Down to the Wire

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For sheer drama, I suppose it would be hard for any Super Bowl to top the one that was played in Atlanta 15 years ago today.

I'm old enough that I can admit that I saw at least portions of every Super Bowl that has been played so far. I've seen some dramatic games, and I've seen some blowouts. The Super Bowl that was played 15 years ago today was expected to be a blowout, but it turned out to be perhaps the most intense finish anyone has seen in nearly half a century of Super Bowls.

The St. Louis Rams were favored, perhaps not by typical blowout proportions (seven points) but certainly in the minds of most football followers. They scored more points that season than anyone else, averaging nearly 33 points per game. They had scored at least 30 points in seven of their last eight games, including their NFC playoff games. It was not unreasonable to believe that they could do it against the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

The Titans could score, too, but not as much. They averaged 24.5 points per game; they came in at just under that in each of their AFC playoff games.

So it was reasonable to conclude that the Rams would win the game. Just one problem. No one told the Titans.

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QB Kurt Warner passed for more than 400 yards, but he completed only 53% of his passes.

If Warner was frustrated, think about running back Marshall Faulk, who ran for nearly 1400 yards during the season but was held to a paltry 17 yards on 10 carries against Tennessee. Meanwhile, Eddie George of Tennessee ran for nearly 100 yards and scored two touchdowns in the second half.

Three Jeff Wilkins field goals gave the Rams a 9–0 lead at intermission, hardly what they were accustomed to. They added to their lead early in the second half when Warner threw a nine–yard touchdown pass to Torry Holt. Then George scored a touchdown in the final seconds of the third quarter, and the Titans went for two. They weren't successful so the Rams took a 16–6 lead into the fourth quarter.

George scored another touchdown, and the Titans trailed by three, 16–13. Then Tennessee held St. Louis to a three–and–out and drove to the Rams' 25, where Al Del Greco's 43–yard field goal tied the game.

But not for long. After the ensuing kickoff, Warner gave the audience what they came to see — a long scoring play. He connected with Isaac Bruce for a 73–yard touchdown, and the Rams led, 23–16, with just over two minutes to play.

At that point, I guess most of the people watching the game figured it was over. I know I did. But it wasn't. George and quarterback Steve McNair took the Titans from their 12–yard line to the Rams' 10. With the final seconds ticking off, McNair completed a pass to Kevin Dyson ...

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... who came up a yard short as the Rams' Mike Jones dragged him down and preserved the victory.

It was a fantastic finish to what had been a truly super Super Bowl.

When Bradshaw Secured His Legacy

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On this day in 1980, Terry Bradshaw became the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls.

"He couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the C and the A," Dallas' Hollywood Henderson had said a year earlier, just before Bradshaw's Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII. As Henderson learned, you don't have to be able to spell to be a Super Bowl–winning quarterback.

In the 35 years that have passed since, only one other quarterback, Joe Montana, has won four Super Bowls. It took him eight years to become the second member of the club.

If New England's Tom Brady wins the Super Bowl a week from Sunday, he will be the third member of the club, but he will have required 13 years to accomplish it.

But on this night, Bradshaw stood alone at the top of that mountain.

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Victory did not come easily. The Steelers' opponents, the Los Angeles Rams, were making their first appearance in the Super Bowl and refused to go quietly against the Steelers, who were making their fourth appearance in six years.

Actually, Super Bowl XIV was almost like a home game for the Rams. The game was played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. At that time, the Rams played their home games in nearby Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is where the University of Southern California also plays its home games. Perhaps the Rams had an unacknowledged home field advantage.

The Rams and Steelers took turns seizing the lead through three quarters. The astonishing Rams led, 7–3 after the first quarter, 13–10 at intermission and 19–17 at the end of the third quarter.

But then the Steelers sprung to life. Bradshaw hit wide receiver John Stallworth for a 73–yard touchdown pass with 12:15 to play, then Franco Harris put the game on ice with a one–yard touchdown run with 1:52 remaining.

Bradshaw received his second consecutive Super Bowl MVP award.

The 10½–point favorite Steelers covered the spread with a 14–0 fourth quarter, but the Rams, who had been 9–7 during the regular season, had proven that they could trade punches with the big boys.

For there was no bigger boy in the NFL at that time than the Pittsburgh Steelers.

