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                                                                 Dallas LB Chuck Howley

Super Bowl V may have been the strangest of all of the 44 NFL title games played since the Super Bowl began. It was played following the 1970 season, the first year the NFL and AFL merged into one league with 2 conferences, after Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore were transferred from the old NFL into the American Conference of the new NFL. After the AFL had established itself as the NFL’s equal with 2 consecutive stunning Super Bowl wins, by the Jets and Chiefs, suddenly the game wound up with 2 old NFL teams playing each other, which took some of the competitiveness out of the game which existed when the young AFL was trying to make a name for itself in earlier years. Both teams entered this game with issues – the Cowboys had gained a reputation for being a good team that “couldn’t win the big one” after failing in the playoffs every year since the early ’60s. The Colts returned to the game where they had suffered the “embarrassment” of being upset by the upstart AFL Jets 2 years earlier, only this time were representing that upstart league as AFC champions. Nonetheless, both teams entered the contest needing to win badly to erase a losing stigma, despite being successful, winning franchises.

The game was an artistic mess, and it looked as if neither team was going to be able to erase that losing stigma, or if either was even capable. The game, which became known as the “Blunder Bowl”, featured 11 combined turnovers, including 7 by the winning team (a record that still stands today), 14 total penalties and a boatload of punts. The Cowboys finished with 113 passing yards, the Colts had 69 yards rushing. All 3 quarterbacks who played in the game, John Unitas and Earl Morrall for Baltimore and Craig Morton for Dallas, completed less than 50% of their pass attempts. A rookie kicker, Jim O’Brien, won the game by kicking a field goal with 5 seconds left, but only after Cowboy RB Dan Reeves let a pass slip through his hands that LB Mike Curtis intercepted, to set it up. Baltimore’s Don McCafferty became the first rookie head coach to win a Super Bowl, but obviously his coaching genius wasn’t much of a factor in the win. For the first and only time in Super Bowl history, a player from the losing team – linebacker Chuck Howley of the Cowboys (pictured above) – was named the game’s MVP. Howley refused to accept the award, saying it was meaningless to him after his team lost. So the Colts, ultimately, erased the stigma of being embarrassed by the Jets in Super Bowl III, but, instead of winning back the glory for the old guard NFL, their win gave the upstart AFL, now the AFC, a 3-2 lead in title games between the leagues. The Cowboys’ story finally got a happy ending also, as they returned to the Super Bowl the next season and soundly defeated Don Shula’s young up-and-coming Miami Dolphin squad in Super Bowl VI to finally give Tom Landry his long-awaited championship. One thing this game accomplished – it firmly established the fact that the old battleground days of the NFL and AFL were over, and that the NFL was now just one big happy family. From this point, the game grew immensely in the 1970s and beyond into the monster it is today.

