1981

[CSKreager]

To me this season like few before or after it felt like a massive NFL sea change

The Raiders, Steelers, Rams, and Vikings all missed the playoffs after essentially ruling the previous decade

You also had the rise of previous doormats in the 49ers and Giants

In 1980, there were inklings of football change: the Rams/Cowboys didn’t even win their divisions and Minnesota would have joined them if not for that Cleveland Hail Mary and the Bears Thanksgiving day improbable win

Oakland was able to steal a SB thanks to Plunkett and his aging 70s holdovers holding onto the Raider mystique like it was 1974

They and PIT having won 6 of 7 SB’s after the Dolphins got WFL’d

But by the time they met on MNF in December 1981, it felt less like their atomic collisions of the mid 70s and more like the last sunset of their rivalry

Conversely, 49ers/Giants in late November which in previous years had been basically for draft positioning suddenly was meaningful

If you had told NFL fans before the season that one of those two post-Thanksgiving games would be a playoff preview, NOBODY would have picked the NFC one

And while those AFC behemoths were no longer invincible, you also had the Jets and Bengals rising from nowhere

Now it wasn’t all upstarts as you still had Miami and Dallas holding things down for traditionalists (they even played each other in a memorable game opposite World Series game 5)

You had the wild sweepstakes known as the NFC Central where everybody was in it but Chicago (who won only 6 games but went 4-0 against the rugged AFC West)

Denver became the only team since the 1970 merger to go undefeated at home and miss the playoffs

You had good wild card races with the likes of Kansas City, Green Bay, and St. Louis playing meaningful games late in the season

The incredibly luckless Falcons who scored more points than their 12-4 1980 season…… yet went 7-9 thanks to a ghastly EIGHT losses by single digits

The shocking collapse of the Eagles: from 9-2 and headed for SB redemption to 1 and done then basically fading away until Buddy Ryan

Joe Gibbs starting 0-5….. and yet they would have made the playoffs if the Giants lost on that final Saturday to Dallas

With so many 70s stalwarts absent for postseason play, you had a lot of new hungry faces vying for a title without the usual suspects involved.

Oh and you had the debut of Summerall and Madden as the gold standard of football broadcasting

Basically it truly felt like a crossroads year: teams coming, teams going

[Ten Minute Ticker]

Love that season. The last one with the NFL as it was when I first jumped on-board.

[7DnBrnc53]

I like that season, too. That was my first season watching the NFL. When I started collecting games, I picked up several from that year.

you also had the Jets and Bengals rising from nowhere

Then, two years later, both teams would go back down. While the Jets came back in 85 and 86, though, the Bengals went through a tough five year stretch:

1983: Last year with Forrest Gregg as HC. It began with two players (Ross Browner and Pete Johnson) being suspended for four weeks for cocaine use. The team started 1-6 before winning six of it's final nine games. The offense slipped to middle of the pack, but the defense was sixth in points allowed and first in yards.

1984: First year under coach Sam Wyche. Once again, they get off to a crappy start (0-5) before winning eight of their final eleven games. After blowing out Buffalo in the season finale, it looked like the Bengals would be boarding a flight to Denver for the Divisional round. However, the 8-7 Steelers somehow pulled off an upset against the Raiders.

1985: Another shaky start (2-5) hurt the team. They rebounded to win five of their last nine games, but close losses to the Raiders (13-6) and Redskins (they blew a 24-7 lead) hurt them. Their defense was horrible, finishing 26th in points allowed, and 22nd in yards allowed.

1986: A strong 10-6 season that ends up being meaningless. They didn't have an easy schedule, going 5-4 against teams that finished above .500. Defense would be the problem again, however (23rd in points allowed and 20th in yards allowed).

1987: A very promising season went up in flames due to a controversial loss to the 49ers and the strike.

[ShinobiMusashi]

1981 seen the attendance and ratings reach all time highs. They averaged over 60,000 per game for the first time in 1981, which is 93.8 percent of stadium capacity, a new record. Also ABC and CBS set new all time records for ratings with NFL in 1981, though NBC ratings for NFL games dropped a little.

Call me crazy(and maybe this deserves a thread of it's own) but as a 90's kid that fell in love with NFL FIlms and the history of the league, looking back now on learning about it all to me I've always felt like that little window from 1980 to 1983 is a bit of a forgotten "dark ages" of NFL history. Maybe calling it the dark ages is taking it to the extreme but I feel like the decades prior to 80-83 and the years after are just more romanticized. Something about this little window of 4 years of NFL history just seems to get glossed over or forgotten about or not as celebrated as much. Players from this period like Billy Simms, William Andrews, Joe Cribbs seems to be a little forgotten how great they were, Everson Walls 11 interception season as an undrafted rookie in 81, or Alfred Jenkins leading the league in receiving in 1981(or that he existed at all). Cowboys fans I talk to usually don't know who Danny White is. I think the 1982 strike season had like a bottleneck effect on what was remembered from this period, careers lost momentum, great teams/players/games/performances flew under the radar a bit or weren't able to keep it going so they were 1-2 hit wonders faded into obscurity in NFL lore.

[Citizen]

I agree, and I might expand that period to five years by including 1979. The year before we had what at the time was the best Super Bowl ever played, between the two best teams of the decade. By comparison, 1979 was sort of blah, and the next few years after seemed to lack compelling characters and story lines. That would all change in '84 with Marino, Dickerson, et al., but the early '80s are one of the oddly forgotten periods of (relatively) recent NFL history.