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Usually when these “How much the world has changed since X” articles pop up, the facts will be things like “the first iPhone was just released!” or “Cheaper By The Dozen was the number one movie at the box office!”
When it comes to contextualizing an NFL team scoring 70 points, though, those fun facts are far more extreme, as the last time it happened prior to the Miami Dolphins pulling it off on Sunday against Sean Payton’s lowly Denver Broncos was when the then-Washington Redskins put up 72 points against the New York Giants on… November 27, 1966!
To be clear, for all of the math-deficient folks (like myself) out there, that was a whopping 57 years ago, which is probably how old your parents are.
Let’s start simple, shall we? In 1966, the President of the United States was Lyndon B. Johnson, who took over after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas just three years prior.
Speaking of the United States government, women had only been allowed to vote for 46 years by the time 1966 rolled around.
Humans had yet to venture beyond our own planet, as the first Moon landing wouldn’t happen until 1969, three years later. The same can be said for Woodstock, which took place in the summer of 1969.
There were 15 teams in the NFL in 1966, which is the year that the NFL and AFL merged (it was announced on June 8, 1966) and the first Super Bowl was played. Vince Lombardi was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers and Bart Starr was the league’s MVP.
That year, the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns, St. Louis Cardinals, Washington Redskins, Pittsburgh Steelers, Atlanta Falcons, and New York Giants were in the “NFL Eastern Conference”, while the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Colts, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, and Minnesota Vikings in the “NFL Western Conference”.
The highest-grossing movie of 1966 was simply titled The Bible, while the best-selling album of that year was Revolver by The Beatles (the most enduring film of 1966, though, was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which resulted in the iconic Elizabeth Taylor winning Best Actress at the Academy Awards). 1966 is also the year that the Batman TV series starring Adam West premiered.
Since pop culture is my niche at this website, here are a few more: iconic American films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, The Graduate, and Night of the Living Dead had yet to be released in theaters. Luckily for movie fans in 1966, they did, however, get to see Clint Eastwood star in Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Long story short? Sean Payton isn’t going to be able to blame Russell Wilson for this one.