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And it seemed at the time that the Steelers were poised to dominate the NFL in the foreseeable future.

As it turned out, though, the Steelers did not return to the Super Bowl for 15 years — and they did not win one again until February of 2006, more than a quarter of a century later.

The Rams, as I recall, were mostly seen as a flash in the pan — good enough to continue to dominate what seemed to be a weak division but unlikely to return to the Super Bowl any time soon.

The Rams did not return to the Super Bowl soon. It took them 20 years. But they rarely won their division in the years after their first Super Bowl appearance, either.

One For The Books

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Such a thing is frequently said of a championship game, but Super Bowl XXXVI, which was played 10 years ago today, really was one for the books.

• It was the first Super Bowl ever played in February.
  
  If you're under 20, you might not have a clear memory of a time when Super Bowls were always played in January, but in the decade since Super Bowl XXXVI was played, only one Super Bowl has been played in January. The rest — including the one that will be played this Sunday — have been in February — and it certainly has the look of a permanent change.
  
  The fact that the Super Bowl was played in February 10 years ago was completely unintentional. It was a consequence of the Sept. 11 attacks and the fact that the NFL postponed all the games that were scheduled for the weekend after the attacks.
  
  Those games eventually were made up the weekend after the regular season was scheduled to end, pushing the start of the playoffs back by a week. The Super Bowl originally had been scheduled for Jan. 27, but it was moved instead to Feb. 3.
  
  Super Bowl host cities are chosen years in advance, and other events are often planned for the week leading up to the game. Local businesses plan to cash in on all that Super Bowl windfall — which is never limited to game day alone.
  
  (Here in Dallas, for example, where last year's Super Bowl was played, there were stories of private citizens who were renting out personal property for up to two weeks — for thousands of dollars per day. And, in spite of an ice storm that virtually crippled the area in the week leading up to the big game, hotels, restaurants and transportation providers still did a thriving business. Some reportedly raised their fees just for the occasion.)
  
  There wasn't any wiggle room for adjusting the schedule to allow for something like a terrorist attack a decade ago.
  
  In the past, there had been a bye week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. If a bye week had been scheduled 10 years ago, it could have been sacrificed to make up the lost regular–season games, and the Super Bowl still could have been played on Jan. 27.
  
  But the bye week had been temporarily dropped during a transition period in which the start of the NFL season had been moved to the weekend after Labor Day. That meant there was no bye week to drop in order to accommodate the lost games and keep the Super Bowl on its original schedule.


• It was the first time that the lead changed on the final play of the Super Bowl.
  
  There have been a few Super Bowls in which the outcome was unknown until sometime in the final minute, and sometimes it went down to the last seconds. But Super Bowl XXXVI was the first — and, so far, only — one that had a lead change on the final play.
  
  In fact, there was no leader when the teams lined up for that final play. The score was tied, and just about everyone must have assumed we were about to witness the first Super Bowl to go into overtime.
  
  But the New England Patriots engineered a remarkable drive, capped by an even more remarkable field goal by Adam Vinatieri to beat the heavily favored St. Louis Rams as time ran out.


• Even though he was on the losing side, Rams quarterback Kurt Warner had the second–most productive passing day in Super Bowl history — second only to the day he had two years earlier when the Rams beat the Tennessee Titans.
  
  Warner's numbers (365 yards in February 2002, more than 400 yards in January 2000) seemed appropriate for a team that had been dubbed "The Greatest Show on Turf." The Rams of those years piled up big yardage and incredible scores almost every time they played and are remembered by many as one of the greatest offensive units in pro football history.
  
  But, for some reason, they seemed to encounter immovable objects when they got to the Super Bowl.

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• The reputation of the Patriots' Tom Brady had not yet been established 10 years ago.
  
  When the 2001 regular season began, Brady was the team's #2 quarterback behind Drew Bledsoe, but he was pressed into full–time service when Bledsoe went down with an injury in the second game of the season.
  
  It's safe to say Patriots fans never missed him.
  
  New England was 0–2 following the game in which Bledsoe was injured. The Patriots were 11–3 the rest of the way with Brady at the helm, even though he was only in his second year and had thrown just three passes on the pro level before Bledsoe was hurt.
  
  Warner finished the game with gaudier numbers, but Brady won a ring.

