The Great Escape

ATLANTA —  It was one yard, separating those who might enjoy glory from those lost eventually in historical anonymity, a Super Bowl slow to start, stirring in its finish, and in your face, Los Angeles.

“It proves we did the right thing in going to St. Louis,” Ram owner Georgia Frontiere after receiving the Lombardi Trophy from NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

The Rams left Anaheim five years ago for a new stadium, more revenue and a fresh start, and Sunday the raining confetti apparently validated the quest for more riches with a Super Bowl XXXIV payoff.

St. Louis defeated Tennessee, 23-16, before 72,625 in the Georgia Dome with linebacker Mike Jones tackling Titan wide receiver Kevin Dyson at the one-yard line as time expired.

“I didn’t think he had a good grip on me and I stretched out,” Dyson said. “But I was just short.”

Tennessee, down 16-0 late in the third quarter, had tied the score at 16-16 with little more than two minutes to play, setting up one of the best finishes in Super Bowl history.

Kurt Warner, who had gone from grocery store stock boy to NFL most valuable player in five years, took it beyond the realm of the believable with a Super Bowl-record 414 passing yards, earning him the game’s MVP honors.

Warner had lost a pair of Arena League championship games while playing for the Iowa Barnstormers and the Rams had lost their only previous Super Bowl appearance 20 years ago in a 31-19 defeat to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But Warner and the Rams combined this season for the greatest turnaround in NFL history, going from 4-12 to 13-3, the final fling off his wonder arm this season the difference in the outcome of the game.

Warner took control of the Ram offense at the St. Louis 27-yard line with 2:12 to play, the game tied, and all the momentum resting with the Titans.

Mike Martz, the Rams’ offensive coordinator who had planned to send in plays to quarterback Trent Green this season before losing him because of a season-ending knee injury in an exhibition game, called for “Twins right, Ace right, 999 halfback balloon.”

In Ram talk, that mean everyone go deep, and let Warner chuck it to the guy most open--in this case wide receiver Isaac Bruce.

“We had time for one play before the two-minute warning and we thought we would go deep, and if we missed it, that would give time for everyone to rest on the sideline during the timeout,” Martz said. “The ball was a little underthrown, but sometimes that’s the best pass because the defender doesn’t know where the ball is.”

The Los Angeles Rams won the 1951 NFL championship with Norm Van Brocklin completing a 73-yard pass to Tom Fears late in the game at the Coliseum for a 24-17 victory over the Cleveland Browns.

This time it was Bruce catching the 73-yard bomb that would eventually stand as the game-winner over a Titan team that barely ran out of time.

After the Rams had moved ahead, 23-16, the Titans took possession at their 12-yard line, and advanced to the St. Louis 10 with six seconds to play and no timeouts remaining.

“We wanted to get the ball to Dyson on a movement route,” said Tennessee Coach Jeff Fisher, a former Ram defensive coordinator during their time in Anaheim. “We wanted to get it to him and let him run into the end zone. We got close.”

The Titans had advanced to the 10-yard line only because of the extraordinary athletic ability of McNair, who had shed a pair of Ram tacklers to hit Dyson on the run for a 16-yard gain. If the Titans score on the next play, McNair’s scramble probably goes down in Super Bowl lore much like John Elway’s whirlybird dive for a first down in Super Bowl XXXII.

“I went up to McNair at the end of the game and told him to never forget this,” Fisher said. “Because we will be back.

“Failure is just success put on hold, and we will be judged by how we come back next year. We had made up our minds at halftime that we were going to win this game. I credit Kurt Warner with the big play, or it’s a different ballgame.”

At halftime, had there been a vote for MVP, it would have been a tight race between Tina Turner, Faith Hill and Jeff Wilkins.

Wilkins kicked field goals of 27, 29 and 28 yards to give the Rams a 9-0 lead at the intermission, and let that be a lesson for any team that fails to score in the first half of a Super Bowl. Ten times it has happened, and on each occasion they failed to rally and win.

Wilkins, however, had also missed a 34-yard field goal try, and another had been snuffed out because holder Mike Horan had the ball slip out of his hands before Wilkins could kick.

The Rams would score a touchdown in the quarter, but by that time Warner would go 0 for 12 throwing the ball from inside the opponent’s 20-yard line.

The Titans countered the Rams’ field-goal barrage with a go-nowhere attack that generated only 89 yards by halftime.

And after Tennessee’s opening drive in third quarter ended with the Rams’ Todd Lyght blocking a 47-yard Al Del Greco field-goal attempt, St. Louis scored the game’s first touchdown, which looked like the death knell for the Titans.

Warner, who completed 24 of 45 passes without an interception, fired a dart to rookie Torry Holt for a nine-yard score with 7:20 remaining in the third quarter.

“I’m still emotionally involved in the game and I can’t tell you how shocked I am that it’s over,” Titan running back Eddie George said. “I’m not going to be down, because we showed something in coming back.”

The Titans came back with a pair of short George touchdown runs, and a 43-yard Del Greco field goal to tie the score.

“I expected to win the game,” said Ram Coach Dick Vermeil, who became the oldest coach (63) to win a Super Bowl and the first to win the Super Bowl and the Rose Bowl (UCLA over Ohio State in 1976). “I have been in the Super Bowl and lost, so I know how it feels and this feeling is much better. I am excited for what it really means--way deeper than that trophy, believe me.”

Vermeil, who left coaching because “it consumed me,” for 14 years after his Philadelphia team lost to the Oakland Raiders, 27-10, in Super Bowl XV, survived a 9-23 start in his first two years with St. Louis.

“I’m glad we got to put that kind of show on for the world,” Vermeil told President Clinton in a telephone conversation after the game. “I’ll tell you this, Mr. President, this football team is what America is all about--good people that work hard and care about each other. Those aren’t just words, that’s what they are all about. Believe me.”

Another yard, the game is tied and after overtime, maybe it’s Fisher chatting cozy with the president on the phone.

But when Dyson caught the ball, Jones, a former Los Angeles Raider before moving to Oakland and then signing with St. Louis in 1997, was there to make the tackle.

“I never saw McNair throw the ball, but I thought it was coming to Dyson, and so I was right on top of him,” said Jones, the Rams’ third-leading tackler in the regular season with 94. “I saw him catch it about the three-yard line, and I knew the game was over if I tackled him.

“When we went down to the ground, it was like, ‘Man, I’m glad this game is over with--we’re world champions.’ It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but I know when I go into the locker room and get with my teammates, it will be, ‘Hey, we are the best in the world,’ and then it will hit me.”

One more yard, and something goes Tennessee’s way in overtime, and instead of a parade and Frontiere’s “I told you so,” it might have been the “same old Rams.”