When the careers of head coaches and quarterbacks in the NFL are ultimately judged, winning – or at least reaching – Super Bowls is one of the important measuring sticks that is used. For some reason, though, perceptions of those players and coaches vary. Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw both won four Super Bowls, and both receive accolades for this accomplishment, including induction into the Hall of Fame. But when the discussion of the greatest QBs of all time begins, Montana is usually at or near the top of the list, while Bradshaw rarely gets mentioned. The perception of Montana is that he was a football surgeon, slicing and dicing opposing defenses like no other before or after him. To me that perception is right on the money. I feel “Joe Cool” is the best quarterback of all time. But the perception of Bradshaw is that he was a bumbling knucklehead who rode on the coattails of  the Steel Curtain defense to those 4 titles. Bradshaw wasn’t an instant success in the NFL, struggling early in his career and even getting benched a few times, but ultimately he developed into a top-notch passer – in fact it was Bradshaw’s arm that won a couple of the 4 Super Bowls the Steelers garnered in the 1970s. Bradshaw probably doesn’t rank with Montana at the top of the list, but he certainly should be in the conversation ahead of Dan Marino, who was a great passer but never won anything, yet is always mentioned in the argument over who is the best of all time. John Elway is another QB who, after winning 2 titles, moved up into the discussion. Yet it can be argued that Elway never managed to win anything until the Broncos added Terrell Davis and started running the ball to complement Elway’s passing. The argument over the top QBs is usually made using the narrow range of the Super Bowl era, only including players who played from 1967 and beyond. Unfortunately, using that range cheats players like Bart Starr, who won 2 Super Bowls but also won 3 NFL championships in the early 1960s before the Super Bowl began, which puts him ahead of both Montana and Bradshaw. Then there is Otto Graham, who quarterbacked the Cleveland Browns to the title game 10 times and won 7 times, although some of those titles were won in the old All- America Football Conference, before the Browns joined the NFL.  Jim Plunkett was an overall first round draft choice who entered the NFL with much fanfare, but failed in early opportunities in New England and San Francisco and was considered a major bust. Then he joined the Raiders and resurrected his career, winning a pair of Super Bowls. Yet Plunkett gets no love at all when it comes to rating the top QBs, or even when it comes to being considered for Canton. His early perception as a bust still haunts him. Raider owner Al Davis has always claimed that there is an anti-Raider bias around the league because of all his lawsuits and battles with former commissioner Pete Rozelle, and he has a point, not only when you consider Plunkett but also his old coach, Tom Flores. Flores won 2 titles and is never mentioned among the top coaches. He won as many championships as Bill Parcells, yet gets no attention at all while Parcells is generally always tagged with the “genius” label. Parcells was a great football coach, but it took a field goal attempt sailing wide right by a couple of feet to get him his second title, so is he really a better coach than Flores was? Don Shula is always considered one of the best, if not THE best, head coach of all time. He won more games than any other coach, and had only 2 losing seasons in his 32 year run as a head coach. But Shula also only won 2 Super Bowls, and his overall record in the Super Bowl was 2-4. Tom Landry was one of the NFL’s most innovative and creative coaches, and his career includes some remarkable accomplishments, including guiding his Dallas Cowboy team to 20 consecutive winning seasons, and winning more post-season games (20) than any other coach. Yet his Super Bowl record is sub-.500 (2-3), and early in his career was considered a coach who “couldn’t win the big one”. Chuck Noll was 4-0 in the game, the late Bill Walsh 3-0. Walsh gets the “genius” tag also, deservedly so. But Noll, who was a low-key no-nonsense coach, rarely is thought of in the argument over the top coaches of all time.  

Reaching the Super Bowl was a shining moment for QBs like Mark Rypien, Trent Dilfer and Jeff Hostetler, but it didn’t push any of them into the argument on top signal-callers of all time. Yet not winning titles has kept players like Sonny Jurgenson, John Brodie and Dan Fouts out of the conversation. The same can be said for some coaches who’ve reached the pinnacle. Brian Billick won in Baltimore and George Siefert won 2 following Walsh in San Francisco, raising their status above where it probably belongs, while long-time successful coaches like Don Coryell and Chuck Knox, who never won a championship, are considered “second tier” coaches on the all-time list.

Since this is Super Bowl week, the annual week of megahype leading up to the National Football League’s championship game, Rayonsports.com will feature  posts having to do with the big game. I’ve always felt that the game has become such a circus-like event, with the stands full of corporate sponsors and the over-the-top halftime shows, that the last REAL football games of every season were the conference title games. That could be just a biased opinion of a Buffalo Bills’ fan though. I have a tradition of staying up all night the Saturday night before the game and watching ESPN’s all-night marathon of Super Bowl highlight videos. Two years ago I only made it until around 3 AM, then fell asleep on the couch, with my last recollection of  being awake and watching being Scott Norwood’s field goal in the Super Bowl XXV video sailing wide right. I dozed off with a slight tear in my eye, from being overtired I’m sure. Last year, my grandsons joined in on the tradition but I couldn’t find any ESPN channels carrying the highlights. Thankfully, I stumbled across Hulu.com and found a library of every game right up to the last one, and we were able to watch on a laptop. My oldest grandson only lasted until around midnight, but the younger one stayed up with me until after 1 AM. I’m looking forward to having them both over again this year.

