On Sunday, the Cowboys (6-3) and Vikings (8-1) will meet for the 34th time when Dallas visits Minnesota to face the hottest team in the NFC. Given how well both teams have started, the game could very well join the list of classic duels between the two franchises.
Randy Moss is quite possibly the owner of the greatest individual performance in the rivalry’s history. On Thanksgiving in 1998, the then-rookie wideout caught three touchdown passes in Minnesota’s rout of Dallas. The greatest game between the two teams took place 23 years earlier, when then-Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach said the most famous prayer in the history of sports.
After splitting their first two playoff games against one another earlier in the decade, the Vikings hosted the Cowboys in the first round of the 1975 playoffs. First-time Super Bowl champions three years earlier, Tom Landry’s Cowboys were actually the underdog against Bud Grant’s Vikings, who had represented the NFC in each of the previous two Super Bowls. Dallas needed late-season wins just to make the playoffs, while Minnesota rolled into the postseason after going 12-2 during the regular season.
Back then, the Vikings played their games at Metropolitan Stadium. It had no roof, which gave the home team an enormous home field advantage late in the season, especially against warm-weather teams like the Cowboys. The weather for this game followed suit, with the kickoff temperature at 25 degrees (with a 17 degree wind chill) and 8 mph winds.
Minnesota struck first when All-Pro running back Chuck Foreman blasted through the Cowboys’ defense from a yard out. It was the only score of a first half dominated by Dallas’ “Doomsday” defense and Minnesota’s “Purple People Eater” gang. The best defender on this day was Vikings future Hall of Fame lineman Carl Eller, who managed to record three sacks of Staubach.
Led by Staubach and his three-headed backfield of Doug Dennison, Preston Pearson and Robert Newhouse, the Cowboys took their first lead on Dennison’s touchdown run in the fourth quarter. Minnesota, behind the running and receiving of Foreman, re-gained the lead when Brent McClanahan’s second effort got him across the goal line late in the fourth quarter.
After its offense went backwards on its ensuing drive, the Cowboys’ defense gave Staubach another chance when safety Charlie Waters came up and stuffed Vikings quarterback Fran…
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