by Adam Lazarus
Everson Walls disturbed the silent benediction. He wanted to narrate the moment for his teammates.
“He’s setting up for the kick,” Walls informed the group.
“That’s enough. We don’t want to hear it,” Pepper Johnson interrupted.
“He’s ready for the snap,” Walls added.
“Shut up, Walls!” Mark Collins screamed.
Matt Bahr was the calmest man in the stadium.
“I didn’t notice the guys kneeling on the sidelines,” Bahr said. “I guess you could say I was fighting the rush of adrenaline. Sure I knew the score and what this meant to the team. But I had to focus on my job. I try to take the same attitude to kicking an extra point in the first quarter as I do kicking a field goal in the last seconds with the game on the line.”
Through his classic, single-bar helmet, Bahr locked eyes with Hostetler. The two emergency stand-ins—each once a Pennsylvania teenager whom Joe Paterno brought to Happy Valley during the 1970s—were now ready to deliver New York to the Super Bowl. Steve DeOssie crouched over the football and fired it back to Hostetler. A perfect snap and perfect placement allowed Bahr to smoothly swipe at the ball.
Into abnormally calm air along the San Francisco Bay, the ball soared downfield, veering slightly toward the left goalpost. Bahr leaned right as he watched, hoping the ball would follow his command. It did.
“I didn’t want to look, I couldn’t look,” Mark Collins said. “I just closed my eyes and waited for the reaction from the crowd. When I heard that dull sound, I knew he made it.”
In Candlestick Park, 65,750 patrons, minus a few transplanted New York fans, fell silent. The Giants’ sidelines went wild. Belichick hugged Parcells, ruffled his boss’ gray hair, and the two hopped around like Little Leaguers who just won the city championship.
“When I saw it was good, I didn’t jump up and down. I just breathed a sigh of relief,” Bahr said. “I may not have looked excited outside, but on the inside, I was excited.”
Stephen Baker couldn’t quite keep his emotions in check.
“I just remember turning around ’cause their stadium, the fans were right behind us, and I’ll never forget they were berating us all day, talking about [Giants running back Dave] Meggett, calling him a midget, calling me a midget, calling Sean Landeta fat,” said Baker. “When we won, I turned around and I gave them the old ‘one-finger salute’ and threw my helmet up as high as I could because I couldn’t believe it.”
Back on the field, Jeff Hostetler had to somersault out of the path of Giants teammates charging onto the field toward Matt Bahr. Despite a sore neck that nearly kept him sidelined that day (X-rays had to be taken after he tried to tackle a Chicago kick returner the week before), the five-foot, eight-inch, 174-pound Bahr didn’t mind being bear-hugged by Lawrence Taylor.
“It was a good kick, but I’ll tell you what, this victory is for [my teammates]. They worked so hard through training camp; they overcame so many obstacles. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.”
In the visitors’ locker room, reporters and writers surrounded Bahr and Hostetler, the game’s two last-second stars. Both men had waited a long time for this moment. So had Everson Walls.
“I’ve been trying to negate [“The Catch”] all my career, and nobody ever let me,” he said. “This is the only way to negate it. Go to the Super Bowl.”
After praising his team behind closed doors and accepting the George Halas NFC Championship Trophy, Parcells addressed a throng of reporters.
“We had them all the way,” he said with a smirk.
Moments later, Parcells noticed Mark Ingram, who, late in the final period, had not been quite as optimistic while talking to Ottis Anderson.
“It’s better than Christmas morning, isn’t it?” Parcells asked.
“This is better,” replied Ingram.
“That’s probably the greatest game I ever coached in. There were a lot of great players playing in that game. Some on our side and certainly quite a number on San Francisco,” Bill Parcells said in 2010, four years after coaching the last of 505 NFL and collegiate games. “I think everyone who played in that game realized that that was a very special game. It certainly was for me.”
“Jerry Markbreit was the referee of the game. He told me years later that he was the head referee for [437] games. He told me that was the greatest game he ever officiated.”
