Three seconds. Two field goals. One bad loss. Recalling an epic Christmas Eve collapse by the Eagles.
Rich Kotite's Birds led the Bengals by 17 points in the second half. What could go wrong?
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Dave Shula, the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, was downright giddy about his 3-13 team’s outcome on Christmas Eve 1994.
“If anybody had any doubts out there that there’s a Santa Claus,” Shula said, “they should be dispelled right now.”
Indeed, the Eagles, in coach Rich Kotite’s last stand, had embraced the spirit of giving in a way that is almost unfathomable. They gave up a tying field goal with three seconds left, then fumbled away the kickoff. Cincinnati’s Doug Pelfrey then drilled a 54-yard field goal before a chilled, elated crowd of 39,923 at Riverfront Stadium, and the Eagles’ seventh straight loss was in the books. Bengals 33, Eagles 30.
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Incredible. Two field goals in three seconds. Kotite’s Eagles had begun the season with a 7-2 record, then hurtled straight downhill and missed the playoffs.
The inglorious finish marked the end of Jeffrey Lurie’s first season as the team’s owner. Lurie’s reaction after the game?
“It was either a very sad ending or comic relief,” he said. “It was a fundamental breakdown in special-teams play, and it’s been that way for a long time, in terms of the way we’ve been playing lately. And I’m not very happy about it.”
Lurie fired Kotite two days later.
The shocking nature of the defeat was a fitting conclusion to the embattled coach’s time with the Birds. Kotite is remembered as a bumbling figure by many Eagles fans, but he finished with a 36-28 record in four seasons here and had one more playoff win — one — than his mouthy predecessor, Buddy Ryan.
But what a way to go out. Kotite’s team started well enough in this one. Herschel Walker returned a kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown and Mike Zordich toted an interception 18 yards for another score, giving the Eagles a 27-10 lead in the third quarter. It was disastrous for the visitors from there.
After Pelfrey kicked a 22-yard field goal to tie the score with three seconds left, he squibbed the kickoff in an attempt to run out the clock and force overtime. Unfortunately for rookie fullback Brian O’Neal, the ball bounced his way.
“We were just trying to kill the clock,” a disconsolate O’Neal said afterward. The ball “took a bounce and it hit my left hand and bounced again, and by that time, everyone was on top of me. The ball should have been fielded. I’m not going to blame anything on anybody else.”
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The Bengals recovered with one second left, Pelfrey kicked the field goal, and the Eagles’ collapse was complete.
“I thought I’d seen it all,” said quarterback Bubby Brister, who replaced the benched Randall Cunningham for the Birds, “but now I have.”
The denouement:
O’Neal played three games for the San Francisco 49ers in 1995 and his NFL career was over.
On Dec. 26, 1994, Lurie dismissed Kotite in an amicable parting: “I felt a change was necessary to give ourselves the best possibility to reach the Super Bowl and win the Super Bowl.” Lurie replaced Kotite with the fiery Ray Rhodes, who went 29-34-1 in four seasons.
Kotite, who once sparred with Muhammad Ali, is 81 years old now. He took over the New York Jets in 1995 and coached them to a 4-28 record in two seasons.
“What the future holds, I don’t know,” Kotite said after his firing by Lurie. “But I have nothing but good feelings. I hope you project that in your own way. If you don’t, you really don’t know Richie Kotite.”