Super Bowl Monday Read online

  Super Bowl Monday

  Super Bowl Monday

  From the Persian Gulf to

  the Shores of West Florida:

  The New York Giants,

  the Buffalo Bills, and

  Super Bowl XXV

  Adam Lazarus

  TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

  Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  http://www.rlpgtrade.com

  Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 2011 by Adam Lazarus

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any

  electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,

  without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote

  passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lazarus, Adam.

  Super Bowl Monday : from the Persian Gulf to the shores of west Florida : the New

  York Giants, the Buffalo Bills, and Super Bowl XXV / Adam Lazarus.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-58979-600-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-58979-602-7 (electronic)

  1. Super Bowl (25th : 1991 : Tampa, Fla.) 2. New York Giants (Football team)

  3. Buffalo Bills (Football team) 4. Football—United States—History—20th century.

  5. Persian Gulf War, 1991. I. Title.

  GV956.2.S8L4 2011

  796.332'648—dc22

  2011010710

  ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

  American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for

  Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Sarah,

  My love and my muse

  Foreword

  Lynn Swann

  If you are a sports fan who always wanted to know how a moment in the competitive landscape of championship sports came to be, then you have found your answer in Super Bowl Monday. The interviews conducted by Adam Lazarus, plus the revelations of key personnel through various books and stories, give you a 360-degree look at Super Bowl XXV. It is better than being in the locker room.

  I have been fortunate to play and win four Super Bowls. Certainly being the MVP of Super Bowl X was a huge highlight. Also, I have broadcast several Super Bowls for ABC including Super Bowl XXV. In those telecasts, I always had the jobs of pregame reports or stories and interviewing the players and coaches of the losing teams. The NFL did not allow sideline reporters at that time.

  For Super Bowl XXV, I found myself standing on the Giants’ sideline as Whitney Houston was preparing to sing our national anthem. The Giants players all lined up with Bill Parcells standing on the left end, right next to me—the last formality before the players took center stage. With emotions running high under the security due to Desert Storm and F-16s flying low and loud, Parcells turned to me with a huge smile and eagerness, to say, “Swanny, this is what it is all about. This is the fuckin’ best!”

  At the end of a great contest, I was in the Buffalo locker room conducting live interviews for our world audience. Many players and coaches have been professional in discussing a Super Bowl loss. None was as gracious as kicker Scott Norwood. It was the first of many that night for Scott, and he gave lessons in class each time.

  What I have just told you was a small part of the night from my viewpoint. Adam gives you the personal stories of all the key players.

  Read Super Bowl Monday and you will feel that you now know the whole story of an American classic that continues to inspire a nation.

  Lynn Swann

  November 2010

  Introduction

  Every Super Bowl is special. A neck-and-neck game, such as the Steelers-Cowboys rematch in Super Bowl XIII, or a gripping finish, like Mike Jones’ tackle at the end of the St. Louis Rams’ win over Tennessee in January 2000, naturally establishes a permanent place in the game’s mythology.

  Super Bowl VI, between Dallas and Miami, was one of the worst playoff games during the entire decade of the 1970s: the Dolphins remain the only Super Bowl participant that failed to score even a single touchdown. Nevertheless, anyone present at that 24-3 Cowboy triumph witnessed arguably the greatest collection of talent in the history of professional football. Apart from the matchup of Hall of Fame head coaches (Tom Landry and Don Shula) and Hall of Fame starting quarterbacks (Roger Staubach and Bob Griese), eleven other starters in that game would eventually be enshrined in Canton, Ohio.

  And through the course of five decades, the Super Bowl has featured moments that had nothing to do with football. Looking past the national crisis caused by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s “wardrobe malfunction” in January 2004, political events and social issues have managed to seep into the story lines of past Super Bowls.

  The New Orleans Saints’ victory in Super Bowl XLIV was especially poignant considering the city was more than four years into the nightmare caused by Hurricane Katrina.

  Nearly thirty years earlier, when the “Crescent City” hosted Super Bowl XV, the nation’s attention was more fixated on the safe return of the hostages that spent 444 days in Iran than the impending Oakland Raiders–Philadelphia Eagles matchup on January 25, 1981. To honor the fifty-two Americans who had been released two days before the Raiders’ 27-10 victory, the outside of the Superdome was adorned with an eighty-foot-long yellow bow.

  That national pride would return to New Orleans in early February 2002. Fittingly, the red-white-and-blue-wearing Patriots from New England won Super Bowl XXXVI at the Superdome, five months after the tragic events that took place on September 11, 2001.

  If these are the criteria that make the NFL’s annual title game great, Super Bowl XXV, between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, had them all.

  In terms of what took place on the field that particular day, January 27, 1991, there has never been a better contest. There were four lead changes. The game came down to the last seconds. The margin of victory was one point. There wasn’t a single turnover. A seven-point underdog emerged triumphant.

