After a week off, NFL re-watch is back with one of the most memorable moments in league history that unfortunately came at the expense of the Dallas Cowboys.
The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cowboys 28-27 in the NFC Championship game to punch the franchises first ticket to the Super Bowl. The 49ers scored the final touchdown in the last minute thanks a young quarterback leading the way named Joe Montana.
Throwing off his back foot as defenders bore down on him, he threw up a pass from that looked like he was throwing the ball away only for his receiver Dwight Clark to come out of nowhere to snag it with his fingertips.
The play would simply be known as “The Catch” in NFL lore is still considered one of the leagues most memorable moments. It not just the improbable play in a high pressure situation, but what it would come to represent as the decade wore on.
Dallas was coming out of the 1970s with the moniker America’s Team. Even with quarterback Roger Staubach retired, there were many players from that era that were still mainstays for the franchise.
The team still had Hall of Famers Tony Dorsett and Randy White to lead the offense and defense while Coach Tom Landry had turned the team into an institution of excellence by that point.
Danny White stepped in at quarterback and the Cowboys kept on winning, getting to the NFC championship game in 1980 before losing to divisional foe Philadelphia. The 1981 season was no different with Dallas going 12-4 and making it to the conference championship game for the fifth straight year.
San Francisco was the young upstart team that the 1970s had not been kind to. The 49ers had not made the playoffs since 1972, where they had lost to the Cowboys as Staubach came off the bench to throw two touchdowns in the final minute and half to come from behind to win that game.
San Francisco had an unproven head coach named Bill Walsh, who employed a short passing attack that became known as the west coast offense.
Emphasizing timing and spreading the ball over the field, it continues to influence offenses to this day as the passing game grew to be more sophisticated.
He drafted Montana in the third round of the draft in 1979 to run the show, despite him not possessing the prototypical size or arm strength the league values at quarterback.
The team made some strides in 1980, but a lackluster defense held the team back and the 49ers posted a 6-10 record.
The team shored up that side of the ball in the draft, with the first five picks being defensive players, with four of them being defensive backs. The biggest name was Ronnie Lott, who would go on to make the Hall of Fame and was versatile enough to play every defensive back spot.
San Francisco was the feel good story of the season, posting a 13-3 record. The defense that had been its Achilles heel the previous year finished as the league’s second best.
Most importantly, the 49ers had crushed the Cowboys in their week six matchup earlier in the season 45-14.
Even with that going for them, many longtime fans felt the longstanding excellence of Dallas and its experience in big games would come through when the teams were slated to face each other in the conference championship game, even at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.
The game was a relatively sloppy one. The team’s combined for nine turnovers, with the 49ers contributing six. With the Cowboys not able to take advantage of that many opportunities, you get the feeling that San Francisco was the better team that year. If Dallas was going to beat that team on the road, it needed all of those turnovers to stop scoring drives that kept the game within reach.
While the game would end dramatically, what makes it so memorable would be what it would go on to represent. The 49ers would go on to win their first Super Bowl. The franchise would win three more that decade and would easily be known as the team of the 1980s.
What do you remember most about “The Catch?”

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.