Sept. 29, 1963 - The Minnesota Vikings poured 35 points into 20 minutes of tumultuous football today and smashed the San Francisco 49ers, 45-14, at Metropolitan Stadium. It represented the offensive peak for the Vikings in their three years of NFL combat, a club scoring record that flowed from a four-touchdown second quarter in which the Vikings destroyed San Francisco with long-play spectaculars. Twice, Fran Tarkenton (pictured) combined with the loping rookie from Texas, 6-foot-4 Ray Poage, on touchdown passes that covered 57 and 67 yards. And when the 49ers came back at them with the almost inevitable length-of-the-field kickoff runback by Abe Woodson, the Vikings countered with a runback of their own, a 60-yard scoring strike to Billy Butler. Butler sprinted in to catch Tommy Davis’s kick in full flight at the 40. He made one cut and got the benefit of a block by Bobby Reed and a granite quarry special — a crunching collision between the Vikings’ Steve Stonebreaker and the 49ers’ Walter Rock. Butler’s choppy strides and a shoulder fake on the last 49er defender supplied the rest, and it was 60 yards for a 21-14 Viking lead. They never looked back. Viking head coach Norm Van Brocklin reflected afterward: “It was a tribute to our team to come back that way after a flat start. There’s only one way to snap out of it, and that’s to get the ball over. So Fran Tarkenton and Ray Poage helped us do that with those two long passes. Poage has that long stride that makes him ideal for that kind of play. Because of his build and his experience, he doesn’t have those quick cuts yet. But we’re working on those. We’re trying to get him open on those angled patterns over the middle, and he caught a couple of those.” As the 49ers sat in brooding silence, unable to comprehend the misfortune which seems to multiply for them each Sunday, coach Red Hickey said: “You can’t win in the NFL without a quarterback. We lost ours when John Brodie hurt his arm in the first period. He couldn’t pass after that. Twice we got Clyde Connor open, and once Bernie Casey was free in the deep secondary. Brodie was physically unable to hit them. That hurt just as much as our lapses on defense.”
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