Anyone not in Candlestick Park that afternoon nearly missed the sights and sounds of the Giants’ miraculous win.
All afternoon, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue remained on-call, ready to replace the national CBS television broadcast in favor of live coverage from the Persian Gulf.
“The decision was made as close to kickoff as he could make it,” NFL Vice President of Communications Joe Browne said. “It was made after he saw there were no major events.”
Still, on at least one occasion, television producers somehow relayed a message informing the referee to extend an on-the-field time-out. They did not want the viewers at home to miss a single play while CBS anchor Dan Rather’s report on a missile attack in Saudi Arabia ran long.
Even at Candlestick, the war was not far from people’s minds. San Francisco police on special duty and mounted officers guarded the field up until an hour before game time. Inside the Giants’ locker room, the war couldn’t be ignored. Ottis Anderson, Pepper Johnson, Gary Reasons, and Matt Cavanaugh each had a cousin in the military, as was Bob Mrosko’s brother. And linebacker Johnie Cooks stayed up most of Wednesday night and Thursday morning with his sobbing wife as they watched the news: his uncle, cousin, and brother-in-law each served in the Gulf.
“Life has to go on,” Cooks said. “It would be better to be playing and give people something else to think about for three hours. We’re sad about what’s going on, but it’s something we’ve got to deal with.”
On game day, Giants players wore yellow wristbands to honor the American sailors and soldiers. Giants owner Wellington Mara—a naval lieutenant commander during World War II—approved the wardrobe addition.
After his kick sailed through the goalposts, Bahr shouted, “This is for the troops,” and waved the wristband in the air.
“The NFL didn’t like it,” Bahr said years later.
League officials probably also didn’t like Mark Ingram’s political statement. Ingram, the Giants’ leading receiver that day, played the entire game with the word “PEACE” written in black marker across athletic tape covering his left wrist.
To the players, fans, and the television executives, this was largely uncharted territory.
“This game, of course, was played under heavy security,” CBS’ Greg Gumbel asked Lawrence Taylor during a postgame interview. “A great deal of discussion about whether or not football games should even be played. Did that enter into your thinking at all as you came out onto the field or as you played today?”
“When you see all the security,” Taylor responded, “it makes you realize that the war is real, it’s not a joke. And even though it’s fought all the way over there in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, it’s touching home right now. It’s a little scary but as far as the guys over there, I’m proud of them, bring us back a victory. And I just wish the people over here would stop all the protesting and support those guys. Those guys are fighting for us.”
A day before the city hosted its fourth NFC Championship Game in ten years, thirty-five thousand people marched from San Francisco’s Mission Dolores Park to an antiwar rally at the Civic Center Plaza. Seventeen hundred demonstrators had already been arrested that week in San Francisco, and upwards of forty thousand protesters were expected to protest the next day outside Candlestick Park, prior to and during the NFC Championship Game.[2] That weekend, tens of thousands more demonstrated in Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. And rallies—some pro-war, some antiwar, some both—cropped up across the rest of the nation, in places like Lawrence, Kansas, Charleston, West Virginia, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.
“Nobody forgot about the guys over there,” said Barney Fitzpatrick, a bartender at an Upper West Side Manhattan sports bar, “but the country needs morale over here too. The American way is here, and football is part of the American way. Why let Saddam ruin our game?”
Americans didn’t let Hussein ruin the game that Sunday; neither did the American servicemen and servicewomen who watched or listened to the NFC Championship Game on the Armed Forces Network.
“How many were able to see it, we don’t know. We have no way of telling,” said Air Force Colonel Richard L. Fuller. “We haven’t had any mail yet and we don’t get any phone calls from them. They’re pretty busy, but they tell us to keep up the news and thanks for the sports.”
[1]In 1976, Saban resigned as head coach of the Bills after five games; Jim Ringo replaced Saban and Simpson won his fourth rushing and final rushing title at the end of that season.
