Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [121]
Seeing the ball spotted right on target, right on time, Norwood stepped into the kick. With the snap, spot, and kick unimpeded, all the Giants had left to influence the outcome were the upright arms, hands, and fingertips of two defenders just past the scrimmage line. New York safety Myron Guyton and tall nose tackle Eric Dorsey leapt into the air, attempting to block the kick once it had been launched. But Norwood had hammered the ball with such force that it kept climbing higher and higher, far out of anyone’s reach.
“He absolutely crushed the ball,” Reich remembered. “That kick probably would have been good from about 55 to 58 yards. I’m sure he was thinking it was probably going to come in a little bit. But it just stayed straight. Usually, with a soccer-style kicker, you plan on the ball coming in a little bit.”
Approaching the right goalpost, the ball appeared on target.
“As the ball was kicked,” said Bill Polian, “I said to one of my colleagues, ‘We’re World Champions! We’re World Champions!’”
But the perfectionist kicker knew he didn’t hit it precisely.
“I left it out right,” Norwood said that evening. “I may have put a little too much emphasis on striking the ball hard. I hit it good and solid. Again, maybe too much emphasis on trying to get a good, solid kick. And it was a good, solid kick. I hit it solidly. I didn’t get the draw coming from the right.”
Upon crossing the plane of the crossbar, the ball stubbornly sailed outside—not inside—the right upright. Two zebra-clad officials beneath the kick waved their hands to the right, indicating the kick was wide.
Reich and Norwood just stared at the ground. So did all their teammates along their sideline. A despondent Marv Levy let out a sigh of acceptance.
“That was the most emptiest feeling that I ever had in my life,” said Kent Hull.
For a moment, Bill Parcells began to celebrate. He hugged Pepper Johnson and Carl Banks, then asked them for a favor.
“Take me for a ride,” he asked. “Will you guys take me for a ride?”
“Let’s take this mother fucker for a ride!” shouted Banks.
Banks and Johnson bent down to pick up their coach onto their shoulders, but because four seconds remained, Parcells told them to stop. Instead of “going for a ride,” he shouted to those players celebrating, begging them to get off the field so the Giants offense could run the clock out. Linebacker Steve DeOssie was too busy filming the crowd with his portable video camera to hear the coach screaming. Parcells and his staff were furious with the photographers and professional cameramen. They hollered incessantly to clear the field. During his fiery tirade, Pepper Johnson doused Parcells with a second “Gatorade Shower” in five years.
“We got you two, that’s what we wanted,” Lawrence Taylor said, embracing Parcells. “We got you two, you’re the best.”
“I’m going for a ride, you’re gonna take me,” Parcells told Taylor.
The offense assembled into the so-called victory formation—“six tight diamond,” as the Giants called it—and Hostetler pulled in the snap, touched a knee to the grass, and the game was over.
Hostetler had been stoic in the seconds following the kick. He watched Norwood’s attempt from the sideline with one knee on the ground. Upon seeing the officials gesture “wide right,” his teammates burst into celebration. Hostetler remained frozen.
“I remember looking back into the stands and looking at the Buffalo players and looking at our players, and trying to take in all of the reactions, and I just kept kneeling there for a few seconds,” Hostetler wrote. “I think I was lucky that I caught a moment in our lives that a lot of guys missed because they were celebrating so much. I was celebrating, too. I couldn’t have been happier. But in one way that I’ve always been glad about, I was a spectator. I held back and watched it. I may never know another moment quite like it.”
Taking the final snap of the Giants’ Super Bowl win shocked Hostetler back into the moment. With the game now officially over, Hostetler exploded.
“I was drunk with emotion.”
So were his teammates.