by Adam Lazarus
“They were used to rolling in that no-huddle offense,” nose tackle Erik Howard said. “At that time, I think the Bills had to be saying ‘what is this, a completely different look?’ and they were going to have to adjust to it. There was no way they could prepare for that.
“That was a major deal: sitting us all down and saying ‘We’re putting in a completely new defense.’ We hadn’t played that all season. I think that action alone inspired a whole lot of confidence.”
As the game wore on, the Giants stuck to their game plan and even (occasionally) pulled defensive end Leonard Marshall off the field: only one defensive lineman was on the field for New York. To combat the unorthodox offense of the Buffalo Bills, Belichick crafted an equally quirky defense.
On that first-and-ten, opening play from scrimmage, Kelly surveyed the field as three Giants neared his right side. Just as Marshall—nearing another gruesome championship game tackle of a Pro Bowl quarterback—leapt at him, Kelly unloaded the ball downfield, far beyond his intended receiver, Andre Reed.
Kelly looking for number “83” was nothing new. Not only had Reed been Buffalo’s most dangerous receiver all season, he was by far the quarterback’s favorite target.
Reed, who turned twenty-seven two days after the Super Bowl, starred for Kutztown University, a Division II football program roughly eighty miles northwest of Philadelphia. Team scout Elbert Dubenion—a small school (Bluffton College) product himself—saw potential in Reed, and the Bills chose him in the fourth round of the 1985 draft.
“Supposedly, I was a diamond in the rough,” Reed said. “And [Dubenion] was one of the guys who got me up here. He just told me I had as much of a chance as anyone else of making the team.”
As Buffalo’s offense improved, Reed blossomed into the best wide receiver in the AFC, leading his conference in receptions and yardage in 1989. A year later, he earned a second consecutive spot on the all-pro team. From the moment Kelly joined the Bills in 1986, Reed led the team in catches each season. And by the time their careers were complete, the Kelly-Reed duo would produce more touchdowns than even the celebrated Joe Montana–to–Jerry Rice combination.
“Everybody talks about Jerry Rice, but I’ll stick with Andre,” Kelly said that week in Tampa. “The guy is unbelievable.”
Having missed Reed on the game’s first snap, Kelly returned to him on the next two plays, and this time both passes were completions. But on each reception, the Giants defense and its wall of bodies in the middle of the field—in place of pass-rushing linemen—swallowed Reed up as soon as he made the catch. Buffalo did not gain a first down and was forced to punt.
Dave Meggett’s twenty-yard return of a Rick Tuten punt provided the Giants with a good starting point, the Buffalo forty-three-yard line, for their first offensive series. While the Bills had opened the game in the shotgun with an empty backfield and five receivers, New York’s offense formation was, predictably, the complete opposite.
From a three–tight end, single-back set, Hostetler handed the ball off to Ottis Anderson for a short loss. Because Darryl Talley had been offsides at the time of the snap, the play was nullified, and New York was awarded five free yards. Benefiting from the game’s first penalty, the Giants strung together a pair of first downs by way of a play-action pass from Hostetler to tight end Howard Cross and a run from Meggett.
But after crossing their opponents thirty-five, an incompletion and a short run brought up a third and seven. Forced into a passing situation, the Giants replaced the three-tight-end running alignment with their own four-receiver shotgun set. Hostetler completed a short pass to the slot receiver, Mark Ingram, who broke a tackle and eluded two others, to pick up sixteen yards. New York’s fourth first down in six offensive snaps set the Giants up at the Buffalo fifteen.
Just a few minutes into Super Bowl XXV, the Giants, not the Bills, looked like the team with the offensive edge.
Buffalo’s defense promptly stiffened, and the Giants could only gain a few yards over the next three plays. Well within Matt Bahr’s range, New York attempted a twenty-eight-yard field goal that split the uprights. With a little more than seven minutes remaining in the first quarter, the Giants led 3-0.
Flashback: Super Bowl I
“I don’t think any of us knew what to expect,” Bill Curry said years later. “But we certainly didn’t expect thirty thousand empty seats at the biggest game in the history of the world.”
