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KISS it goodbye Big One answered lots of questions ... but many remain
Posted: Tuesday February 02, 1999 12:00 AM
MIAMI (CNN/SI) -- Sunday night’s Super Bowl answered, Without a Doubt, who the best team in the NFL is. There are a few things, though, that it didn’t answer. Like ... Is the Dirty Bird dead? As every athlete on the face of the earth is fond of saying, Without A Doubt. Its oversized neck was wrung for good, we hope, by the Denver Broncos, who took umbrage to the strutting, jerky, modernized funky chicken and vowed to keep its creator, Atlanta Falcons running back Jamal Anderson, out of the end zone. They did. “We thought we were going to face the Dirty Birds,” Denver linebacker Bill Romanowski said. “Seems like we got the Pretty Birds instead.” Translation: Pluck this, pal. Why couldn’t the Falcons score when they got it close Sunday night? That’s going to haunt them for the entire off-season, and probably a lot longer than that. The Falcons were one of the NFL’s best teams in the red zone this season. But, against a Denver defense that stacked the front and blitzed Chris Chandler regularly, the Falcons just could not convert. The Dirty Birds' ugly numbers: Seven drives ended inside the Denver 30. Two ended with interceptions. One ended by giving the ball over on downs. One ended with a missed field goal. Two times they were held to a field goal (once at the 15, once at the 11). They scored one touchdown, with 2:04 in the game. As the FOX people might say -- and probably did a few hundred times in a seven-hour pregame show -- you have to score to win. Would it be fair to say that there isn’t a more overblown, overhyped, overdone, bone-wearying, mind-numbing, intellect-insulting, FOXized television event than the Super Bowl? OK, maybe we slanted that question a little. But the answer, as Meg Ryan might put it, is YES! YES! YESSSS! Where will Super Bowl XXXIII rank in Supie lore? Well, a 7 ½-point favorite won by double that (the score, if you’ve already forgotten or fell asleep and are just now waking up, was 34-19). The game was decided, really, before the third quarter gun sounded. (OK, so there’s really no gun.) Atlanta, for all its underdog appeal, is not exactly a showcase franchise in the league. So it’ll rank right up there with oh-so-many other Super Bowl bores. Not high. Can the Broncos pull off a Super Bowl hat trick next season? Sure they can, if John Elway comes back. There’s an old saying in the NFL: With Terrell Davis in your backfield, anything is possible. Well, maybe it’s not that old of a saying. But, fact is, with Davis running like he did this season, the Broncos have maybe Jacksonville, maybe the New York Jets to worry about. And that’s it. Where was Davis Sunday night? The Falcons contained him, which was Goal No. 1. Davis had 102 yards, pretty plebian for him. He didn’t score, either, and his longest run was 15 yards. All because the Falcons’ seven frontmen didn’t over-pursue, watched his cutbacks and tackled well. Unfortunately, all the attention the Falcons had to pay to Davis left Mr. Elway free to do his thing. “They were going to make John Elway beat them,” Denver wide receiver Rod Smith said. “And he did.” Speaking of Elway ... will he or won’t he? Now we’re getting down to it. Sure he will. Come back, we mean. Heck, there have been rumors about Boomer Esiason coming back, for Pete Rozelle’s sake. As much as Elway might like to hang up his pads, walking away from a team like this would go against every athletic impulse he has. He’s relatively healthy. He’s had a fine year, despite a few bumps and bruises. And he has a chance next year to do something no one ever has -- win three straight Super Bowls. The thought here is, in the near future, he’ll announce he’s retiring -- after the ’99 season. Or not. Did the Eugene Robinson fiasco hurt the Falcons? Well, other than a blindside to their pride and their image ... no, not much. Robinson was awarded the Bart Starr Award from Athletes in Action this weekend -- it goes to a player of “high moral character” -- then celebrated by getting arrested for solicitation of sex from an undercover police officer. Robinson was the closest one to Denver’s Smith on an 80-yard touchdown pass, but the cornerback on Smith’s side, Ronnie Bradford, didn’t even touch the speedy Smith coming off the line. Robinson, really, wasn’t awful. He just looks that way now, and for an entirely different reason. Where was O.J. Santiago on Sunday night? Who? Oh, yeah, the Falcons’ tight end. Well, poor O.J. -- shouldn’t those initials be banned from the NFL? -- spent much of the night wrestling with Denver linebacker Romanowski, finding it tough to get off the line and thus negating any chance the Falcons had of opening up the middle of the field. His Super Bowl totals: One catch, 13 yards. Robinson came closer to scoring than Santiago did. KISS? Yeah, really, what’s up with that? Was Quiet Riot booked? The veteran rockers, rivaled only by the former Tammy Faye Baker and the current Pat Summerall for excessive use of makeup, did their tired bit in the pregame show of XXXIII. If we had wanted to see a bunch of old guys strutting around the field, tongues hanging out and all, we’d have rooted for the San Francisco 49ers to make it. Who will be in Super Bowl XXXIV next January in Atlanta? What do we look like, Dionne Warwick? All right, all right. Hmmm. How about Denver and ... Minnesota. In the Super Bowl That Should Have Been. Without A Doubt. John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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