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Since the NFL's first season in 1920, the league title had been awarded to the team with the best regular season record based on winning percentage with ties excluded.. While four of the first six championships were disputed, only once (in 1921) did two teams finish tied for first place in the standings: the Chicago Staleys, who became the Bears the following year, and the Buffalo All ...
k As of the 2010 NFL season, this season marks the last tie game the Bears played. It was a game at Soldier Field on September 24, 1972, against the Los Angeles Rams. The game ended at 13–13. l The 1982 season was a strike-shortened season so the league was divided up into two conferences instead of its normal divisional alignment.
Beginning with the 1933 season, the NFL featured a championship game, played between the winners of its two divisions.In this era, if there was a tie for first place in the division at the end of the regular season, a one-game playoff was used to determine the team that would represent their division in the NFL Championship Game.
The Chicago Bears (8–3) of the Western Division met the Washington Redskins (9–2), champions of the Eastern Division. [3] Neither team had played in the title game since 1937, when the Redskins won a close game at Chicago's Wrigley Field. For this game in Washington, the Bears entered as slight favorites. [4] [5]
The Bears would play in the NFL Championship Game two more times that decade, losing both of them. In 1935 and 1936, the Bears remained somewhat competitive, but failed to qualify for the Championship. In 1937, they made a return to the Championship Game, but fell short as Sammy Baugh and the Washington Redskins won 28–21.
Prior to the 1937 season, Redskins owner George Preston Marshall moved the team from Boston to his hometown of Washington, D.C. The Boston Redskins won the Eastern Division title the previous season, but attendances were very poor in Boston, which forced Marshall to move the 1936 NFL Championship Game from Fenway Park to the Polo Grounds in New York City. [6]
The Giants had won the regular season game 14–0 at the Polo Grounds seven weeks earlier on October 27, [4] but the Bears were seven to ten point favorites. [ 1 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] This was the fifth and final NFL Championship game played at the Polo Grounds and the fourth of six meetings between the Bears and Giants in the title game.
Due to blizzard conditions in Chicago, the game was played at Chicago Stadium, [32] [33] marking it as the first indoor American football game. The success of the playoff game led the NFL to institute a championship game. In the first NFL Championship, the Bears played against the New York Giants, defeating them 23–21.