Prior to the 1966 NFL season, Curry, a second-year center from Georgia Tech, earned the starting job for the Green Bay Packers. The dual duty of snapping to and blocking for the great Bart Starr, combined with the eye of head coach Vince Lombardi scrutinizing his every move, prepared him for just about any pressure situation. By the end of that season, he was more than ready to play before a fully packed stadium for the Packers’ NFL title game against Dallas.
Seventy-five thousand, five hundred four people filled the seats at the Cotton Bowl that day, witnesses to Green Bay’s 34-27 defeat of the Cowboys. So when the Packers and Kansas City Chiefs met two weeks later to play in the first ever AFL-NFL Championship Game before a one-third empty Los Angeles Coliseum, Curry and most of his teammates were stunned.
“There were a few writers, there was a sparse crowd, and we played a game, and it just didn’t feel big time.”
The fourteen-point underdog Chiefs of the allegedly inferior American Football League met the Packers on January 15, 1967, and even caught a break on the third play from scrimmage. While blocking to help spring fullback Jim Taylor for a first down, Packer tight end Boyd Dowler separated his shoulder and left the game.
During the previous four seasons, Dowler caught more passes than did any other Green Bay player. Against Kansas City’s defense—led by future Hall of Famers Buck Buchanan and Bobby Bell, as well as boastful, yet talented all-star Fred “the Hammer” Williamson—the loss of Dowler threatened to severely handicap the passing game.
Fortunately, the Packers had a suitable replacement on their sidelines: former Pro Bowler Max McGee. But the thirty-four-year-old McGee only caught four passes during the 1966 season, despite suiting up for every game. Even more troublesome to the Packer cause, was McGee’s physical and mental status when Vince Lombardi called for the eleven-year veteran.
“He didn’t come in the huddle bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Packer guard Jerry Kramer remembered. “He was like he was half-way hungover or something, or half-way asleep. He wasn’t what you’d like to see coming into the huddle at that particular point in time.”
McGee wasn’t half-way hungover; he was full-blown hungover.
“I was rooming with Paul Hornung, my buddy, and we’re both single and here we are, last night in Hollywood, and boy I tell you, we went out and hit a few of the hot spots, the normal places and we ran into a group of stewardesses who were having a little fun,” McGee told NFL Films years later. “Well all at once: curfew. So we head back to make curfew and we jumped into bed. And for some reason, Hawg Hanner was checking curfew, not Vince. Well, I played with Hawg, he was my good buddy. . . . He opened the door and said, ‘Ok, if you two guys are in, everybody’s in.’ Well, when he went back out, we almost ran over him, I did, getting out of there.”
A stern warning had been delivered to the entire Packers team earlier that day:
“Men, if you bust curfew tonight, not only will I fine you $2,500,” Lombardi told his players, “But I will see to it that you never play another game in the National Football League.”
McGee, who informed reporters all week that he was retiring after the AFL-NFL championship, didn’t care. He didn’t return to the team hotel until the next morning, just as quarterback Bart Starr walked through the lobby to pick up a newspaper.
“They had these little dressing cubicles in the Los Angeles Coliseum,” Dowler recalled. “Max was right next door. . . . I sat down with Max and he gave a big sigh of [exhaustion]—like ‘Oh my gosh.’”
“What’s the matter with you?” Dowler asked.
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“Don’t go down today,” McGee told Dowler.
“Tell me about it,” Dowler replied.
“So he told me about it. So I knew what was going on,” Dowler said, four decades later. “I hear there were two young ladies involved. He referred to them as ‘fiancés.’”
Not expecting to play, still hungover, and operating without sleep, McGee was ill-prepared when Dowler was injured.
“Here’s McGee on the sidelines,” teammate Bob Long recalled years later, “he’s looking around, scurrying around, he starts yelling ‘Where’s my helmet, where’s my helmet?’ Someone shouts out ‘Max, you left it in the locker room.’ Can you imagine that! He didn’t have a helmet. So I kinda felt sorry for him at that moment, I said, ‘Here Max, take my helmet.’ Max took my helmet.”
A series after he wobbled into the huddle, the Packers faced a third down at the Kansas City thirty-seven. The Chiefs had already rebuffed Green Bay on a third down the previous drive: their front four penetrated Green Bay’s offensive line and sacked quarterback Bart Starr, forcing a punt.