The Super Bowl has become the premier sporting event in the U.S. , and that has spawned lots of books about it over the years. You can find a book chronicling  just about every year’s winner and their journey to reach the pinnacle, etc., and there are some other interesting books about the game also. The Billion Dollar Game: Behind-The-Scenes of The Greatest Day In American Sport – Super Bowl Sunday by Allen St. John has a long title, and is pretty short on information about the actual sport of football. If you’re interested in reading about all the fanfare surrounding the game, the book has lots of interesting facts, from stories of partying celebrities to details of how the Playboy Super Bowl party is set up. There’s The Super Bowl: An Official Retrospective by Rare Air, Ltd., Ken Leiker and Craig Ellenport and Super Bowl Trivia: 75 Quizzes from A to Z by J.M. Colbert, which I haven’t read but is supposed to be fun to have for Super Bowl parties. One interesting book is a Kindle edition eBook, available for $.99, called  200+ Ultimate Football Super Bowl Recipes eBook Cookbook by eBook Ventures. I haven’t read it but it makes me hungry just thinking about it. If you’re a true football fan and you want to read about the history of the Super Bowl, from the beginning right up until Super Bowl 43, I recommend The Ultimate Super Bowl Book by Bob McGinn. It’s subtitle is A Complete Reference To The Stats, Stars and Stories Behind Football’s Biggest Game – And Why The Best Team Won, and that’s exactly what it is. It covers each and every game and has lots of fascinating back stories about the teams, coaches and players involved. I’m not an avid reader but this was a book I couldn’t put down, being a person who loves the history of the sport.

I love this year’s matchup between two of the NFL’s most storied franchises, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, and am really excited about the game. Both teams earned their way into the Super Bowl by winning tough games in cold weather, the first time I remember that happening in awhile. So, I’ll join in with the NFL’s hype machine and post things having to do with the Super Bowl this week. Hopefully it’s a great game!

Today – Thursday, January 27th, 2011, is the 20th anniversary of a game that lives on in Buffalo sports history as “Wide Right”, the Buffalo Bills’ first-ever appearance in the NFL’s Super Bowl following the 1990 season, that ended in heart-breaking fashion with kicker Scott Norwood missing a 47 yard field goal that would’ve won the game. It is still the only game in Super Bowl history in which the ultimate title match winner was decided on the game’s final play.  There was a story on the sports segment of the local news today showing video of the game’s final play and its’ immediate aftermath, showing the agony on the faces of the Bills’ players and especially, coach Marv Levy. The reporter doing the story included a telephone interview he had done recently with Levy, recalling the Hall of Fame coach’s memories of the post-game locker room scene. He recalled that one by one, all the Bills’ players stopped to personally console Norwood, and many of them reminded the forlorn kicker of moments in the game when mistakes they had made had contributed to the loss, and that it was a total team defeat, not his fault. Buffalo fans obviously saw the game’s outcome a similar way, as they repeatedly chanted for Norwood at a rally the following week in downtown Buffalo to honor the team, then heartily cheered him when he relunctantly came to the podium to face the crowd (see link below).

When I watched the video of the end of the game on the sports tonight, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind – first, how young the players all looked, and secondly, how over the years these players have not only come to grips with the crushing loss, and three more Super Bowl losses to follow, but also how they’ve grown closer to each other as a family over the years, and come to appreciate each other as friends and “teammates” for life.  Jim Kelly will always be remembered as the quarterback whose team lost 4 straight Super Bowls, but I’ve always felt that those losses prepared Kelly to deal with the battle his son Hunter faced in his short life. Four losses in football games, no matter how big the stage, tend to pale in importance when compared to dealing with what Kelly and his wife did with their young son’s illness, and when the big Hall of Fame quarterback had to face that battle, those football game losses left him armed with a large dose of proper perspective.

The game itself has faded into football lore, taking its’ rightful place as one of the greatest of all time, and over the years football insiders have come to appreciate how special it was for one team to “climb the mountain” four years in succession, even if the end result was four straight disappointments, as team members continue to be honored with inductions into the game’s shrine in Canton. Their accomplishments are the ultimate example of the old saying that’s been attributed to a lot of football’s past greats, including Vince Lombardi and Mike Ditka, that “it’s not how many times you get knocked down that’s important, but how many times you get back up and try again”.  After all, nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills.

