Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [103]
The eleven-year veteran plowed over McNeal, continued on in the open field and chugged into the end zone. The forty-three-yarder gave Washington a 20-17 lead.
“It was amazing to see a guy that age do the things that he did over the course of that long season and then cap it off with the performance he had in Pasadena,” Didinger said. “If he had played that whole game and scored that winning touchdown from the one-yard line, you still would have said ‘Jesus, that’s quite an accomplishment.’
“But for him to cap it off with that run, which was forty-plus yards, that’s the really amazing thing: on that carry, at that stage in the game after all the wear and tear and all the pounding he had taken, that he could still break through the line and outrun the secondary. That’s the one that just takes your breath away.”
An immediate three-and-out from the Washington defense, followed by a seven-minute, twelve-play touchdown drive—in which Riggins toted the ball eight more times—sealed the Redskins’ victory. And an hour later, in the victorious locker room, Joe Gibbs chatted with a satisfied commander-in-chief.
“I hope when you come back you can help me up on Capitol Hill with some congressmen,” President Ronald Reagan told Gibbs during a postgame, congratulatory phone call.
Meanwhile, a never-shy John Riggins—“Ron is the President, but I am the King”—soaked up his share of the championship spotlight. Setting new records for rushing yards and carries made the sportswriters’ choice for the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XVII a no-brainer: Riggins garnered every single vote.
But for all those yards and all those runs, it was the longest run in Super Bowl history—a play on which he needed just a foot—that defined Riggins, the Redskins, and Super Bowl XVII.
“I felt like that was the game right there. That broke their backs,” center Jeff Bostic told the Super Bowl press corps regarding Riggins’ touchdown jaunt. “It wasn’t so much what it did for our team, it was what it did to their team. It took all the emotions out of them.”
With the third-quarter game clock showing just under a minute and a half, Bill Parcells did not hesitate about his approach to fourth and two at the Buffalo thirty-five. And why not: in the postseason, New York was five-for-five on fourth-down conversion attempts.
Hostetler and the Giants offense stayed out on the field while Parcells and Erhardt—speaking to each other through headsets—selected a play. It wasn’t exactly “Goal line, I-left, tight-wing, fake zoom, seventy chip,” but it was close.
There was no motion-man, and, instead of a lead blocker, the three–tight end formation featured a flexed-out wide receiver, Mark Ingram. Still, in another moment of Super Bowl déjà vu, thirty-four-year-old Ottis Anderson—the recently reborn power back—took the ball from his quarterback and spied a spot off left tackle.
Serving as lead blocker, front-side left guard William Roberts pulled around left tackle Jumbo Elliott, looking to block any Bills defender who crossed his path. But next to Roberts were tight ends Howard Cross and Mark Bavaro, and they couldn’t quite figure out who to block: Pro Bowl linebacker and Buffalo’s leading tackler that season, Darryl Talley, or the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, Bruce Smith.
Fortunately for the Bills defense, they both chose to block Talley. That left Smith virtually untouched precisely at the spot on the field where Ottis Anderson was heading. Anderson had no chance. He couldn’t bounce away from Smith—there was too much congestion, the result of his own blockers’ miscue. And no running back—even a bruising load such as Anderson—could bowl over a 275-pound defensive end.
Two yards behind the line of scrimmage, Smith stood Anderson up, and with teammates Shane Conlan, Leon Seals, Nate Odomes, and Mike Lodish swooping in as reinforcements, the mob wrestled Anderson to the ground. While sitting on the ground, Smith, who, since recording his pivotal sack/safety, had been largely neutralized in his one-on-one battles with Jumbo Elliott, stared down and