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“My leg felt numb after the play,” the rookie said. “I stayed in for the next play, but it still felt numb, and I couldn’t run my pass pattern.”

As Hampton hobbled off the Meadowlands field, Ottis Anderson jogged past him and into the Giants’ huddle.

With his production reducing each week—simultaneous to Hampton’s late-season surge—Anderson wasn’t entirely dressed for the role of feature back. He mistakenly wore his practice pants instead of the team-issued game pair against Chicago. (Because the Giants won, Bill Parcells insisted Anderson wear practice pants on game day for the duration of the postseason.)

“Ottis thought he wouldn’t play much right before the game,” Maurice Carthon said. “I told him, ‘You’ll get a lot of work.’ Now, he thinks I’m psychic.”

In Hampton’s place, Anderson totaled eighty yards on twenty-one attempts and added a six-yard reception. He touched the ball twenty-two times, nearly one-third of the Giants’ total play count. And it was his goal-line block—of enormous William “The Refrigerator” Perry—that sprung Hostetler for New York’s third touchdown.

Anderson became the second-oldest back in NFL history to post more than seventy-five yards rushing in a playoff game.

“I ain’t throwing no Gatorade,” Anderson told a teammate who asked for his help in a postgame showering of Bill Parcells. “I’m too tired to throw Gatorade.”

The franchise’s first playoff win since Super Bowl XXI set up an NFC Championship Game showdown with the 49ers. At 14-2, San Francisco owned the best record in the NFL and had earned the number-one seed in the NFC, a reward for defeating the Giants 7-3 in early December.

The Giants and 49ers were similar in many ways. Parcells and San Francisco’s George Seifert had each earned exactly one Super Bowl ring as a head coach. And both men had worked their way up through the organization, from position coach, to defensive coordinator, and finally to head coach. Although Parcells’ sideline and postgame press conference demeanor was the antithesis of the subdued Seifert, they both craved defensive excellence. As a result, Parcells’ Giants and Seifert’s 49ers were among the best in the league, two of the best units in the modern era. Twelve of the twenty-two starting Giants and 49ers defenders were once or future Pro Bowlers. The two teams even finished the 1990 season with unusually similar statistics: 4.6 yards allowed per play, and only five first downs and three turnovers separated that year’s totals.

Offense—and specifically the decorations with which offensive personnel were adorned—made for the lone disparity between the two teams.

Forty-niners quarterback Joe Montana won his second consecutive MVP Award in 1990. In three of the four Super Bowl titles that San Francisco won during the decade, Montana was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. Ironically, the one Super Bowl victory in which he did not receive the trophy was arguably the greatest performance of his career. He passed for a record 357 yards and two touchdowns, the second of which completed a 92-yard drive in the final minutes of a 20-16 victory over Cincinnati.

Instead of Montana, the MVP for that Super Bowl XXIII triumph went to wide receiver Jerry Rice. The finest pass catcher of his or, perhaps, any era, Rice set a new personal record in 1990 with one hundred receptions. After six seasons, the twenty-eight-year-old was already halfway past breaking every receiving record in league history.

Although the “Montana-to-Rice” mantra became etched in pro football history throughout the second half of the 1980s, San Francisco’s run at an unprecedented three consecutive Super Bowl titles (the popularly labeled “three-peat”) was fueled by a roster of all-stars. Versatile running back Roger Craig along with prototypical fullback Tom Rathman comprised a phenomenal backfield. John Taylor and Brent Jones, one of the league’s premier tight ends, gave the 49er passing game several weapons to complement Rice. And with the same five players starting every game