Super Bowl Monday

by Adam Lazarus

  “I didn’t have a guy in front of me that was stinking out the place,” he said. “[Simms] was throwing the lights out of the ball, playing really, really well. So there just weren’t the opportunities there that you normally get as a backup quarterback.”

  Not being given opportunities to take snaps—even in practice—was Hostetler’s true frustration. He knew that the first, and really the only, objective of the Giants coaching staff was to prepare the team to win football games. And if the Giants believed Simms gave the team their best shot at victory, then he was the logical choice to quarterback every down. Still, to best serve the team—and himself—the backup felt he needed some level of regular participation.

  During the first six seasons of his NFL career, Hostetler played only four games at quarterback. And aside from the outrage that seeped through after being pulled at halftime against New Orleans in 1988, he quietly endured his frustration.

  “Jeff is the kinda guy that he is such a competitor, he said, ‘Coach, I don’t even have to shower, I never get in. I don’t do anything. It’s just murder,’” Don Nehlen remembered.

  But twice in 1990, he had tasted the so-called crunch time of the fourth quarter. And now, near the end of that season, Hostetler’s patience quickly evaporated.

  “Seven, eight weeks go by and I’ve just had it. You think about it, six-and-a-half years, how long [that] is, over two thousand days. I remember coming home after a Friday practice, no reps again. I sat down at the dinner table with my wife,” he said about reaching his breaking point after six painful years as the team’s backup. “I can remember telling her, ‘That’s it, I’m done; I’m absolutely done. I’ve had it. End of the year, we’re moving; we’re taking everything. I’m done with football.’” Hostetler said later.

  “I felt like I’d finally reached the end, I felt like I had reached the bottom. There wasn’t any further that I could go. And I felt disappointed. I felt empty.”

  2

  Quarterback Lack

  Very early into an eighth decade of professional football, the collective body of New York Giants fans had been familiar with cruel and crippling home losses. Members of the older generation lamented losing to Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts at Yankee Stadium in the 1958 NFL Championship Game. But at least that one was somewhat honorable. The overtime defeat clinched professional football’s unyielding place in American culture.

  The franchise’s transition to brand new Giants Stadium in October 1976 also came with home-field frustrations. “Big Blue,” as the team was sometimes called, lost their first three home contests, the last two by shutout. By the time of the “Miracle at the Meadowlands” (the Philadelphia Eagles impossible last-second victory in 1979), New York had been so bad at home that such an absurd, fluke defeat was almost laughable.

  “Laughable” also describes that 38-12 rout by Washington in October 1987. Instead of the defending Super Bowl champions, scab, replacement players filled in for the striking NFL Players Union. New York lost a third home game in twenty-two days. Most horrified fans stayed home anyway, electing not to watch the faux-Giants drop to an 0-4 record.

  Any history-conscious New Yorker who walked into the East Rutherford, New Jersey, stadium on Saturday, December 15, 1990, had to be aware of the team’s occasional brush with embarrassing or painful home losses. But when the Giants sulked off the Meadowlands AstroTurf later that afternoon, their fans had never known anything like this.

  Following a remarkable 12-4 regular season in 1989, the Giants squandered home-field advantage in their first-round playoff showdown with the wild-card Los Angeles Rams, losing in overtime. At the start of the next year, the team held high hopes, which they fulfilled through two-and-a-half months. A wonderfully balanced New York team won each of the first ten games of the 1990 season.

  Sitting out all of training camp to protest his contract did not keep linebacker Lawrence Taylor from reclaiming his position as the league’s best outside linebacker. He posted three sacks in the season opener against Philadelphia—just five days after returning from his holdout—then recorded another and returned an interception for a touchdown the following week at Dallas. The thirty-one-year-old did not need a preseason to knock the dust off his revolutionary pass-defense skills. With Taylor, Leonard Marshall, Carl Banks, and Pepper Johnson, the Giants featured the best and most feared front seven in the NFL. By Week Eleven, the “Big Blue Wrecking Crew” ranked first in the conference in yardage and points allowed and were ranked first in the NFL in rush defense. The only team to allow fewer yards (fifty-five) and points (one) was the Miami Dolphins, who the Giants dominated 20-3, in late September.

