After two decades of mediocrity, the Packers had begun showing signs of life. Quarterback Don Majkowski, a fan favorite with his long blond hair, swashbuckling style, and catchy nickname of “Majik Man,” had shown promise. His favorite target, Sterling Sharpe, was a rising star. The defense, anchored by linebackers Tim Harris and Brian Noble, played with purpose—if not always effectiveness.
And yet the Packers entered the November 5, 1989, game against the Chicago Bears with a 4–4 record. Chicago, which was 5–3, had humiliated the Packers throughout the “Super Bowl Shuffle” era and had won eight in a row against Green Bay. The sellout crowd of 56,556 at Lambeau Field was thrilled to see the Packers take a 7–3 lead into halftime, but Chicago pulled ahead on Kevin Butler’s field goal and Brad Muster’s two-yard touchdown run.
The fourth quarter had ominous overtones for the home team. Majkowski maneuvered the Packers into the red zone twice and turned the ball over both times. The first came on first and 10 at the Chicago 20, when linebacker John Roper sacked the quarterback and forced a fumble that Ron Rivera recovered. On the next Green Bay series, Majkowski hit Brent Fullwood with a 67-yard pass, moving the ball to the Chicago 23. Two plays later Rivera stepped in front of a pass intended for Sharpe and picked it off at the 10. “That’s where it really got nerve-wracking,” Majkowski said. “I remember coming off after the interception, and Lindy [Infante] grabbed me by the facemask and said, ‘Keep your head up because you’re still going to be the hero of this game.’”
Green Bay’s defense, playing its best game of the season, got the ball back to Majkowski with four minutes and 44 seconds left. Disaster came knocking early as the Bears tipped Majkowski’s pass at the line of scrimmage, and the ball was just about to fall into Steve McMichael’s mitts when Ed West stepped in and knocked it away. With 1:26 left and the Packers on the Chicago 7, Roper hit Majkowski again, knocking the ball to the turf, where it lay uncovered for several agonizing moments before center Blair Bush fell on it. After a pair of incompletions, the game came down to one play: fourth and goal from the 14 with just 41 seconds to play.
The Bears had been blitzing heavily for much of the day. Knowing the ball had to get out quickly, Infante called a play designed to combat man-to-man coverage: Two Out, Short 470, Z Slant, X Choose. Majkowski was going to look for Sharpe or Jeff Query inside the five and hope whoever caught the ball could beat a defender into the end zone. At the snap the Bears rushed four defenders and dropped into a Cover-2 zone, forcing Majkowski to improvise with a scramble drill. As he rolled right with Trace Armstrong in pursuit, Majkowski gave a pump fake toward the right side of the end zone, where Aubrey Matthews and Perry Kemp were covered. Sharpe, who was running across the field with the scramble, found a seam in a den of Bears defenders, and Majkowski hit him with a bullet pass to the chest.
It was a touchdown, but the euphoria in Lambeau Field was short-lived.
Jim Quirk, the line judge, had been stationed on the opposite sideline. He was certain that he saw that Majkowski’s final leap to deliver the pass had moved the ball past the line of scrimmage. He threw his flag. Moments later, Bill Parkinson, the replay official, buzzed down to Tom Dooley, the referee, to tell him the play was under review. Instant replay was only two-and-a-half years old at that point. Parkinson was in the press box, working two VCR-equipped monitors to find a definitive angle that—truth be told—didn’t exist. “The line judge made a call of an illegal pass where the ball was released over the line of scrimmage,” Dooley told a pool reporter after the game. “And that foul is a five-yard foul plus the loss of down.”
Parkinson looked at slow-motion replays. After a delay of about four minutes, he overturned the call. “On stop and start on the instant replay, the initial line feed showed that the ball did not cross the line of scrimmage, the 14-yard line,” he said. “The ball must cross the line of scrimmage to be ruled an illegal pass and the ball did not cross the line of scrimmage when he threw the ball.”
Asked where Majkowski’s feet were in relation to the line of scrimmage, Parkinson replied: “The quarterback’s feet have nothing to do with it,” he said. “Where the ball is when it’s released [is the deciding factor].” The NFL got rid of replay a few years later before bringing it back in the late 1990s, and the rule regarding quarterbacks changed to require both the ball and the body to be behind the line of scrimmage.
Once the official changed the ruling, the Packers sideline erupted in celebration. “It was the first time in my athletic career, I was crying from tears of joy,” Majkowski said.
Of course, victory wasn’t secured until Majkowski’s roommate, punter Don Bracken, held the ball for rookie kicker Chris Jacke to convert the extra point, which gave the Packers a 14–13 win in what has become known as “The Instant Replay Game.” The victory was cathartic for the Packers, who went on to a 10–6 record but missed the playoffs after losing a tiebreaker to the Minnesota Vikings. “I’m at a loss for words,” Infante said afterward. “In 25 years of coaching I can’t remember being more proud to be a part of an organization and a group of guys as I was during that game. There were so many opportunities for us to maybe look at ourselves and say we couldn’t do it, but quite frankly we looked at ourselves and said we could.”
Led by Packers-hating coach Mike Ditka, the Bears were less than thrilled with the result. “It’s a crying shame it came down to a replay,” said Rivera, who followed his playing career by becoming a head coach. “If a referee makes a judgement call, I can live with it, but to me it’s going to be hard to live with what happened. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t think that’s right. They could go back every play and pick out all the infractions, and the game would never be completed. I think they’ve got to do something about it. Sometimes I feel they ought to just put 22 robots in uniform and let them play or get a couple of computer operators and let them play it on a video game.”
Defensive lineman Richard Dent saw the flag after the final play and was convinced that Packers left tackle Ken Ruettgers had been called for holding him on the play. “When are we going to start respecting refs’ calls?” Dent asked. “What did that man [Quirk] see? He didn’t throw a flag down for the heck of it? He must have seen something…I hate for the game to come down to a situation like that.”
As the replay delay dragged along, Chicago cornerback Donnell Woolford, who had admirably covered Sharpe for much of the game, got an “eerie feeling” the call wasn’t going the Bears’ way. “For that to happen at the end, it made me sick,” said Woolford. “We had four people around [Sharpe]. I don’t see how he caught it.”
In the hour after the game, the Packers and the fans celebrated like they had just won a postseason game. There were even a few tears. “It was one of the great locker room scenes,” said linebacker John Anderson, a Waukesha native. “You go through training camp and the ups and downs of the season…This is the kind of win that can do a lot for a team. This is a win that can bond us.”
To this day, the result has an asterisk next to it in the Bears media guide.