Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [48]
Even with a healthy Simms and a healthy Hampton, the Giants scored only a field goal in the regular-season loss to San Francisco. A month later, the 49ers still possessed the same talent, while the Giants offense now featured second-stringers at quarterback and running back. Few gave New York much of a chance.
“People talk about Hostetler; how he’s a seven-year veteran. Yeah, but he’s a seven-year backup quarterback,” said John Madden, the Super Bowl winning coach who, along with Pat Summerall, would broadcast the NFC Championship Game for CBS.
How will he respond on the road in a hostile environment? His sense of poise and running ability has to be of concern to (49ers coach) George Seifert. But can he have back-to-back great games? It will be tough. . . . He did well against Chicago because he was kind of an unknown. But after last week, the 49ers have more film. The 49ers will be practicing all week to prepare for him. For the Giants to win, Hostetler has to play the greatest game of his life. And it’s going to be much, much more difficult this week.
By game day, San Francisco was an eight-point favorite. But the veteran Giants paid little attention to the prognosticators. They had already proven once in 1990 that they could match up well with their prolific opponent: holding Montana’s unit to just one score during the December loss marked the lowest output from the famed 49er offense in thirty-five games. And in the only postseason showdown between the two franchises, during the 1986 playoffs, the Giants walloped San Francisco 49-3. (During the rout, a brutal hit by a Giants defensive lineman knocked Joe Montana out of the game.)
The mostly veteran Giants squad didn’t need fiery confidence-boosting speeches by their head coach. Bill Parcells delivered one anyway.
“There was just a one-week interval before the Super Bowl,” Parcells said in 2010. “I told our team before we went to San Francisco that I wanted them to pack for ten days because we weren’t coming home. A lot of players have mentioned that to me over the years that that was a display of confidence that I really believed we could beat San Francisco—even though not many people did.”
Forty-niners wide receiver John Taylor had a knack for the big play.
A league suspension sidelined Taylor for the opening four weeks of the 1988 NFL season. But in his first game back, the third-round draft pick out of Delaware State fielded a punt deep in his own territory and sprinted seventy-seven yards for a touchdown. That third-quarter score proved to be the difference in San Francisco’s 20-13 victory over Detroit. In November, against the World Champion Washington Redskins, Taylor violated the cardinal rule that forbids fielding a punt inside the ten-yard line. He atoned for the sin, soaring ninety-five yards for an incredible touchdown.
Of course, the most famous moment in Taylor’s career came the following January, when he caught Montana’s game-winning touchdown pass with thirty-four seconds remaining in Super Bowl XXIII.
A year later, as the bookend receiver to Jerry Rice, he grabbed sixty receptions for 1,077 yards and ten touchdowns. That postseason, Taylor was on the receiving end of a Montana touchdown pass in each of the 49ers’ three playoff victories against the Minnesota Vikings, Los Angeles Rams, and Denver Broncos.
But in 1990, no team felt the sting of Taylor’s penchant for clutch catches and electrifying runs more than the New York Giants.
The only points allowed by the Giants defense during the Monday night loss to San Francisco in early December came on a twenty-three-yard touchdown strike from Montana to a sliding Taylor.
“I was supposed to be over in the middle area,” defensive back Everson Walls said. “When Montana pumped, I got drawn in. He took me out of my area.”
Montana had been fooling NFL defensive backs for twelve seasons. But to Everson Walls, Taylor’s touchdown was eerily familiar.
Nine seasons earlier, in the same south end zone