The game featured the Western Division champion Chicago Cardinals(9–3) and the Eastern Division champion Philadelphia Eagles(8–4). A week earlier, the Eagles defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers21–0 in a tiebreaker playoff to determine the Eastern winner.[7][8] Both the Eagles and Cardinals were making their first appearances in the championship game. The Cardinals had won the regular season meeting in Philadelphia three weeks earlier by 24 points and after a week off, were 12-point favorites to win the title game at home.[9][1]
This was the second NFL title game played after Christmas Day, and the latest to date. Scheduled for December 21, it was pushed back a week due to the Eastern division playoff. The temperature at kickoff was 29 °F (−2 °C).[10] On a frozen field, the Cardinals elected to wear sneakers.[11]
The Cardinals built a 14–0 lead in the second quarter, then the teams traded touchdowns. The Eagles closed the gap to 28–21 with five minutes to go, but the Cardinals controlled the ball the rest of the game on an extended drive to win the title.[2][3][4][5][6]
This was the only NFL title game played at Comiskey Park and remains as the Cardinals' only NFL Championship victory. The two teams returned for a rematch in 1948inPhiladelphia, but the Eagles won in a snowstorm. The Cardinals have not won a league championship since this one, over seven decades ago, the longest drought in the NFL. They made it to Super Bowl XLIII in the 2008 season representing Arizona, but they lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Cardinals' win kept the NFL title within the city of Chicago; the North Side's Bears had won the previous season. The team did not receive championship rings until the 50th anniversary of their win in 1997.[12]
This was the Cardinals' last playoff win as a franchise until January 1999; at 51 years and five days, it was the longest post-season win drought in NFL history, and still holds the current record for the longest title drought in North American sports. The team moved to St. Louis as the St. Louis Cardinalsin1960 and Arizona as the Phoenix Cardinalsin1988 (changing to Arizona Cardinals in 1994).
1 – Dates in the list denote the season, not necessarily the calendar year in which the championship game was played. For instance, Super Bowl LIV was played in 2020, but was the championship for the 2019 season.
2 – From 1966 to 1969, the first four Super Bowls were "World Championship" games played between two independent professional football leagues, AFL and NFL, and when the league merged in 1970 the Super Bowl became the NFL Championship Game.