Niagara Square Rally 1991

It’s a shame that a lot of younger football fans don’t even remember Don Meredith, who passed away on Monday of a stroke, as an original member of the Monday Night Football broadcast team, yet alone his playing career as a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Meredith backed up Eddie LeBaron at QB in Dallas in the franchise’s first 2 years of existence in 1960 and ’61, split time with LeBaron in ’62, then became the full-time starter for coach Tom Landry’s team in 1963. He then proceeded to guide the ‘Boys into their first winning era, on their way to becoming “America’s Team”. It’s unfortunate that Meredith never won a championship in his career. He played 9 seasons and was retired by the time Dallas won their first Super Bowl in 1971. During Meredith’s era, the Cowboys gained a reputation as being one of those teams that “can’t win the big one”, and in Meredith’s two title game encounters with Green Bay, in 1966 and ’67, he didn’t play particularly well. In ’66, the game was played in Dallas’ home stadium, the Cotton Bowl, and Green Bay jumped out to an early 14-0 lead. Meredith led a comeback and made a game of it, even driving the Cowboys to Green Bay’s 2 yard line with a chance to tie the game late in what was a shootout style of game. Meredith threw an interception that sealed the win, 34-27, for the Packers. The next year, the same 2 teams played for the NFL title again, this time in Green Bay’s Lambeau Field in what would turn out to be one of the most memorable games in league history, the “Ice Bowl”. Played in horrid, frigid conditions, neither team mounted much offense in the game. However, Packer signal-caller Bart Starr is remembered for scoring the winning TD on a quarterback sneak, while Meredith totaled 59 yards passing for the afternoon.

What I remember about Meredith is that he was a gamer. He took vicious hits and kept bouncing back. He was a real leader of his football team, and the Cowboys’ reputation of not being able to win the big one had nothing to do with Meredith’s desire to win. His teammates always respected him and his inner drive to win. Following his retirement, he became an analyst on NFL telecasts, eventually joining the  ground-breaking MNF crew. Teaming with Howard Cosell as analysts,  he carved out his “Dandy Don” personna by playing off Cosell’s arrogance with his witty, country charm, as Keith Jackson, and then Frank Gifford as play-by-play announcers, played the straight man. It was really the first time a football announcing team brought entertainment to the booth, and became part of the story as much as the game was. Those early Monday Night Football telecasts, and the humor and entertainment Meredith and Cosell provided, were huge in helping to grow the NFL into the monster it is today – the real national pastime.  So now, to quote “Dandy Don” himself, “turn out the lights, the party’s over”, for Meredith on this earth. His legacy as both a player and analyst deserves to be mentioned, because it was a big part of the game. Rest in peace, Dandy Don.

On this day in 1931, legendary NFL head coach Bill Walsh was born in Los Angeles, California. I recently read a short biography of Walsh and it reminded me of a fact that seems lost in today’s NFL – that the greatest coaches of all time are the ones that are the best teachers, not the ones who rant and rave and put on a big macho act. Paul Brown was an innovator in that he was the first to introduce classroom training and film study to the NFL. Vince Lombardi has a reputation as a taskmaster but in reality he was one of the best “teaching” head coaches of all time. He was a teacher before he decided to go into coaching. Tom Landry was as stoic a figure on the sidelines as there’s ever been. His method was all about teaching and preparation throughout the week in practice, not yelling and screaming on the sideline on Sundays. Chuck Noll, who played for Brown in Cleveland, always had a reputation for being low-key in Pittsburgh. Noll was a no-nonsense coach, but like the others was all about having his team prepared. Joe Gibbs always had a Mr.Peepers persona, peering out through his eyeglasses, but he too was a great “teacher”. 