[2]Only a handful of people actually demonstrated outside of Candlestick Park during the NFC Championship Game. According to the Kansas City Star, “Instead, the war protesters held placards in the park alongside one of the main roads into the stadium. A peace symbol made of red material was laid out on the ground—not clearly visible to passers-by but clearly seen from the Fuji blimp that circled the stadium during the game.”
5
Respect Week
Pan Am flight 8207 from Buffalo landed in west Florida early Monday evening, January 21. Crushing Los Angeles by forty-eight points in the AFC title game put Bills players in a good mood. While a few enjoyed the in-flight movie (Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty), others played cards or reminisced over the highlights of their great victory.
“It was a good plane ride,” said defensive tackle Jeff Wright. “Everybody was laughing and joking and having a good time. There’s no sense in being in a tense mood right now.”
The excitement carried out of the plane and onto the tarmac at Tampa International Airport.
“Showtime . . . it’s showtime!” Bruce Smith and Cornelius Bennett announced to writers and cameramen.
The Bills intended to savor their first brush with the Super Bowl stage.
“I want all the media I can get while I’m here,” Bennett told the press that week. “I won’t turn a reporter down while I’m here.”
Bennett was not alone in basking beneath the spotlight. Jim Kelly drew the most media attention, and the Bills quarterback gave them plenty to report on. Hours after the Bills plane landed, Kelly and Lawrence Taylor—one of the Giants who would be chasing him on Sunday—served as judges for a “beauty contest” at Thee Dollhouse Lounge, a local Tampa strip club. Another compelling angle for reporters was the identity of one of Kelly’s special guests to the Super Bowl: Sandi Korn, who reportedly once dated Kelly’s former USFL boss, Donald Trump. (Under the pseudonym Sandra Taylor, Korn would be Penthouse’s Pet of the Month that March.)
“I’m going to enjoy myself like everyone else,” said Kelly. “Hey, I’m single, I think you can enjoy yourself and stay focused. It remains a business trip.”
Kelly openly mingling with beautiful, half-clad women would have been enough for the already-established Joe Namath comparisons to swell. But reporters weren’t satisfied.
Surrounded that week by dozens of interviewers—including one who asked “Joe, Joe, what do you think of all these questions?”—Kelly spoke with trademark confidence.
“Our goal is not to be in Tampa. Our goal is to win in Tampa. If we execute as we should, we should have no problems.”
Some reporters translated his comment into a guarantee. The Newport News Daily Press ran that quote beneath a headline “Report: Bills QB Almost Pulls a Namath.” Too great was the temptation of sensationalizing another western Pennsylvania-born quarterback who guaranteed victory during Super Bowl week in Florida.
Kelly’s cryptic “promise” of victory came on Tuesday, during the NFL’s prearranged extensive press session. For every player and coach, Media Day, as it became known, was mandatory. At age sixty-two, head coach Marv Levy didn’t bother attending. He had waited a long time to get to the Super Bowl and didn’t want to waste precious time talking with reporters.
Two seasons of high-school coaching and two more as an assistant at his alma mater, Coe College, prepared Levy to take over as head coach at the University of New Mexico in 1958. Consecutive winning seasons for the Lobos gave way to a more prominent gig, rebuilding the University of California. But in four seasons at Berkeley, the Bears posted eight wins in forty games and he resigned “in the best interests of the university.” Arguably, his finest accomplishment at Cal came away from the gridiron. In February 1960, he gave Fremont High School’s head coach, Bill Walsh, his first collegiate job.
Following a five-year, mixed-results tenure at the College of William & Mary, in 1969 Levy joined the professional game. Brief stints in the NFL prepared him for a head-coaching job with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. There he won a pair of league titles until Lamar Hunt lured him away to coach the Kansas City Chiefs, where he failed to make the playoffs in each of his five seasons. He was fired in 1982. And a season directing the Chicago franchise of the USFL didn’t prove any better. Under Levy—who learned a day after taking the job that his entire roster was swapped with the Arizona Wranglers’ roster—the Blitz finished 5-13.