He's added two more to his personal collection since then, but this Sunday he will be seeking to avenge the one time when it got away.

And, when he takes the field against New York, he will be starting in his fifth Super Bowl. That's as many as John Elway — and more than Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw or Roger Staubach.

It's hard to remember when Brady was a relatively unknown quarterback who had never even played in a Super Bowl, much less won one.

But it all began 10 years ago today.

The Heat Is On

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Several years ago, I was watching ESPN, and a World Series highlights show came on.

The subject of the program was the 1985 World Series, which matched two cross–state rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals, in what came to be known as the I–70 Series (an homage to the interstate that connects to the two cities).

I remember that World Series quite well. My best friend has always been a Cardinals fan, and I was working at the time with a woman who went to college at the University of Missouri, which is about halfway between those two cities along I–70. As long as I could remember, there had been a rivalry between St. Louis and Kansas City, but this was the first time it had spilled over into sports.

Appropriately, the song that was used as the theme for the show was "The Heat Is On," Glenn Frey's huge hit that was featured in the soundtrack for "Beverly Hills Cop," one of the most popular films of 1984.

Anyway, that tune popped into my mind when I was thinking about the St. Louis Rams' first pick in last week's NFL draft.

If you're a football fan, you probably already know that the Rams took Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford (who won the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt sophomore in 2008) as the first overall pick. Bradford didn't play much last year. He had a shoulder injury that kept him on the sidelines for most of the season.

Consequently, the Rams had to act on the assumption that the numbers Bradford posted in his Heisman–winning season were the true indicators of his talent, which (presumably) remain valid.

No doubt the Rams need someone who can revive the offense that was once known as the Greatest Show on Turf. An NFL team that averages only 10.9 points per game, as the Rams did last season, can hardly be said to be living up to that kind of billing.

The Sporting News thinks the Rams were one of half a dozen teams that improved themselves in the draft, but writer Dennis Dillon acknowledges that, while "Bradford could develop into a franchise quarterback ... he probably won't step in as the starter immediately."

I suppose that's true. A decade ago, when Kurt Warner and the Rams were putting up 500–plus points a year, St. Louis seemed to have embraced football in a way that the city never really did when the Cardinals played there.

If the enthusiasm level had remained where it was then, Bradford would be in for a lot of pressure right away. But the Rams have won only six games in the last three seasons, and St. Louis' sports fans seem to have revived their passions for baseball and hockey. It's hard to imagine anyone except hard–core football fans expecting much from him.

It might be different for Bradford if he had gone to a franchise in his neck of the woods, like Dallas or Houston or the world champion New Orleans Saints. Football fans are devoted everywhere, but there is a special intensity to that devotion in Southern cities, which undoubtedly brings quite a bit of pressure.

Dillon may be right when he says Bradford isn't likely to face the pressure of being a starter for the Rams right away, but you've got to pity whoever gets that assignment this fall. Last year's starting quarterback Marc Bulger, 33, was released by the Rams a few weeks ago; statistically, that would have made 28–year–old Kyle Boller his logical replacement, but Boller signed with Oakland in mid–April.

That leaves only 24–year–old Keith Null with any playing experience for the Rams, and his performance last season was a mixed bag at best. He did complete more than 60% of his passes, but he was intercepted three times as often as he completed passes for touchdowns, and, although he was the third–string signal caller, he had nearly 30% of the team's 44 sacks.

The other candidates for the starting job are 32–year–old journeyman A.J. Feeley, who signed a contract with the Rams in March, and two guys who, like Bradford, haven't taken their first snaps as pros.

In all honesty, I think Bradford may have lucked into the perfect situation for him, but, even though it looks like that right now, it's unpredictable. Bradford and his coaches need to be sensitive to signals that the Rams' fan base is growing restless.

The Rams are 6–42 in the last three seasons. How long will it be before St. Louis' eternally patient sports fans (they've been loyally pulling for their hockey team since it was founded in 1967 with no Stanley Cup to show for it) start demanding to get some bang for the bucks that will be committed to Bradford?

My guess is, not long.

Death of a Role Model

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I often hear folks complain about the absence of quality in the famous people their children wish to emulate.

