This offseason, Shutdown Corner will travel down memory lane with a series of stories presenting some interesting and sometimes forgotten stories from the NFL’s past. Join us as we relive some of the greatest and craziest moments in the sport’s history.

On its own, it’s a pretty remarkable sight in the clip above: A kicker retrieving his own blocked field-goal attempt, scooping up the loose ball and running it in for a walk-off touchdown.

That doesn’t happen every day in the NFL, after all. But it’s the back story that makes Chester Marcol’s 1980 touchdown against the rival Chicago Bears one of the most WTF moments in modern league history.

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Marcol entered the league in 1972, a Polish-born kicker whose family left their home country after his father committed suicide. He arrived at high school in Imlay City, Michigan (30 miles east of Flint) not knowing a lick of English, but a gym teacher discovered that Marcol could kick the heck out of a soccer ball.

Once Marcol was introduced to football and taught how to kick that oblique spheroid, a great talent was transformed. He went down the road to kick for then-NAIA Hillsdale College, where he went on to set several school kicking marks and become a four-time All-American. He made a 62-yarder in 1969 (a year before Tom Dempsey made a 63-yarder in the NFL) and attempted an unheard-of 77-yard try against St. Norbert (which just happened to be where the Packers held training camp at the time) that reportedly came up a few yards short.

Packers head coach Dan Devine thought enough of Marcol to spend a second-round pick (34th overall) on him, and Marcol rewarded him by making Pro Bowls in two of his first three seasons and being named 1972 NFC Rookie of the Year after making 33 field goals in 14 games and leading the NFL in scoring that season.

Green Bay Packers kicker Chester Marcol was the NFL’s leading scorer as a rookie in 1972 (Photo by Nate Fine/Getty Images) More

His efforts that season against the Chicago Bears endeared him to the locals. He beat them with late field goals in both games and frustrated Bears coach Abe Gibron so much that he handpicked special-teams ace Gary Kosins as a mercenary to go after Marcol on kickoffs to try to knock him off his block.

“What do they think he is, a Polish prince?” Gibron scoffed?

With that a nickname — and a legend — was born.

Marcol became a folk hero in Wisconsin, and its Polish community embraced him even tighter. His rise to stardom was meteoric, and on the outside he loved the newfound attention. But on the inside there were demons.

“I could go home after kicking three or four field goals and missing one, and it would take me til 4 or 5 o’clock [in the morning] to fall asleep,” Marcol told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2002. “I would sit at the kitchen table and rethink the whole game over and over.”

His effectiveness and usage dropped off a bit as the decade wore on, especially after Bart Starr took over as head coach, but Marcol was thrust into a key situation on Opening Day in 1980. It was knotted at 6-6 in sudden-death overtime against those rival Bears up at Lambeau Field, and the 31-year-old Marcol had made two field-goal attempts — from 41 and 46 yards — to that point.

Marcol lined up for a 34-yard try to win the game for the Packers. The snap and hold appear good. Marcol thumped the ball — and then there was a second thump. That was the sound of the Bears’ Alan Page, who had burst through the line, blocking the kick. But in an instant, the ball ended up back in the oversized hands of Marcol — hands that might have made him a goalie had he stayed in Poland — as he streaked freely toward an area kickers rarely ventured.

It was sheer chaos. The Bears were stunned. So was nearly everyone else in the stadium that moment.

Likely none more than Marcol himself. He raced to the end zone, escorted by a convoy of blockers, and the Polish Prince had once more beaten the Bears — but this time in stunning fashion: by scoring what would be marked down in the box score as a game-ending 25-yard blocked field-goal return. The bespectacled Marcol had scored all the Packers’ points in a 12-6 overtime stunner.