  With the Empire State showdown marking the Super Bowl’s quarter century, silver anniversary, it was appropriate that a handful of pro football legends stood on the Tampa Stadium sidelines that day.

  Two of the greatest pass rushers of all time, Lawrence Taylor and Bruce Smith, led their respective defenses.

  Three (current or future) Hall of Fame head coaches, Bill Parcells, Marv Levy, and Bill Belichick, were the brains behind the game plans.

  Several of the greatest players during their era starred for the Giants and Bills 1990 teams: Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, James Lofton, Andre Reed, Mark Bavaro, Carl Banks, Pepper Johnson, and Leonard Marshall. In all, thirty-four once-or-future Pro Bowlers competed in Super Bowl XXV: seventeen for each team if the injured Phil Simms is counted.

  And with the Persian Gulf War—America’s first true war since Vietnam—having officially begun ten days before the Giants and Bills kicked off in west Florida, Super Bowl XXV had a cloud of peril and uncertainty hanging above it like no other single-day event in the nation’s sports history.

  Still, for all the lines on a Hall of Famer’s résumé, the back-and-forth excitement of a game that comes down to the last play, eve
n the larger, far more significant non-football issues that might hover above a sporting event, Americans cherish the tales of redemptions and underdogs as much as anything. Why else are Rocky, Hoosiers, Seabiscuit, and Major League such compelling box office draws?

  That is why the individual stories of New York Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler and his teammate, running back Ottis Anderson, occupy special places in NFL history . . . and this book. That is also why the Buffalo Bills franchise’s swift transition from laughingstock to dynasty, beginning in the late 1980s and into 1990, is central to the drama within Super Bowl Monday.

  But an NFL team is comprised of dozens of players, coaches, trainers, administrators, secretaries, and so on. So while Hostetler, Anderson, Jim Kelly, James Lofton, and a few others are the “faces” of this book, inside these pages are any number of side stories and lesser-known tales.

  The historic action that took place on the field that day is the reason for this book. But the men who carried out those graceful or superb displays of athleticism that evening are what I hope you will find most captivating.

  Adam Lazarus

  October 2010

  Prologue

  November 9, 1986

  Week Ten of the 1986 National Football League season was a typical one for the New York Giants. Linebacker Lawrence Taylor guided the team to a shutout of the Philadelphia Eagles through the first three quarters. The eventual league Most Valuable Player tallied three sacks and seven tackles in the NFC East showdown at Veterans Stadium. A pair of touchdowns by all-pro running back Joe Morris gave New York a seventeen-point lead late in the third quarter. And clutch passing by quarterback Phil Simms added just enough for the Giants to secure a 17-14 win over their division rival.

  Equally routine that afternoon was the sight of Jeff Hostetler and Ottis Anderson watching most of the action from the Giants’ sideline.

  Few people possessed Hostetler’s blend of intelligence and athleticism. Although six feet, three inches tall, 215 pounds, and blessed with speed and a strong throwing arm, brains were probably his greatest asset. After earning first-team academic all-American honors at the University of West Virginia, the finance major was nominated for a Rhodes scholarship.

  Those physical and mental tools intrigued the Giants, who not only selected Hostetler in the third round of the 1984 NFL draft but also signed the twenty-three-year-old to a three-year, $1 million contract prior to his rookie season.

  Regardless of his talents—and his comparatively large salary—in three years on the Giants’ roster, Hostetler never dropped back in the pocket, never read the opposing defense’s coverage to find the open receiver, and never threw a pass. Instead, Hostetler earned (very minimal) playing time only as a special teamer and, occasionally, an emergency wide receiver.

  “What it made you feel like was that you weren’t really part of the team. Here you are, you do all the work during the week and then come Sunday you stand there and watch,” Hostetler said years later. “It was extremely difficult mentally because you know that if you had the opportunity to go out and perform and make some mistakes and learn from it that you could do that job. But to never have the opportunity was extremely frustrating.”

  By the middle of his second season, Hostetler could no longer take the inaction.

  “I wanted desperately to get out on the field and get into the game, use myself up a little, so I asked if I could play on any of the special teams,” Hostetler later wrote. “Then a couple of the wide receivers got hurt and we were running low on them in practice so I volunteered to run the plays. The coaches liked what they saw and they told [head coach Bill Parcells] that if they ever needed somebody, they could put me in as a receiver. . . . In the end, I got into quite a few games, which was better than just sitting on the bench eating my heart out.”

  And despite not doing so as a quarterback, Hostetler did make an impact for the Giants.

  Midway through the second quarter of the Week Ten battle in Veteran Stadium, New York forced the Eagles to punt. Coach Parcells sent onto the field his return squad, of which Hostetler was a member. While both teams were lining up to start the fourth-down play, Eagles tight end John Spagnola—still discussing pass routes on the sidelines with his fellow receivers—forgot to fill his special teams duties as a blocker for the punt team.

