Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [99]
As frustrating as it was for Kelly and the Bills offense, the tremendous difference in time-of-possession devastated the Buffalo defense more.
“We were on the field 10 minutes at a time,” Cornelius Bennett said. “We’d rest for two, and then go back on. When that happens, there’s no way you can keep up your intensity. You tend to start reaching instead of taking the proper steps. You start making arm tackles.”
The seventy-one-degree weather and 76 percent humidity compounded their exhaustion. Aside from the regular-season finale, in which most starters did not play all four quarters, the Bills had played the previous five games in wintry conditions: the “miserable,” snowy scene at Giants Stadium in mid-December, followed by three games at Rich Stadium in Buffalo. Although defensive coordinator Walt Corey didn’t believe the humidity that night in Tampa bothered his unit, at least one of the men perpetually running up and down the field disagreed.
“We weren’t used to playing in this kind of heat,” Shane Conlan said. “This was training camp weather.”
Buffalo’s defense slogged onto the field and—by way of another bootleg away from Bennett and toward Bruce Smith—Hostetler again connected with Howard Cross for a ten-yard gain. A defensive-holding call against cornerback Nate Odomes during the play further irritated Buffalo fans.
The penalty advanced New York five more yards and gave Hostetler’s unit a first and ten from the Buffalo forty-three. Because they had controlled the clock and tempo, a few more first downs punctuated by another score—even a field goal—would give the Giants a two-score lead with less than a quarter to play.[1]
Still, no matter how tired they were, the Bills defense did not give in. After the automatic first down due to Odomes’ penalty, the Giants failed to gain anything on a run from Anderson and (yet another) bootleg to the left by Jeff Hostetler, who scrambled toward the sideline, unable to find an open man.
That left a third and eleven. Hostetler’s Giants had been so prolific at coming up with big plays on third down. They fully expected another.
“We had a lot of talent on that offense: Mark Ingram, Steven Baker, Dave Meggett, etc.,” Mark Bavaro remembered years later. “Combined with Jeff’s throwing skills, vision, and scrambling ability, there was never a third-down situation that seemed unattainable.”
From a shotgun, four-receiver set, Hostetler sat in the pocket and fired a quick strike to Mark Ingram. As he had on the incredible third-and-thirteen conversion, Ingram caught the ball well short of the first down line with plenty of open field to run. But instead of using the fast feet and spin moves that shook four Bills defenders one drive earlier, Ingram elected to try and bowl over would-be tackler Leonard Smith, who collided with Ingram. Using the sideline to his advantage, Smith stymied the ball carrier by pushing him out-of-bounds, two yards behind the marker.
Finally, the Buffalo defense came up with the third-down stop they needed. But for the Bills to take back the football and regain momentum, the job was not done yet.
FLASHBACK: SUPER BOWL XVII
“I’m bored, I’m broke and I’m back,” John Riggins announced to a small gaggle of reporters outside a Washington Redskins’ off-season practice on June 11, 1981. “What did I miss most? Besides the money? I missed the little kiddie atmosphere. If I quit football, I’d have to grow up.”
Riggins—the ninth-leading rusher in league history—had walked away from the NFL the previous July. After one day of training camp at the team’s facility in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the ten-year veteran left, citing his desire for a new contract. The Redskins refused to give in to the demands of the thirty-one-year-old who, throughout the 1970s, embodied the prototypical bruising running back.
An all-American