BO KNOWS HIP INJURIES -- History of the Super Bowl Part 21
1990
The 86 and 87 drafts would feature back-to-back top picks who got alot of attention --
Bo Jackson from Auburn, and Brian Bosworth from Oklahoma.
Jackson was the most successful back of any kind in SEC history.
Brian Bosworth was the leader of an Oklahoma team that would take its first national championship since the 70s.
Bosworth was a big powerful linebacker who had bragged and boasted that he was going to contain Bo Jackson.
When his Seahawks played the Raiders in Seattle on Monday Night Football his rookie year, Bo BOWLED INTO HIM TO SCORE A TOUCHDOWN.
The Boz would have 3 more years of football before finally being released. The bubble had been popped, and you can't very well bandage up a bubble.
Boz would be the movie "Stone Cold" which was about THIRTY MILLION times better then Boz's pro career.
Boz is a big scary dude, but Bo knows scary.
Bo Jackson was not only drafted with the first pick for football, he was drafted with the FIRST PICK to be a Kansas City Royal.
Bo knows baseball.
Bo even knows basketball, for he tried out and made it many years later into a continental basketball league that works out with the Lakers.
Bo Jackson becomes the first NFL player to literally be as big as Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.
Joe Montana and Jerry Rice were by now in the story, as it's 1990 and they're the two time defending champions.
But as early as 87, 88...it was Bo.
But Bo Jackson would see the end of his NFL career and a hefty deal of athleticism in other realms...during the playoffs at the end of this 1990 season.
During a game against the Chiefs in Oakland, Jackson got his hip separated on an attempted tackle.
Jackson popped the hip back in.
You gotta be STRONG to pop back in a hip.
Freaking gross.
The future of Bo Jackson was of course four things -- Deion Sanders, Antwaan Randle-El, Charlie Ward, and an 0-for-15 hitting performance for the White Sox in the 1993 American League Championship Series.
There's a reason why Deion was viewed as a nuisance while Bo wasn't -- Deion's Braves were always in the playoffs while the Royals weren't.
This meant that while Deion Sanders would go from a Falcons game via helicopter to a freaking Braves gave in Houston on THAT NIGHT...Bo wouldn't, and thus people didn't call him names.
The 1990 season was silly.
Everyone just sat and waited to watch the 49ers three-peat.
They were in top form throughout.
The rest of the league had funkiness in its' feathers.
For example, the NFC Central...back to the stupid Bears again...featured Harbaugh and Tomzcak actually guiding the Bears to the DIVISION TITLE!!!!
Every other team was 6-10 while they were 11-5.
See? Funky.
In the AFC, up until the Bo injury, the Raiders would end up having a regular season only SLIGHTLY worse then the big guns -- Buffalo and Miami.
Dan Marino's recievers were in their prime -- a prime that would go on for like EIGHT YEARS.
Mark Clayton and Mark Duper couldn't be covered.
The Dolphins draw Cleveland in the wildcard game and go down 20-3.
They come back...
And down 5 with twenty seconds remaining...YEEEEEAHHHHH Marino hits Duper for a touchdown from 8 yards out.
DOLPHINS TAKE THE LEAD.
And they keep it.
They now have to go into crappy, snowy Buffalo, where the Bills were simply...robotronic.
You've probably noticed that I'm trying to get past everything leading up to the final four.
Because this final four would make the 1990 season TRULY special.
The NFC playoffs had Chicago at home to play a team that was 8-8, and very likable to a degree.
The New Orleans Saints.
The Saints are much much better in the late 80s and early 90s then things would eventually indicate.
All they needed...was to do some windsprints.
None of these guys can take a whole season of football.
9 games? Sure. They'll be undefeated.
I know the sister of the current New Orleans coach personally. I met her around the year when the Bears would beat them and go to the Superbowl with Rex Grossman.
I asked her -- why is your brother Sean so cool?
She said simple!
He was a quarterback at Eastern Illinois.
Can you think of a more well-rounded experience for a coach to have?
In other words, he was once the only good player for a crappy college team.
This meant...he had the kind of experience that only Len Dawson and Jim Kelly would.
Your coach tends to trust you alot more if you're Sean Payton and you're surrounded by Eastern Illinois.
And it also explains the rise of Drew Brees.
Brees's career was almost terminated in San Diego.
Phillip Rivers was younger, faster, and didn't reek of Midwestern quarterback.
See?
Sean Payton even understood the third part.
As a quarterbacks' coach, Sean Payton would teach Brees how to complete pretty much any pass he wanted while Favre stuck his thumb up his ass.
Sean Payton taught Brees how to outfox and outdiscipline BRETT FAVRE.
And so they're now in a Superbowl, and about to take the Magic Johnson of quarterbacking exams...
Trying to outfox Payton Manning.
Looking at the Saints in 1990, what's missing due to Sean Payton still being in high school...is obvious.
Bobby Hebert couldn't even outfox Mike Tomzcak.