  “I knew they had only 10 men on the field,” Hostetler said, “because there was no one on me. When I saw that, I hurried up and got down. I didn’t want them to see me.”

  At the snap, Hostetler knifed through the line and deflected punter John Teltschik’s kick. The ball went four yards past the line of scrimmage, giving the Giants offense great field position, inside Eagles territory. New York scored the game’s first touchdown six plays later.

  “It gets boring just sitting around,” Hostetler said when reporters asked him that week about his non-quarterback role. “These things give me something to do. It gets me involved. At least I’m contributing somewhere.”

  But punt blocking and route running was not the pro-football future Jeff Hostetler had hoped for. Since childhood—playing two-on-two tackle football with his brothers, Ron, Doug, and Todd—he dreamed of commanding the huddle, scanning the field for receivers, and throwing the football to the open man.

  “And I hope everyone remembers that,” said Hostetler, addressing his desire to be the team’s quarterback. “People ask me when I’m going to play. And I tell them I don’t know. I know I can play. I just need the opportunity.”

  Like his teammate Jeff Hostetler, running back Ottis Anderson hungered for a chance to play. But at least Hostetler occasionally contributed to the Giants on special teams, as he did in the early November game against Philadelphia. On that day, Anderson never even set foot onto the field of play.

  A month before their win over the Eagles, New York curiously acquired the eight-year veteran Anderson—a former all-pro and the eleventh leading rusher in NFL history—from the St. Louis Cardinals. But with Joe Morris in the middle of his second straight exceptional season, Anderson was not brought in to change the status quo. His role was expected to be that of a decoy or to occasionally spell Morris, who (at five feet seven inches and 190 pounds) was averaging more than twenty carries per game.

  “The Giants told me they needed more production from the fullback position,” Anderson later wrote, “though they knew I was a halfback. It was a way to quickly get me on the field and change their one-dimension offense, which was basically Joe Morris left, Joe Morris right.”

  Anderson carried the ball thirteen times for fifty yards in three games after joining the team; not bad for a soon-to-be thirty-year-old rusher still learning the playbook. But a nagging hamstring injury, which he suffered during his first appearance with the Giants, slowed his step.

  And although, at first, he had been eager to leave the inept 1-4 Cardinals for the 4-1, perennially playoff-caliber Giants—“This is like a second chance in my life, a chance to play in the Super Bowl,” he said when he met the New York press—his mood quickly soured. Only six carries in three games, then sitting out completely during the Giants’ win in Philadelphia, left Anderson feeling lost.

  “Embarrassed,” he said, describing his mood a few weeks into his Giants career. “That’s it. I get traded from a team that hasn’t won a game to a team that has lost only once, and then this thing happens to my hamstring. So I’m more embarrassed than anything else. You can deal with frustration. People say don’t worry, but you’re a player. You want to produce.”

  New York’s victory over the host Eagles that day pushed their record to 8-2, the team’s best start since 1963. The Giants would not lose another game during the remainder of the regular season, earning home-field advantage in the playoffs. And once the postseason began, Bill Parcells’ crew was even better. They obliterated Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers in the opening round 49-3, then shut out Joe Gibbs’ powerful Washington Redskins to advance to the franchise’s first Super Bowl. At the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,
California, New York overcame a narrow halftime deficit to stomp the Denver Broncos and win Super Bowl XXI 39-20.

  Anderson scored a somewhat meaningless two-yard touchdown in that Super Bowl win (the Giants already held a twenty-point lead with less than four minutes remaining in the game), but admitted the moment left him feeling “somewhat saddened, because I felt I was on a team that I didn’t make a major contribution to.”

  “To be honest,” he later said, “I didn’t feel a part of that Giants team.”

  Neither did Jeff Hostetler. Playing wide receiver in a late-season game against San Francisco, the third-string quarterback injured his knee and was placed on injured reserve, leaving him ineligible for the postseason. From the sidelines of the Rose Bowl Stadium, in street clothes, Hostetler watched Phil Simms lead New York to the title by way of the most accurate passing performance in Super Bowl history. (The game’s Most Valuable Player, Simms completed twenty-two of twenty-five passes for 268 yards and three touchdowns.)

  As the weeks, months, and eventually years of being anchored to the sideline mounted—as did awareness that their ephemeral athletic gifts were being wasted—Hostetler and Anderson naturally connected.

  “There was a pretty tight bond there as far as we both knew what we were going through and we were pulling for each other. There was a constant patting guys on the back and ‘keep going, keep going’ and ‘it’ll happen,’” Hostetler remembered. “I think having him there was a real positive for me because there was a guy there that had been playing and knew what it was like and then ‘boom’ the opportunities dried up and you weren’t a contributor and you felt like you were on the outside looking in. . . . And that’s frustrating, ’cause you didn’t make it that far by being satisfied with just having a uniform on.”

  

  Week Ten of the 1986 National Football League season was not a typical one for the Buffalo Bills; and for reasons beyond simply posting a victory.