Rather than (predictably) running the ball on third and three, the Packers went to the air. Again, the Chiefs formidable defensive line collapsed the pocket. Because no one blocked him, blitzing linebacker Chuck Hurston crashed into Starr, slightly altering the release. The pass soared downfield to the twenty-two-yard line, intended for McGee, who was running a post-pattern near the middle of the field.
“A lot of guys on the team would tell you that Max was the best athlete on that team,” said Bill Curry. “He could just do anything, including get drunk all night and come play and then say ‘Being drunk one night is not gonna destroy twenty-five years of conditioning.’ That was the most hilarious line in the whole thing: Getting drunk one night can destroy anything.”
McGee beat defensive back Willie Mitchell to the inside and was wide open. Starr’s rhythm disrupted, the ball ended up several feet behind his target. With sharp reflexes that defied the effects of his nighttime adventures, McGee stuck out his right hand—continuing to run at full speed—nabbed the football with his fingertips, pulled it into his chest, and sprinted into the end zone.
“Max took my helmet, and he caught the first pass ever for a touchdown in a Super Bowl, so I get to tell my kids, ‘I didn’t catch the pass but my helmet helped Max McGee catch the first touchdown ever.’ That was my helmet, it was Max McGee’s body,” Bob Long said. “As Max would tell it, the story, I heard him tell this all the time. Everybody up here [in Green Bay] says ‘Hey Max, you caught that ball one-hand, behind your back.’ Max says ‘Yea, my eyes were so bloodshot I looked back for the pass from Bart Starr I saw two footballs coming. I really didn’t know what to do but I thought quickly, I’ll put my arm right in the middle between them. And that’s where the ball stuck.’”
For a sports spectacle that would produce countless unforgettable moments over the decades, McGee’s miraculous thirty-seven-yard catch was the first touchdown in Super Bowl history.
In his dubiously self-declared “final game” (he would return to the team next season), McGee was not content with the one catch. Starr and McGee hooked up on six more receptions.
“[Willie] Mitchell was out there trying to cover Max McGee by himself,” Bill Curry said. “And Max was running in the huddle saying, ‘God Almighty, throw me the ball, that guy can’t cover me.’ Which, of course, was exactly right.”
McGee and the passing game stretched Kansas City’s defense. The increasingly over-aggressive front line of the Chiefs, eager to bring down Starr, left holes at the line of scrimmage and Packers running backs found room to run. In the second half, Green Bay overwhelmed their AFL counterpart.
With the score 21-10 late in the third quarter and the Packers inside the red zone, McGee ran another post-pattern. He swam around the underneath safety, cut in front of Mitchell, and again found an open spot in the secondary. Right at the goal line, Starr targeted McGee. Although it was a perfectly placed, over-the-shoulder pass, McGee made another dazzling circus catch for a Packer touchdown. The ball hit his hands, bounded into the air, and the juggling McGee pulled it down for a thirteen-yard score. He finished the game with seven receptions for 138 yards and two touchdowns.
“He thought he should have been the MVP,” Curry said about McGee, who passed away in 2007. “Bart [the MVP Award winner of Super Bowl I] tried to give it to him!”
At 28-10 with just a quarter to play, McGee’s second touchdown put the game out of reach. Early in the final period, running back Elijah Pitts’ rushing touchdown pushed the lead to 35-10, sealing the game.
Not much happened after that. Green Bay tried to kill time off the clock, and the Chiefs essentially surrendered, replacing perennial AFL all-star quarterback Len Dawson with backup Pete Beathard. Now a blowout, many spectators began to lose interest, including a ten-year-old boy whose home stood just a few miles from the Los Angeles Coliseum.
“I was just a kid and I wanted to know when I was going to get the popcorn and the hot dog and the soda,” he remembered. “And probably, after I finished that, I was ready to go.”
Mike Lofton, an army sergeant major and single parent, surprised his son, James, with tickets (albeit, not very good tickets) to the big game. With so many vacant seats in the stadium, Mike and James snuck closer and closer to the field. By halftime, the father and son watched from a wonderful viewing point near the thirty-yard line.
“I really didn’t know much about the teams that were playing, but I was always grateful for his taking me to that game,” James Lofton said about his father, who passed away in October 1990. “It was a real special memory.”