  Throughout the 1980s, the Giants defense had largely overshadowed the offense. But at the start of the new decade, New York’s scoring attack seemed every bit as potent. After ten games, quarterback Phil Simms was the league’s number-one-rated passer, the running attack averaged over 120 yards per contest, and with only ten turnovers in ten games—the lowest in the NFL—the Giants embodied head coach Bill Parcells’ ideal offense.

  By the start of Week Twelve (the team’s bye came in early October), every aspect of the Giants 1990 team seemed flawless. Even Sean Landeta’s punting was tops in the NFL.

  “Each week, you get another win and you get hopeful,” Parcells said at a Monday press conference prior to the eleventh game of the season. “If someone said you’re going to lose five of the next six games but win the division, I’ll take it.”

  A month after Parcells made that comment, he and the Giants were on target for that exact scenario.

  In a rematch at Philadelphia, the Giants suffered their first loss of the season, as elusive quarterback Randall Cunningham scrambled and passed the Eagles to a decisive 31-13 victory. A road loss to one of the league’s best—and a team that had swept New York in both games the previous two seasons—didn’t crush morale. Neither did a narrow 7-3 defeat the following week against San Francisco. After traveling cross-country to battle the reigning two-time Super Bowl champion 49ers, the Giants came up on the short end of a physical defensive melee. Apart from a two-minute stretch in the second period, the game was scoreless.

  Consecutive losses raised questions, but at 10-2, with a three-game lead in the NFC Eastern Division, and a roster full of veterans—most of whom already owned Super Bowl rings from the 1986 season—panic never entered Parcells’ mind.

  “There’s a lot of things unsettled right now,” he said a few days after returning from San Francisco. “Things will change a lot. A loss, or two or three, in the middle of the season, really, will not be how you’re judged. You’re judged not by the middle of the season but by the end.”

  Judgment of the Giants’ end-of-the-season prospects continued to dim the following Sunday. In Week Fourteen, they returned to the Meadowlands for a game against the Vikings and what was a showdown of two teams headed in opposite directions.

  Minnesota had lost six of their first seven games before an impressive resurgence. During a perfect November in which they crushed the 9-1 Chicago Bears by four touchdowns, the Vikings arrived in East Rutherford at 6-6. With Herschel Walker and a fantastic defensive line that included all-pro Chris Doleman, Henry Thomas, and undrafted rookie (yet future Hall of Famer) John Randle, the Vikings had remarkably climbed into the playoff picture.

  With a two-game losing streak and the division title at stake, coach Parcells had plenty on his mind that week. He didn’t need a serious personal health crisis to drain both his physical and mental strength. But he got one. Near midnight on Saturday—a little more than twelve hours before kickoff—Parcells checked himself into Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. The pain from dislodged kidney stones had become unbearable. Although doctors insisted he stay longer, Parcells checked himself out at 9 a.m. the next morning and, equipped with a supply of Demerol, he rode to Giants Stadium, where he fell asleep on the trainer’s table.

  “[Parcells said to me] I’ll go as long as I can,” team physician Dr. Allan Le
vy told reporters. “This is just about the greatest pain you can have, but he couldn’t take very much to kill the pain. He wanted to be able to think during the game.”

  Assistant coaches ran the pregame activities and spoke to the team in the locker room. Ten minutes before game time, Parcells gingerly took his place on the sideline and watched, understandably without his usual fire and gyrations.

  “He didn’t make any moves to show he was hurt,” said Ed “Whitey” Wagner, the team’s equipment manager, who routinely stood next to Parcells on the sideline, “but I knew it was like a knife sticking in him.”

  Parcells’ pain only increased as he watched his team continue to wipe away all memories of a perfect 10-0 start. Four minutes into the action, Doleman sacked Phil Simms in the end zone for a safety, and by the middle of the second quarter, New York trailed 12-3. The Meadowlands crowd repeatedly booed, especially at the sight of Minnesota stuffing a Giants running back on a key fourth down and short. (The Vikings then drove seventy-six yards for the game’s first touchdown.) New York eventually crawled back into the game late in the second period, as a rushing touchdown narrowed the score to 12-10.