All too often, unfortunately, the athletes that young people admire are greedy or self–centered, not generous and selfless. They are the athletes with the multimillion–dollar contracts, the big houses and the flashy cars who cheated on their spouses or took steroids to gain an unfair advantage over those who played the game straight.

Herb Brooks, who coached the U.S. hockey team to its miraculous gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics, once defined (without realizing it) the characteristic of an athlete that parents should want their children to mimic — "players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back."

Merlin Olsen was such a role model. And he died of mesothelioma yesterday at the age of 69.

Many folks may only know Olsen from his work in television. Like many former athletes, he provided commentary for NFL and college football broadcasts. He was also a star of Little House on the Prairie for many years before starring in his own series, Father Murphy.

All of this came after his 15–year career in pro football, all of it spent with the Los Angeles Rams and much of it spent in the years before most professional sports teams put the player's last name on the back of the jersey.

Olsen also played at a time when defensive units weren't given collective nicknames. But, before Minnesota had the "Purple People Eaters" and Pittsburgh won four Super Bowls with a defense known as the "Steel Curtain," the Rams' front four were known as the "Fearsome Foursome."

A defensive lineman, Olsen was one of the "Fearsome Foursome." And, although that group included such names as Deacon Jones, Lamar Lundy and Rosey Grier, Olsen may have inspired the most fear of all. At 6–5 and 270 pounds, he was a mountain of a man in the years before it became almost commonplace for linemen to exceed 300 pounds — an intimidating force with "superhuman strength," according to Jones, who told the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s that "[a] lot of the plays I made were because he or the others would make the sacrifice."

Olsen modestly asserted that the "Fearsome Foursome" would have been successful in any era. "We could all run," he said. "The other thing we had going for us was a rare chemistry. There was also a very special kind of unselfishness."

He was a special kind of person. It is uncommon these days to find an athlete who graduated from college before moving on to professional football, but Olsen was named one of the nation's top students during his senior year at Utah State, and he earned his master's degree in economics while he played pro football.

Maybe it was due to the values he learned growing up in a Mormon household. Maybe it was a quality that was born in him. But, whatever the source, his many accomplishments made him someone that any parent would want to see his/her child idolize.

He was a winner. Even if he didn't win championships.

Rest in peace, Mr. Olsen.

Who Will Be the No. 1 Pick?

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The NFL holds its annual draft this weekend, and observers have been speculating for weeks about who will be the No. 1 pick by the Detroit Lions.

The Lions, as you may recall, failed to win a single game last season. In fact, since the Lions lost their last regular–season game in 2007, they have now lost 17 consecutive games.

And it's even worse than that. The Lions' 7–9 record in 2007 was Detroit's best season since 2000 — when the Lions finished with a 9–7 record. They haven't been in the playoffs since 1999, and they haven't won a playoff game since 1991 (and that, incidentally, was Detroit's only playoff victory since winning the 1957 NFL championship).

Since 2000, Detroit has compiled a record of 40–104–0.

The consensus appears to be that Detroit has been negotiating with University of Georgia quarterback Matt Stafford. He's got a good arm, but Detroit has no line to speak of, which means Stafford (or whoever is calling the signals for the Lions next season) will have to throw on the run ... A LOT.

Stafford should be used to that, though. Georgia had little on the offensive line during Stafford's tenure there.

The best available offensive lineman appears to be Baylor's Jason Smith, and Sports Illustrated's Peter King thinks he will go second, when the St. Louis Rams make their pick. Smith seems like a good fit for the Rams, who cut the aging Orlando Pace last month.

But the team that could really use Smith is Detroit. Until the Lions get some big, strong linemen to provide protection for both the running and passing games, it won't matter how many marquee names the Lions put on their roster. The quarterback won't have time to look for the open receivers, and in the 10 years since Barry Sanders retired, Detroit hasn't found any running backs who can make things happen in spite of any weaknesses on the line the way he could.

Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free–Press says Stafford is going to be a Lion, like it or not — even though, I believe, Detroit already has four quarterbacks signed to contracts.

"The Lions apparently believe Stafford will be a franchise quarterback," Rosenberg writes, "and when you are that deeply in love, you don't worry about the price of roses."

Still, a lot of unforeseen things can happen in the NFL draft. Mike Florio of The Sporting News provides a rundown on the top storylines heading into the draft, and he points out that trades, drama and risk are key factors.

But that's true every year.