Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [25]
“We didn’t tackle anybody and we didn’t cover anybody in the first half,” said defensive end Leonard Marshall.
“We weren’t aggressive, we let their offense set the tempo,” added linebacker Steve DeOssie.
Those plain facts infuriated Lawrence Taylor.
“We’re not physical enough,” he shouted at halftime. “I’m going to start playing the way we’re supposed to play. If anybody wants to come along, fine.”
In the second half, Taylor led and the Giants followed. Behind 15-10 late in the third quarter, Taylor and the Giants pass rush forced quarterback Rich Gannon into a premature throw, which Greg Jackson intercepted. Four plays later, the Giants added a field goal. Taylor and rookie Mike Fox opened the ensuing series with a sack of Gannon. Then, a lunging tackle from Taylor, followed by defensive lineman Erik Howard’s quarterback sack on third down forced a punt. The offense capitalized on the momentum, as Ottis Anderson closed out an eight-play drive with a two-yard touchdown run.
Now ahead 20-15, the Giants continued to apply pressure. With under six minutes remaining, Taylor breached the Vikings offensive line and grabbed the legs of Gannon, who was barely able to get rid of the football. Linebacker Gary Reasons intercepted the wobbly pass inside Minnesota territory. The Giants added a short field goal to clinch the victory and the division.
“He’s a one-man wrecking crew,” Gannon said. “He just took over the fourth quarter. L. T. was the difference. We couldn’t stop him.”
Taylor accounted for twelve tackles, 2.5 sacks, and one forced fumble.
“We’d gotten away from our basic objective, to win the division,” Taylor told reporters. “We were thinking about 16-0, about the Super Bowl. We had to get back to basics.”
Halting the losing skid to secure the NFC East title seemed to cure many of the Giants’ ailments, but not those that pained Parcells, who checked back into the hospital hours after the win to undergo surgery.
“I just remember watching him on the sidelines that day,” Parcells’ personal secretary Kim Kolbe said years later, “I couldn’t believe that he was out there coaching. And then I just remember him getting in a [state trooper’s car] right after the game and going to the hospital.”
The defense atoned for the poor efforts against Philadelphia and a disappointing first half against Minnesota. And while the offense had managed only two touchdowns in the previous ten quarters, rookie Rodney Hampton’s presence (he rushed for 105 yards on twenty-one carries) behind their once–Super Bowl MVP quarterback Phil Simms, gave New York a formidable backfield.
“We’ve taken two steps [making the playoffs and winning the division],” Parcells said. “Maybe we can take another one. We still got some work left.”
Losers of the previous six Super Bowls, the American Football Conference (which had won eleven of the first thirteen post-merger Super Bowl titles) could no longer claim status as the league’s dominant faction. Worse yet, the margin of defeat during the AFC’s losing streak had been twenty-six points. The second half of the 1980s suggested that the AFC was the lesser conference. And the 1990 NFL season continued to promote that myth.
By the midway point, Week Nine, the National Football Conference boasted two undefeated teams, the Giants and 49ers, as well as Mike Ditka’s 8-1 Chicago Bears. And with the intimidating Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins (Super Bowl champions just three years earlier) still in the playoff hunt, the NFC was as strong as ever.
Most AFC players and coaches scoffed at the idea of a conference gap.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between the two conferences. It’s not like the players come from a different talent pool,” said Bills wide receiver James Lofton, a former Raider who had also spent nine seasons with the Green Bay Packers.