  A third consecutive week of trailing at halftime—this time at home against a .500 team—generated palpable frustration in the locker room. Especially for a prideful, once-dominant defense that surrendered 175 first-half yards to the league’s seventeenth-ranked offense.

  “We didn’t tackle anybody and we didn’t cover anybody in the first half,” said defensive end Leonard Marshall.

  “We weren’t aggressive, we let their offense set the tempo,” added linebacker Steve DeOssie.

  Those plain facts infuriated Lawrence Taylor.

  “We’re not physical enough,” he shouted at halftime. “I’m going to start playing the way we’re supposed to play. If anybody wants to come along, fine.”

  In the second half, Taylor led and the Giants followed. Behind 15-10 late in the third quarter, Taylor and the Giants pass rush forced quarterback Rich Gannon into a premature throw, which Greg Jackson intercepted. Four plays later, the Giants added a field goal. Taylor and rookie Mike Fox opened the ensuing series with a sack of Gannon. Then, a lunging tackle from Taylor, followed by defensive lineman Erik Howard’s quarterback sack on third down forced a punt. The offense capitalized on the momentum, as Ottis Anderson closed out an eight-play drive with a two-yard touchdown run.

  Now ahead 20-15, the Giants continued to apply pressure. With under six minutes remaining, Taylor breached the Vikings offensive line and grabbed the legs of Gannon, who was barely able to get rid of the football. Linebacker Gary Reasons intercepted the wobbly pass inside Minnesota territory. The Giants added a short field goal to clinch the victory and the division.

  “He’s a one-man wrecking crew,” Gannon said. “He just took over the fourth quarter. L. T. was the difference. We couldn’t stop him.”

  Taylor accounted for twelve tackles, 2.5 sacks, and one forced fumble.

  “We’d gotten away from our basic objective, to win the division,” Taylor told reporters. “We were thinking about 16-0, about the Super Bowl. We had to get back to basics.”

  Halting the losing skid to secure the NFC East title seemed to cure many of the Giants’ ailments, but not those that pained Parcells, who checked back into the hospital hours after the win to undergo surgery.

  “I just remember watching him on the sidelines that day,” Parcells’ personal secretary Kim Kolbe said years later, “I couldn’t believe that he was out there coaching. And then I just remember him getting in a [state trooper’s car] right after the game and going to the hospital.”

  The defense atoned for the poor efforts against Philadelphia and a disappointing first half against Minnesota. And while the offense had managed only two touchdowns in the previous ten quarters, rookie Rodney Hampton’s presence (he rushed for 105 yards on twenty-one carries) behind their once–Super Bowl MVP quarterback Phil Simms, gave New York a formidable backfield.

  “We’ve taken two steps [making the playoffs and winning the division],” Parcells said. “Maybe we can take another one. We still got some work left.”

  

  Losers of the previous six Super Bowls, the American Football Conference (which had won eleven of the first thirteen post-merger Super Bowl titles) could no longer claim status as the league’s dominant faction. Worse yet, the margin of defeat during the AFC’s losing streak had been twenty-six points. The second half of the 1980s suggested that the AFC was the lesser conference. And the 1990 NFL season continued to promote that myth.

  By the midway point, Week Nine, the National Football Conference boasted two undefeated teams, the Giants and 49ers, as well as Mike Ditka’s 8-1 Chicago Bears. And with the intimidating Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins (Super Bowl champions just three years earlier) still in the playoff hunt, the NFC was as strong as ever.

  Most AFC players and coaches scoffed at the idea of a conference gap.

  “I don’t think there’s any difference between the two conferences. It’s not like the players come from a different talent pool,” said Bills wide receiver James Lofton, a former Raider who had also spent nine seasons with the Green Bay Packers.