Walsh was the ultimate in football coaches who you’d never guess were coaches if you met them on the street. He was professorial to the point where he came across as arrogant. Old school football people always scoffed at Walsh’s “West Coast” offense, which substituted a short “dink and dunk” passing game for the running game. His offense took the opposite approach of the norm, which was that you had to run the ball effectively to set up the passing game. Walsh would pass the ball to set up the running game. It wasn’t a particularly physical style of football, which is what drove football purists crazy, but it was definitely an extension of Walsh’s personality – a scholarly approach to the game rather than the usual “three yards and a cloud of dust” approach. Walsh had the knack for bringing in players who fit his system and were mature to the point where they didn’t need constant babysitting and policing (see this year’s Dallas Cowboys or Minnesota Vikings for examples of that). Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig and Matt Millen were not only the team’s best players but also the hardest working. In his early formative years, Walsh was not a great athlete, or a top student either. Obviously he was a genius when it came to football though. When he worked at San Jose State as a graduate assistant coach, the head coach wrote this note in his personnel file: “I predict Bill Walsh will become the outstanding football coach in the United States.” There was a great quote in that biography on Walsh that sums up his scholarly approach to the game. ESPN analyst Beano Cook said this about him: “If Bill Walsh was a general, he would be able to overrun Europe with an army from Sweden.” Walsh was definitely one of the NFL’s greatest coaches of all time, and deserves the “genius” label that he used to seem to relish wearing. When he passed away in 2007 the league lost a great resource, and if there’s one thing current NFL owners can learn from him, it’s that every once in awhile when your team is struggling and your knee-jerk reaction is to blame the coach for “losing control of the locker room” and fire him, maybe a closer look at what kind of players are in that locker room should be in order.

                                            Inaugural Dallas Thanksgiving Game vs. Browns in 1966.

Detroit has had the honor of hosting the NFL’s annual Thanksgiving Day game since 1934, but in 1966, the league added a second Turkey Day game, awarding the honor to the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys played the Cleveland Browns in their inaugural game that year, and the game was pivotal in the young franchise’s development. The Cowboys entered the game with a 7-2-1 record while the Browns, who were 7-3, had played in the 2 previous NFL Championship games and were a powerhouse at the time. Tom Landry’s club won the game, 26-14, and would go on to have an astounding 20 straight winning seasons. The NFL’s move to put an annual game in Dallas was a good decision by commissioner Pete Rozelle, as the team, since that first game in ’66, has been a marquee franchise ever since. My daughter, who is now in her 30s, has fond childhood memories of family get togethers – she recalls them being Sunday afternoons – where the family was gathered around the televison and the Cowboys were always playing a late afternoon game. She distinctly remembers Landry, with his trademark fedora hat and stoic look, standing on the sidelines, with the large silver stars lining the walls of the old Texas Stadium behind him. I think she may actually be remembering Thanksgiving Day celebrations rather than Sundays, since the Cowboys have been Turkey Day fixtures her whole life.

The most memorable Dallas Thanksgiving game has to be the “Clint Longley” game, played on November 28, 1974. It was a matchup of the Cowboys and their most bitter division rivals, coach George Allen’s Washington Redskins. These 2 teams regularly battled it out for NFC supremacy in the 1970s, and this year was no exception. Allen’s “Over The Hill Gang”, a collection of veterans and old misfits that the coach fielded due to his disdain for playing rookies, were challenging Landry’s always strong team for first place in the NFC East. The ‘Skins were dominating this game, and when veteran linebacker Dave Robinson hammered the Cowboys’ star QB, Roger Staubach, with a tackle so vicious that it knocked Staubach out of the game, it looked hopeless for the home town team. Staubach’s replacement was 22-year old unproven rookie Clint Longley, who had not played in a game up to that point. Longley had earned the nickname “The Mad Bomber” from his teammates for his habit of throwing errant passes and hitting Landry’s coaching tower in practice. He came into the game with his team trailing, 16-3, and wound up throwing 2 touchdown passes, including the game-winner to Drew Pearson, to lead the Cowboys to an improbable 24-23 win. Longley had no expectation of ever playing in the game and entered it totally unprepared, and afterward lineman Blaine Nye, his teammate, sarcastically called the win “a triumph of the uncluttered mind.” The game turned out to be Longley’s 15 minutes of fame, as less than 2 years later, he sucker punched Staubach from behind in the locker room during training camp, leaving Staubach requiring several stitches to repair his face. The team immediately traded Longley to San Diego, where his career faded. It was reported recently on the NFL Network that Longley wound up selling carpeting out of his car back in Texas.

                                                            Clint Longley in 1974.