The novelty of playing an NFL game on Christmas is entirely new for the Buccaneers and for Tom Brady, who will respectively do so for the first time Sunday after avoiding the holiday throughout the franchise’s first 46 years and the quarterback’s first 22 seasons.
Especially for a road team like the Bucs, who face the Cardinals across the country in Arizona, it means time away from family on the one day that’s rarely the case. The NFL will have three such games Sunday, the most it’s ever scheduled, but the league has a Christmas history going back 51 years.
Ask Larry Csonka, and there’s no better way to celebrate the holiday than with a victory, however long it takes.
“When you played football for a guy named Shula, holidays, bar mitzvahs, it doesn’t matter,” the Hall of Fame running back said by phone this week with a laugh, remembering a 1971 playoff game against the Chiefs. “Football comes first when you play for him. And certainly in the playoffs, it was very serious. I’m sure there was some momentary hesitation to observe Christmas in some capacity, but it was pretty much keep your nose to the grindstone.”
Csonka wasn’t just playing on Christmas in 1971 — he was also celebrating his 25th birthday that day, just as Sunday will be his 76th. He had a touchdown run among 24 carries that day, still remembering a hard-hitting Chiefs defense loaded with future Hall of Famers.
“It was not a birthday party,” Csonka said. “I really have high respect for Willie Lanier, Curley Culp, Bobby Bell, and if I had a birthday party, I’d invite them. But if anyone pulled out a football, I’d be inclined to make sure it got thrown out the window.”
That playoff game, one of two played that day, remains the longest in NFL history, the Dolphins and Chiefs staying tied all through a 15-minute overtime and for another seven minutes and 40 seconds in a second overtime before Miami prevailed. Csonka vividly remembers an Associated Press photo from the end of the game, showing him in his No. 39 jersey, looking to the sky in exhaustion. That picture is featured in his recent memoir, “Head On,” and he jokes that in that moment, he was happy they won the game and happy the game was over, and not necessarily in that order.
Back in the time of 14-game schedules, an NFL regular season was usually over before Christmas, so any schedule overlap came in the playoffs, and the league largely avoided the holiday for a long time. When Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1977, 1983 and 1988, the league split its playoff games between Saturday and Monday that weekend in reverence.
In 1989, the NFL scheduled its regular-season finale for a Monday night on Christmas, and the Bengals not only had to travel to Minnesota, they missed the playoffs with a close loss that gifted the Steelers a wild-card berth instead. From there, the NFL slowly embraced playing on Christmas, with single games six times between 1993-2000, then two each the next time the holiday fell on a weekend from 2004-06, then back to single games from 2009-11, ramping back up to twice in recent years.
In all, there have been 24 NFL games played on Christmas. The Cowboys, who played and won on the road that first year in 1971 on the way to beating the Dolphins and Csonka in the Super Bowl, have the most Christmas appearances with five, but the Cardinals, Packers, Dolphins and Broncos on Sunday will soon join the Vikings with four.
The Bucs and Rams will make their Christmas debuts Sunday, leaving only eight NFL teams yet to play on Dec. 25th: the Jaguars, Patriots, Bills, Commanders, Falcons, Panthers, Seahawks and 49ers.
Brady doesn’t experience many NFL firsts at age 45, but talked on his SiriusXM podcast this week about the personal challenge of delaying Christmas activities with his family to take care of business on Sunday.
“It’ll be a new experience that I’ve never had before that I’m going to learn how to deal with, and I think that’s what life’s about,” Brady said. “I’m going to learn how to deal with Christmas Eve in a hotel, and I’m going to have to learn how to deal with Christmas and Christmas night and still go out there and be a professional, and then look forward to celebrating Christmas with my kids the day after.”
Bucs coach Todd Bowles has coached on Christmas once, losing at home to the Eagles as a Cowboys assistant in 2006. And while he is a huge Christmas fan, even sharing his top-five Christmas songs to reporters this week, he said his players know how to pull together and focus on winning a game for three hours, hoping to unwrap a win along the way.
“If you’re on the road, it’s kind of tough, because there’s nothing on in the hotel but the yule log,” he said. “Other than that, you kind of focus and refocus. It’s kind of like playing on Thanksgiving a little bit — if you’re at a home game, everybody’s there, you’ve got your family and everything. If you’re on the road, all you have is each other. You get bonding time and you go play the game.”
The Bucs have much on the line Sunday, clinging to a one-game lead atop the NFC South standings with three weeks left and knowing they can clinch a division title by simply winning their next two games. Tampa Bay has never won back-to-back division titles in its history, so any wish list going into this season would have started with that at the top.
“I’ve never experienced this one,” offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich said. “This one is a little different. It’s too important of a ballgame to worry about what day it’s on. We could [not] care less what day. Our families and everybody understand that, that we’re really locked in and have our minds on something bigger than the day of Christmas. We’ll get back home and we’ll enjoy our time with our families when we can.”
For Bucs players, the idea of playing on Christmas brings back a nostalgia to their childhood, when they’d wake up and open presents, watch a game on television and then go outside and play with a new football.
“I’m excited about it, personally,” said receiver Russell Gage, who caught two touchdown passes in last week’s loss to the Bengals. “Growing up, I watched games on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving, and I was like ‘That’s awesome. You get to play on a holiday like this? I’m going to go outside in the yard and play football with my friends.’ So we get to play on this day, and we’re playing for something, playing with purpose. We’ve got a lot of things at stake, and I’ve personally never been in the playoffs, so I’m excited.”
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Greg Auman is FOX Sports’ NFC South reporter, covering the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He is in his 10th season covering the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having spent time at the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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