Lofton soon learned to make his own spectacular touchdown catches, first at George Washington High in Los Angeles, then at Stanford University. Over the years, the memories of what took place on the field during Super Bowl I faded for Lofton. But at the start of his own NFL career, he would become thoroughly reacquainted with the tale of Max McGee and the first touchdown in Super Bowl history: The sixth overall selection in the 1978 NFL draft, he was selected by the Green Bay Packers. Lofton’s rookie season would be McGee’s fourth as a folksy, colorful contributor to the Packer radio broadcasts.
“I talked to those guys a little bit about what it was like playing in that game,” said Lofton. “[I came] to know Max over the years, [and saw] that play countless times.”
While McGee broadcast games well into the 1990s, Lofton left Green Bay and joined his hometown Los Angeles Raiders in 1987. After nine seasons (including six under head coach Bart Starr) as a member of the Packer franchise that won the first two Super Bowls, Lofton yearned for a chance to play in “the biggest game in the history of the world.” Even if a spectacular circus catch wasn’t one of his goals.
“[Playing the Super Bowl is] a fantasy, sure,” he said a few days before his Buffalo Bills faced the Giants. “There’s the one-handed, reverse catch that you always want to make. But, you know, I usually tell guys, when you go out trying for the spectacular, something for the blooper film usually results.”
Seeing Matt Bahr’s field goal provide the underdog Giants an early lead left Buffalo’s high-powered offense eager to make a big play. After all, when the Giants forced a three-and-out at the outset of Super Bowl XXV, it marked the first time the Bills were kept without an opening-drive touchdown in that postseason.
On second and eight from their own thirty-one-yard line, the no-huddle hurried to the line, following a short Thurman Thomas run. From the shotgun, Kelly looked right—momentarily freezing Giants defensive back Everson Walls—then heaved a deep ball down the left sideline. At the New York twenty-seven-yard line, James Lofton was one step past nickel cornerback Perry Williams.
“The ball was really hanging up there,” Lofton remembered. “Had Jim been able to throw it three or four yards further, ’cause I had beaten him easily, and the ball was kinda underthrown a little bit . . . it would have been an easy score.”
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s leapt, sprawling out in midair, then deflected the ball with the fingertips on his right hand. The tipped pass spun end over end, high above the ground. The extra hang time allowed Lofton to adjust and locate the ball.
“He got a lot of the ball, so it wasn’t a bad deflection. He was coming down when the ball was coming down. He really wasn’t out of position,” Lofton noted. “Those are the kind of plays you can’t predict. You certainly don’t practice them.”
Displaying remarkable concentration, Lofton pulled in the wobbly ball. He danced along the sideline, trying to stay in bounds to reach the end zone. Lofton’s tiptoeing—and the additional split-second in which the tipped ball floated in the air—gave Everson Walls time to swoop in and knock Lofton out-of-bounds at the eight-yard line.
“I played safety like I played cornerback,” said Walls, a cornerback who played safety in the Giants’ nickel and dime packages. “I could still sit back and read an offense extremely well, and I was good at anticipating. And I knew that’s where [Kelly] was going with the pass. That’s what allowed me to get a jump on it and stop Lofton from scoring a touchdown.”
In the previous twenty-four Super Bowls, only nine plays from scrimmage netted more yards, and each of those produced a touchdown. Although Walls prevented Lofton from scoring, the sixty-one-yard catch-and-run seemed destined to yield a touchdown and, perhaps, spark Buffalo’s great offense into a scoring frenzy. But two incompletions from Kelly, sandwiched between a short Thomas rush up the middle, stalled the drive, and kicker Scott Norwood converted on a short field goal to even the score at three.
At the start of their next drive, the Giants offense picked up where they had left off. From their standard, multiple tight-end set, consecutive rushes by Anderson and Hostetler gave New York a first down.
Hostetler then fired a pass downfield to Stephen Baker and saw tight end Howard Cross—who thought the ball was intended for him—stick his hand up and deflect the ball. The ball slowed down and fluttered through the air, but stayed on target: Baker pulled the ball into his stomach. The second fluke, tipped-pass reception of the quarter garnered a sizable chunk of yardage and moved the Giants to midfield.