CLint Longley, the Mad Bomber

a Thanksgiving Day miracle I almost missed

November 28, 1974: a day that shall live in improbability.

Here is Clint Longley, 22 years old, bold and scattered-looking in a boyish way, the nice kid from the next ranch down the road who has a peculiar twist for catching rattlesnakes and blasting away at stumps and bushes with his two six-guns. Clint is standing on the sideline at Texas Stadium, noting on a clipboard the play that the third-place Dallas Cowboys have just run in the third quarter this Thanksgiving Day afternoon against the second-place Washington Redskins. All of a sudden he hears a voice: "Longley, get your helmet."

For a moment Longley can't find his helmet. He hadn't figured he would need it. He is a rookie quarterback who would have been playing for Abilene Christian College instead of Dallas this fall if he hadn't decided to go ahead and graduate last summer. Longley looks up and sees Roger Staubach, the No. 1 quarterback, ambling off the field with glass eyeballs and a stoned frown. Staubach has been knocked goofy by a Redskin linebacker; he can walk, but he doesn't know where he is. Someone says to Longley, "Get 'em, Bomber."
by Edward Shrake, from the Sports Illustrated vault -12/9/74

Clint Longley danced to the beat of an ancient Indian tom-tom only he could hear. He didn’t care for subtleties and was unburdened by societal norms. He was a West Texas kid with a cannon for an arm and a penchant for blazing away with six-shooters for fun.

Longley played college football at Abilene Christian University, where his exploits were enough to get him drafted in the 1974 supplemental NFL draft. The Cincinnati Bengals drafted the wild Texas gunslinger and promptly traded him to the Dallas Cowboys for a fifth-round pick.

Longley was expected to provide depth at the QB position, backing up Roger Staubach’s backup, Craig Morton. But Morton forced a trade because he was unhappy on the bench behind Staubach and Longley promptly moved up the depth chart. Raw as onion and green as broccoli, Longley had a big arm and a devil-may-care swagger that indicated he just might be able to handle the daunting career of an NFL quarterback. Someday.

Someday came sooner than later when during a critical Thanksgiving Day game versus the hated Redskins - how could you pick a more perfect opponent to debut a Texas gunfighter? - Roger Staubach was knocked silly, suffering a concussion. Teammates had already named him “The Mad Bomber” after he threw a pass in practice that clanged off Coach Tom Landry’s observation tower.

Longley led the Cowboys back from a two-touchdown deficit in the most unlikely manner imaginable. It was the stuff of legend and the kind of story you might expect from Hollywood rather than Irving, Texas.

SI’s Shrake wrote it this way:

The Dallas line keeps the Redskins off Longley for at least five seconds. The Mad Bomber pumps and throws—and there is Pearson at the four-yard line, reaching up to take the ball over his shoulder and going on in to score. On the sideline you can feel the stadium quake as the energy released by one huge, incredible cry rockets around the walls and soars through the hole in the roof. Efren Herrera, still another rookie, kicks the extra point, and Dallas leads, 24-23. Washington has one more chance with 28 seconds left, but the Cowboys grab a fumble and wait it out.

After the game, offensive lineman Blaine Nye (what a great football name!) was asked about Longley’s exploits in the game. Nye replied wryly that it was “the triumph of an uncluttered mind.”

And I almost missed it.

From around the age of six or seven, until I was 14 or 15, most of our Thanksgiving Day celebrations happened at my maternal grandparents' home. I called them Big Granddad and Granky. Big Granddad was a Texas cotton farmer turned Baptist Preacher. He and Granky lived meager, unpretentious lives. In 1974, they lived in the church’s parsonage, a small, white-framed house on pier-and-beam that sat on the same lot as the church. When the family gathered there (they had five kids and three of them, including my mother, had their own kids), the little place was crowded.

Dad would say, “It was so crowded, you had to go outside to change your mind.”

The other (and most distressing) thing about Thanksgiving that year was that Big Granddad and Granky did not have a television set. This caused me no small amount of anxiety. My beloved Dallas Cowboys were facing off against the hated Redskins in a do-or-die game that would determine playoff possibilities, and I was going to have to listen to the game on the radio??? Life was so unfair.

But my uncles Daryl and Gary were Diehard fans, too, and one of them secured a room at a roadside motor hotel on the edge of town. All of us guys - four adults counting Dad, Big Granddad, Daryl, and Gary, and six of us boys - crowded into the tiny room to watch the game on a twenty-seven-inch color TV with rabbit ears and sketchy reception.

I was elated. Then I was devastated. My hero Staubach was slobber-knocked and out of the game. My team was losing. In trotted this messy-haired kid none of us knew much about. Morton was gone! Staubach was seeing stars. We were watching in dismay as our season circled the drain.

Then the legend of Clint Longley, the Mad Bomber, was born.

We tore up that motel room like we were the Rolling Stones. Pillows and covers flew! We shouted. We danced. We sang. We celebrated.

Even Big Granddad beamed.

Sometime later, Longley would sucker-punch Staubach and thus end his brief but notable Cowboys career.

But that’s another story.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy football!