minnesota then drove 80 yards in 15 plays, taking a 14-3 lead on a 1-yard run by Dave Osborn.

The Rams cut the lead to 14-10 on a 44-yard pass from Harris to Harold Jackson late in the game, but the Vikings ran out the final 5:37 to win the game and advance to the Super Bowl.

“Every time we went into a game up there, we felt we had a good enough team to beat them,” Brooks said. “It didn’t work out that way.”

Of Tom Mack, Brooks said. “It was one of his big heartbreaks. They took his Super Bowl chance away right there. Then Harris threw the interception and that let the air out of the balloon.”

Ram owner Carroll Rosenbloom, who had recently suffered a mild heart attack, watched the game on television and afterward demanded that playoff games be played at neutral sites. The temperature at game time was 31 degrees.

Dec. 26, 1976: Vikings 24, Rams 13

This was the game that brought tears to Lansford’s eyes. The Rams drove to the Vikings’ 1-foot line in the first quarter. On second down, receiver Ron Jessie thought he had scored on an end-around. The officials didn’t.

On third down, Haden thought he had scored on a quarterback sneak. The officials didn’t.

Haden says now that the sneak call was ill-advised.

“I hadn’t run a quarterback sneak all season,” he said.

On fourth down, Coach Chuck Knox went for the field goal. Earlier in the season against the Vikings, Knox had gambled on fourth down and failed.

In 12-degree weather, Dempsey stepped in for a 17-yard field goal attempt, closer than an extra point. But Allen crashed through the line and blocked Dempsey’s attempt. The ball bounded into Bryant’s hands as he hit full stride. He ran 90 yards with the ball and the Rams’ season.

Later in the half, Matt Blair blocked Rusty Jackson’s punt, leading to field goal by Fred Cox that made it 10-0.

Minnesota was up 17-0 before the Rams recovered. Haden got his team as close as 17-13, but a fourth-down pass headed straight for Jessie’s hands with 2:40 left was intercepted by Bobby Bryant.

Bryant made a great play on the ball, leaving his receiver, Jackson, to help out on Jessie, who had badly beaten his defender.

“That was the best Ram team I played on,” Haden said. “But it was a matter of them playing better. They played better than us. They blocked the field goal.”

Dec. 26, 1977: Vikings 14, Rams 7

After years of freezing in Minnesota, the Rams rejoiced at finally gaining the home-field advantage. And then the rains came.

“It rained for 40 days and 40 nights,” Youngblood said. “It was the winter of the 100-year rain. I kept looking for a rainbow.”

The Vikings had lost Fran Tarkenton for the playoffs with a broken leg and thought it best to score early, before the field became a complete mess. It was sound strategy. Chuck Foreman scored on a 5-yard run in the first quarter and the Vikings added another touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The Rams got their only score in the final minute.

Afterward, Grant thanked the weatherman.

“We got some Minnesota weather, which was a good omen,” he said. “As you know, we’re a bad-weather team and we play the majority of our games on bad fields.”

The Rams knew. Haden had trouble gripping the ball that day. It was said his hands were too small.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Haden said recently. “I could have had hands like Mike Tyson, I still couldn’t have thrown the ball that day.”

After four excruciating playoff losses, the Rams finally defeated the Vikings in a first-round playoff game at the Coliseum in 1978, 34-10.

The drought was over.

“There was great satisfaction, finally beating Tarkenton,” Haden said. “Especially when he’s such a thorn in your side. You could sense it in the whole organization.”

The irony, of course, is that 10 years later the Rams return to the scene of a franchise’s most distasteful losses. But this time, they face the Vikings in the climate-controlled world of an indoor stadium, the Metrodome.

“The kids here don’t know what going there was all about,” Youngblood said.

Hilgenberg sees the Vikings’ move to the indoor world as nothing less than sacrilege. The Vikings will never be the same, he says. Three weeks ago, Minnesota looked helpless in a loss on the frozen fields of Green Bay.

“My wife was just saying it the other day,” Hilgenberg said. “She said it’s a sad commentary to say that the Vikings are an indoor, warm-weather team. Those guys have been pampered by the indoor arena.”

Rams from another era can only wonder how history might have been different had the Metrodome been constructed 20 years ago.

“I don’t know if I feel jinxed,” Youngblood said. “I think it was just fate, or bad karma. Somehow, we couldn’t get by those guys. They seemed to make the big plays to win games.”

And if Youngblood could change one thing?

“I think it would have been different had we had a quarterback,” he said. “I’m not knocking James Harris or Pat Haden. But if we’d have had Jim Everett, it would have been a different story. I think we’d have been the team of the ‘70s. We’d have been the Pittsburgh Steelers.”