Despite poor records at his most recent stops, Bill Polian knew that Levy could coach.
“I felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that Marv Levy was the right guy,” said Polian, who worked under Levy in both Montreal and Kansas City. “I was absolutely convinced he could do the job.”
Within two seasons, the Bills were championship contenders. And when the Bills earned their first Super Bowl berth, Levy spent Tuesday watching film and crafting his game plan, instead of providing copy for reporters.
“I’ve been coaching for 40 years,” Levy said. “This is the game I’ve been preparing for all my life, and I’m not going to cut any corners for it.”
League officials threatened Levy with a $5,000 fine if he did not apologize (which he did) to the press. Without Levy, reporters found exciting, even controversial, sound bites to run for their headlines or broadcasts. Bills players were hardly soft-spoken.
Beginning with the day he arrived in Tampa, Thurman Thomas complained to reporters about a lack of respect.
“When people talk about the great backs you hear Neal Anderson, Herschel Walker, Barry Sanders, and Eric Dickerson mentioned,” he said. “All those guys get big paragraphs and I get a little diddly one.”
It was a curious statement considering that for the second straight season, he had been selected to the Pro Bowl. And in that week’s issue of Sports Illustrated, columnist Peter King succinctly summed up the Buffalo offense with the metaphor, “Kelly draws the blueprint and Thomas erects the building.” But Thomas’ feeling of slight was probably justified. Although he accounted for more than one-third of the team’s total yardage during the past two seasons, he still played for “Jim Kelly’s Buffalo Bills.”
Teammate Darryl Talley also felt slightly underappreciated. The eight-year veteran enjoyed his best season in 1990, leading the team with 123 tackles, chipping in four sacks, and scoring his first career touchdown. And his twenty-seven-yard interception return for a touchdown against the Raiders turned the AFC Championship Game into a rout. Talley, however, was again denied a spot on the player-voted Pro Bowl team.
“Evidently I’m not popular enough with my peers,” Talley said. “When you play on a star-studded defense, somebody is bound to get overlooked, and I just feel I’m that person.”[1]
Even veteran James Lofton couldn’t keep from hinting that many Bills felt like second-class citizens in Tampa.
“There’s probably only one nice hotel in Tampa, and I guess the Giants have that.”
Apparently, the Hilton wasn’t nice enough for the Bills.
But in the weeklong disrespect diatribe, one Buffalo Bill, defensive end Bruce Smith, stole the spotlight.
Smith never lacked confidence.
“I hope we’re going to have a winning season. No, we are going to have a winning season,” Smith said during his first training camp in 1985. “It felt great to be the first player drafted. It’s something I’d been hoping for. But I didn’t feel any pressure because of where I was drafted. The only pressure I felt was to come here and do the things I’m capable of doing.”
Eventually, Smith validated his hype, winning consecutive AFC Defensive Player of the Year Awards in 1987 and 1988. And despite not joining the league until 1985, he was named to the NFL’s all-decade team for the 1980s.
After five years of cut blocks from offensive tackles, Smith needed knee surgery following the 1989 season and was forced to change his off-season preparation. A new conditioning program and a change in diet reduced his body-fat percentage to 6.1 (down from 15 percent just two years earlier). Shedding the weight added significant quickness.
“I just decided not to fail,” he said. “I didn’t want to end my career just being some former No. 1 draft-pick fat cat who looks back after it’s over and regrets that he didn’t push himself from a good to a great career.”
In 1990, Smith continued to harass NFL quarterbacks, breaking his own franchise record with nineteen sacks. His contributions to Buffalo’s run defense transformed him from an elite pass rusher into an elite defender.
Frequent double-, even triple-teams, could not slow Smith down and he accounted for 101 tackles. And the attention Smith drew from opposing coaches and players freed up his teammates to make plays when he couldn’t. At the end of the regular season, Smith was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
As a single-season honor, the award wasn’t enough for Smith. He wanted to be recognized unequivocally as the best defensive player in the league. With Lawrence Taylor still around, that had not yet happened.
