• Decades later, Baugh remembered the worst field I've ever played on in my life. ... A week or so before that they had a playoff game .... and it had rained and got real muddy. Hell, they just chewed up the field. Well, when we got on it, ... the ground had froze up. There were all these little frozen balls of mud, hard and sharp as rocks, all over that damn field. They cut the living hell out of you when you hit the ground. A lot of people got chewed up pretty bad that day.
• Taking their cue from the 1934 Giants, both teams wore rubber-soled bas­ketball shoes.
• The anticipated 40,000+ spectators turned out to be just 15,878 because of the frigid conditions.
• Halas prepared a special defense for the game. He deployed only five defensive linemen instead of the usual six, dropping an extra defender to cover Sammy's receivers coming downfield quickly from the Redskins' double wing formation.

• Quarter 1
  The Redskins kicked off to the goal line. The Bear returner slipped as soon as he caught the ball but got up quickly and ran out to the 32. Bronko Na­gurski rambled through a big hole at left tackle for a first down. But the drive soon bogged down, and Ray Nolting punted out of bounds on the nine.
  A preview of how the day would go and an example of why Eastern writers credited Baugh with "opening up" the game of football, came on the Red­skins' open­ing play from scrimmage. Slingin' Sam lined up in what appeared to be punt formation in the end zone. But taking the snap, he ran to his right and lofted a pass to Battles in Coach Flaherty's version of today's screen pass, a tactic designed to thwart the Bear rush. Aided by some fantastic downfield blocking, Cliff ran all the way to the Chicago 49. But Washington couldn't move much further and had to punt.
  But the sudden change in field position benefitted them when they got the ball back at their 48. Two more of Flaherty's "flare passes" to backs, as they would be called today, moved the ball to a first down at the 20. One went to BB Riley Smith as Baugh ran right but moved backward to avoid the rush, and Ernie Pinckert caught the second. Then it was Baugh and Battles on the ground the rest of the way with Cliff slithering the final seven through left tackle to break the scoring ice with five min­utes remaining. Smith booted the first of four PATs on the day. Redskins 7 Bears 0

But the Bears surged back with two touchdowns by Manders in the next 5 1/2 minutes to take the lead. After the kickoff return to the 29, Bernie Masterson teamed up with Manders for a 51y pass and run. Shortly afterward, Nagurski gained seven to the 11. Then, with a man in motion taking at least one defender out of the middle of the field, Jack broke free through center for the touchdown. Automatic Jack also kicked the point to tie the score. Redskins 7 Bears 7
An interception at midfield set the go-ahead drive in motion. With the ball at the 38, Masterson looped a pass to Manders cutting across the field to the right 10y beyond the line of scrimmage. Benefitting from a nice block by George Wilson that Battles thought was holding, Jack ran as fast as he could on the slippery turf to the end zone. Bears 14 Redskins 7

• Quarter 4
  The Bears reached midfield before having to punt. FB Don Irwin on the ground and Baugh through the air moved the Skins to the Chicago 42, where Sammy decided to go for it on 4th-and-one. Irwin bucked for just enough to move the chains. Sam followed with a throw to Irwin to the 35. Then came what would turn out to be the winning play. Baugh took the snap, threw his right arm straight up in that distinctive style of his to fake a short one to E Charlie Malone, dropped back a few more strides, and rifled to HB Ed Justice 15y beyond the line of scrimmage. "Chug" ran the remaining 20 to put the visitors ahead for good. Redskins 28 Bears 21
  But the nerve-tingling battle was by no means over. After stopping the Bears after the kickoff, Washington moved 61y to the 15 only to lose the ball on a Millner fumble. Chicago then drove to the Skins 24, but Masterson failed on four straight passes.
  During the period, a free-for-all broke out when Bears E Dick Plasman caught a pass and was nailed from behind by Baugh and whirled out of bounds at midfield right into the visitors bench after a 35y gain. Plasman then injudiciously tossed a punch at Baugh. In a trice, every Redskin within reach began pummeling the miscreant. Teammates quickly arrived to protect their rookie end, and the two sides fired away at each other with abandon for several minutes until police and ushers broke up the fracas. Plasman came away with a bloody nose, gashed lip, and puffy eye.
  The home team mounted one last drive starting from their 22. Along the way, the Bears got a bad break that they would ever after blame for costing them a chance to tie. Masterson passed to E Les McDonald in the clear at the Washington 32, but as Les turned to run on the most slippery part of the field, he almost bumped into umpire Ed Cochrane, a Chicago sports writer limping with a lame knee. By the time Les switched gears and got going, Battles and Baugh closed in and dragged him down on the 12. Three plays later, Masterson was thrown for a 7y loss, then threw incomplete on fourth down.
  When Baugh limped off the field bruised and battered in the last two min­utes, the crowd rose to cheer him.
  FINAL SCORE: REDSKINS 28 BEARS 21

The statistics backed up what Arthur Daley wrote in the New York Times: Baugh threw passes that had to be seen to be believed.

• Sammy completed 18-of-33 passes for 335y, 25 more yards than the Bears' total offense. He had one intercepted, and several more were dropped by receivers with frozen fingers. It was the finest passing performance in league history to that date and would set the championship standard for years.
• Hundreds of the 3,000 Washington fans at the game pushed past police into their heroes' locker room.
• Sammy said it was the roughest game he'd ever been in. He dismissed his sensational performance. What the heck, anyone can do the pitching, but it takes real ball players to do the catching.
• Dutch Clark, coach of the Lions, visited and called Baugh the greatest passer I've ever seen.
• Flaherty said the Texan's exhibition was the greatest one-man show ever put on in pro football.
• 47 years later, Baugh recalled: I didn't find pro football all that different from what we played in college. A lot rougher, sure, but they used pretty much the same dang things we did in college, like the single wing and the double wing. We also used the spread formation, what they call the shotgun now.
• Naturally, the Redskins owner was ecstatic. He told the press that he lost $85,000 in Boston but expected to make a $20,000 profit for the '37 cam­paign.

Hardly any tickets were sold at the gates, and many who had bought ducats didn't show because of the weather.

• The disappointing attendance limited the victorious Redskins players TO only $6,325.25 to split or almost $50 less per player than the Packers earned in '36.
• The Bears divvied up $4,216.84.

After making All-Pro for the third straight year, Battles asked Marshall for a raise from his $4,000 salary.

• But George said he couldn't afford to do that since he paid so much to Baugh.
• So Cliff said goodbye to the pros at age 27 and took a job as an assistant to Lou Little at Columbia.
• Halas also lost his star, Nagurski. When George wouldn't accede to Bronk's request for a raise to $6,000 from the $5,000 he had made every year as a Bear, Nagurski stayed in International Falls MN and opened a service sta­tion.