Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [135]
The identity of the Giants starting quarterback created the greatest dissension. Jeff Hostetler arrived at training camp a day late in the summer of 1991, while the final details of a two-year, $1.8 million contract were negotiated. The ensuing battle between Hostetler and Simms would essentially produce a draw during the next two seasons.
Hostetler won the job in training camp, surprising many teammates and members of the media: “In my mind without a doubt,” Mrosko said, “Simms was the winner in that competition; he had an unbelievable preseason.”
Beginning with the opener against San Francisco, Hostetler played fairly well. But the Giants offense struggled to score: after nine games, the 4-5 Giants scored just thirteen touchdowns. And in a stroke of irony, a devastating late-season, season-ending injury to Hostetler—a crushing hit by the Buccaneers Broderick Thomas fractured three vertebrae in his lower back and he left the game on a stretcher—enabled Simms to reclaim the starter’s job.
Handley returned to Hostetler for the beginning of 1992, a season that saw even more of a quarterback carousel. Simms, Hostetler, and rookie Kent Graham each started at least three games. New York’s 6-10 record was the team’s worst since Parcells’ rookie season as head coach.
“[1991 and 1992] were two of the most surreal years I’ve ever been through. It was like it came out of another dimension,” recalled Ernie Palladino, the beat writer who covered the team for twenty years. “You always had the image of Parcells sitting at home laughing about this.”
Parcells didn’t sit around to watch the Giants crumble for long. Successful bypass heart surgery and a new healthier lifestyle convinced both Parcells and the New England Patriots to agree on a partnership. In late January 1993, the New England Patriots gave him a five-year, $5 million contract to rebuild their inept franchise.
“I started my coaching career here in New England, and I am going to end it here. This will be my last coaching job,” Parcells said.
On the day that the governor of Massachusetts publicly welcomed Parcells during his introductory press conference at Boston’s Westin Copley Hotel, George Young and the Giants’ front office worked feverishly to sign their next head coach. Ray Handley was fired at the end of the 1992 season, and, five days after Parcells signed with New England, Dan Reeves took over the Giants. Reeves quickly settled on Simms as his starting quarterback.
“I didn’t need that kind of controversy here,” Reeves later said.
For the first time since leading the Giants to victory in Super Bowl XXI, Simms started all sixteen games in 1993. At age thirty-eight, Simms earned his second Pro Bowl invitation as the resurgent New York squad opened up 5-1. NFC East champions, the Giants hosted Minnesota in the opening round of the playoffs. Trailing at halftime, a pair of second-half rushing touchdowns by Rodney Hampton—who finished with thirty-three carries and 161 yards—propelled the team to victory.
“Maybe we’re not as flashy, but we can control the clock,” Hampton said afterward. “If we control the clock, we can keep those other teams that score a lot of points off the field.”
The win earned New York a place in the second round and a cross-country trip to San Francisco. Since their unforgettable showdown in the 1990 NFC Championship Game, the 49ers had also undergone a series of changes to their lineup. Gone was Joe Montana, replaced by Steve Young, the league’s Most Valuable Player the previous season. And like the Giants, the 49ers boasted a new, younger model at running back: Pro Bowler Ricky Watters took over for Roger Craig.
But the apparent upgrades at those prominent positions were the only similarities between the two teams. Despite a shaky end to the regular season, the 49ers won the NFC West and earned a first-round playoff bye, largely because of an incredible offense that averaged nearly thirty points per game, twelve