Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [131]
But one uncertainty eclipsed all the others. Jeff Hostetler’s exceptional performance in the playoffs, and especially on Super Bowl Sunday, had created a quagmire at the quarterback position.
Like Hostetler, Phil Simms had also brought the Giants a Super Bowl championship, just a few seasons earlier. The 1991 New York Giants depth chart would be the first in history with two quarterbacks to start and win Super Bowls. And Giants players did nothing to settle the issue either.
“Jeff Hostetler is a great quarterback,” Mark Bavaro said. “He took over for Phil (Simms) when we needed him and filled in great. This Super Bowl was his game. We’re just very thankful for him, that he was on our team. And I’m not taking anything away from Phil. Phil’s a great quarterback too, but so was the Hoss. They’re both great. We love them both.”
“[It] doesn’t matter to me which one of them is playing,” added Bart Oates, “unless one of them has really cold hands.”
Even more so than about his own future, the Giants head coach was noncommittal about who would quarterback the team next season.
“I’ve got two pretty good quarterbacks, that’s not a controversy,” Parcells said. “I’ll go by what I see at the start of training camp. That doesn’t mean the quarterback’s job is wide open. Quite obviously, Jeff Hostetler has earned a tremendous amount of consideration. But, hey, I’ve got a great veteran quarterback. He’s one of my guys.”
Simms scoffed when approached about retirement—and with good reason. Although Simms would turn thirty-seven that November, prior to the foot injury, he was enjoying the finest season of his career.
But to earn their second Super Bowl championship, New York had won its final five games, two in the regular season and three during the playoff. Hostetler took all the key snaps, made all the big throws, and endured all the nasty hits in each of those wins. And without his clutch third-down passing the Lombardi Trophy would have been on a plane back to Buffalo instead of New Jersey.
“I like Phil Simms, and I don’t wish him any bad luck,” Hostetler wrote in his 1991 autobiography, One Giant Leap, coauthored with Ed Fitzgerald, “but I’m the one who sat on the bench for six and a half years and I hope I don’t have to do it anymore. I think I’ve proved that I can not only hold the ball while somebody kicks it, but I can throw it, too—and run with it.”
A pair of experienced Super Bowl winners was not the abundance of riches it seemed. Neither one wanted to return to the sidelines.
As spring approached, the front office submitted designs for diamond-encrusted Super Bowl championship rings, “Mr. and Mrs. W. Jeffrey Hostetler” attended a White House state dinner (Vicky sat with President Bush and the Guest of Honor, Denmark’s Queen Margreth II) in February, and the New York Giants looked toward next season.
“For more than an hour, Bill Parcells and Ottis Anderson were center stage yesterday, with the Vince Lombardi trophy and the new Pete Rozelle Trophy,” New York Times columnist Dave Anderson wrote upon attending the Monday press conference after New York’s triumph over Buffalo. “But not once was the word ‘dynasty’ mentioned in asking about the Giants’ future. Not once were the Super Bowl XXV champions described as the ‘Team of the 90’s.’ Maybe people are finally learning that dynasties don’t exist in sports anymore.”
Beneath a gray sky and light rain, Pan Am Charter Flight 8207 took off from the runway at Tampa International Airport. Somewhere along the route from Western Florida to Buffalo, New York, Marv Levy left his seat and walked down the aisle to look over his team. His somber,