  Lofton was right. Great players and great teams still resided in the so-called inferior AFC. Denver’s John Elway and Houston’s Warren Moon operated prolific passing attacks, as did Boomer Esiason of the Cincinnati Bengals, who came very close to an upset win over San Francisco in Super Bowl XXIII. And the Miami Dolphins, coached by Don Shula, had put together a simple-yet-proven formula for success: Dan Marino plus a stout defense yielded wins.

  But no team in the AFC was better than the Buffalo Bills.

  Marv Levy’s November 1986 victory over Pittsburgh—the product of “45 stout hearts and the north wind”—was the first of many. And as much as Levy’s craftiness keyed the Bills’ turnaround, good fortune was also a factor.

  There had been nowhere to go but up when Levy took over the Bills in the middle of 1986. Talented, young defenders, Darryl Talley and Bruce Smith, along with rookie offensive linemen Will Wolford and Kent Hull gave the Bills a solid foundation up front. With second-year wide receiver Andre Reed and former all-pro running back from Notre Dame Greg Bell, the Bills did not lack skill players. And the inevitable demise of the United States Football League during the summer of 1986 gave Levy and the Bills what they needed most: a quarterback, a star, and a leader.

  As he predicted, Jim Kelly had no regrets over choosing the USFL over the Buffalo Bills in June 1983. A multimillionaire at age twenty-three, Kelly enjoyed every bit of his new celebrity, driving a cherry-red Corvette Stingray to bars, restaurants, and publicity events all across town. He quickly validated his large salary and larger brashness. The expansion Gamblers, coached by Jack Pardee, won the Central Division in the spring of 1984. Kelly was unquestionably the league’s finest passer, throwing for 5,219 yards and forty-four touchdowns during the eighteen-game regular season. He won the league MVP that season and was equally superb in 1985.

  Despite the exciting brand of scoring-heavy football, USFL franchises could not draw enough spectators to stay financially sound. In February 1986, Kelly’s Gamblers merged with the New Jersey Generals. Moving to the tristate area meant that the familiar comparisons only continued.

  “For a new league, Kelly is the kind of guy you want,” Jerry Argovitz restated. “He’s like Namath—working class, talented, antiestablishment.”

  A reputation as a “playboy” furthered the parallels. Much like Namath, who once famously sported shades and a fur coat on the sidelines, Kelly almost always wore sunglasses, except underneath his helmet. And the first official act as a member of his new team was to fly to New York City and interview sixty finalists for the Generals cheerleading squad.

  Before he ever threw a pass for owner Donald Trump’s team, the league suspended operations and granted its players the right to negotiate contracts with the NFL for the 1986 season. By August, Kelly an
d the Bills—who still owned his exclusive draft rights—agreed to terms, thirty-nine months after his selection in the 1983 draft.

  Bills fans didn’t care that he previously chose Houston over Buffalo. Nor were they bothered by his less-than-optimistic outlook—“they need more than a quarterback in Buffalo”—for the previously 2-14 team. The day he arrived in town, hordes of Bills fans cheered and chanted his name as his limousine pulled up to the Hilton Hotel for an introductory press conference. Four thousand season tickets were sold the week his signing was announced. Even New York Governor Mario Cuomo phoned during the press conference to welcome him to town.

  According to his former head coach Howard Schnellenberger, Kelly had already been a “messiah” to the University of Miami’s program. His impact on the short-lived Houston Gamblers franchise was similar. Buffalo expected nothing less.

  “I can remember the very first game, we played the Jets, in 1986, the home opener, and people had been talking about getting twenty thousand, thirty thousand people in the stands, and, shoot, we had eighty thousand. They wasn’t there to look at me,” remembered Bills center Kent Hull. “They were there to watch Jim Kelly. He was the savior of that city. That city had just gone through a terrible ordeal where Bethlehem Steel had laid off thirty thousand people in one year. . . . The best way to rally everybody is to find some simple thing everyone enjoys and they all come together. And that happened to be Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills.”

  Kelly’s addition was critical, both on and off the field. But Levy and General Manager Bill Polian knew they needed to revamp the roster. By the middle of his first full season, Levy had received a pair of outstanding linebackers. In the first round of the 1987 draft, Buffalo selected Shane Conlan, a captain of the Penn State team that won the national championship that January.