They lose 16-6 at Soldier Field, and the Bears move on.
To the NFC Division playoffs at loud, cold, angry Giants Stadium.
Where the Minnesota Twins of the NFL would crush Chicago 31-3.
It really didn't look like it would be this way.
Simms broke his foot in Week 14, and the mighty Giants quarterback would be replaced by a guy nobody had heard of...
Jeff Hostetler.
This little asshole hit Mowatt, he hit Baker for like 30 yards over his shoulder, and the linebackers all picked off Tomzcak.
The Giants were going to San Francisco, where mighty San Francisco wasn't even concerned.
The new edition of the Washington Redskins, with quarterback Mark Rypien and Ernest Byner, would finish a daring display of aeronautics in Philadelphia with Gary Clark and Art Monk catching touchdowns and Byner tearing it up.
Then they had to go to San Francisco.
Now this should have been a marquee match-up, the two best teams in the 80s, but Rypien hadn't been here before.
You can tell Montana is good or bad because of the linebackers.
In this case, Washington's linebackers were the weak spot.
Charles Mann was a pass rusher and Darrell Green was a cornerback. I wonder where I'd pass even if the linebackers were good, right?
The 49ers won 28-10, and thus would very cockily and confidently await the Giants.
Meanwhile the Bills would trounce the Dolphins, and draw the Raiders for the AFC Championship.
Without Bo Jackson.
Leaving poor white boy Jay Shroeder NOTHING.
Rich Stadium for the 1990 AFC Championship Game could have been heard from space.
It was 41-3 Buffalo at halftime.
The Bills were remarkable in this game, and their fans would get to see them make their first ever Superbowl appearence.
The Bills were big, tough, strong, fast, talented, cool, and would sit comfortably at about 3 P.M. Eastern time after their big win to watch the 49ers/Giants game.
It didn't look promising at all.
Except for one thing...
Joe Montana would still have to face those four Giants linebackers who beat him in 87.
He had lost to them BEFORE the phenomena of hitting Jerry Rice over the linebacker's shoulder...
Sure enough as the game turned out, Montana couldn't outfox that foursome of the Giants.
The Giants meanwhile held the ball for days and years, all the while Joe Morris sat retired and Phil Simms watched with a casted foot up in the air.
To see the way the Giants handle their offense from here on out, makes alot of sense when you know it was Bill Bellichek's grand design.
Bellichek would use this same tactic to bring down the St. Louis Rams in Superbowl 36...along with a warning to Tom Brady that he could do alot for himself by practicing accuracy for throws over linebacker's shoulders!
It looks it will be for naught.
Three quarters go by and the 49ers are doing their thing for as long as they're on the field.
In other words, since it's mostly the defense on the field, the Giants have only put up 4 field goals and no touchdowns.
But then with about seven minutes to go in the game, and the 49ers leading 13-12 with the ball...Joe Montana gets MURDERED.
Leonard Marshall the pass rusher hits Montana with Montana's back COMPLETELY TURNED TO HIM.
Montana didn't have a single second of warning that he was about to be hit.
Montana had a slew of injuries accumulate all from one hit.
I'm not ESPN which LOVES injuries, so I'm not gonna talk about 'em.
That hip thing already makes me sick.
It would be the end of the 1980s of football...here in 1990...the way Magic and Byron Scott's hamstrings spelled the end of the 1980s basketball.
Yet Steve Young comes in and does the ball control thing, running past people, letting Craig and Rathman have it, and the 49ers remain up 13-12 with not even two minutes remaining, and they're just bringing that ball down field.
They get within the 10 and are just letting that clock disappear.
They hand it off to Crai--FUMBLE!!!! THEY FUMBLED IT!!!!!! GET IT!!!!
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
I was in the other room when I heard the above.
I rush out into the TV room where all my dad's friends were going CRAZY.
The Giants have the ball back.
They have a chance to win it.
IF they get in field goal territory.
But that time is ticking...
So Hostetler gets behind the controls...and leads them downfield with Bellichek in his ear.
They get within the OUTSKIRTS of field goal territory, but there's only 3 seconds remaining...
Matt Bahr is coming on to kick. Here we go...here we go...
I'm holding my uncle's hand because I don't want the 49ers to play my Bills.
And the kick...
It's up...
IT'S GOOOOOOOOD!!!! IT'S GOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!! THE DYNASTY IS DEAD!!!! THERE WILL BE NOOOOOOOO THREE-PEAT IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!!!!
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Super Bowl 25
So the Bills come in HEAVY FAVORITES and decimate the CRAP out of the Giants in the first half.
Jim Kelly throws a pass that's bobbled by James Lofton catches it for 50 yards any freaking way.
They go up 10-3, and then the Bills defense pins Hostetler in his own endzone for a safety.
This made it 12-3.
Then the Giants held the ball for the whole second quarter, culminating in a touchdown pass from Hostetler to Baker.
Baker's knee landed out of bounds, but the officials also believed there would be a terrorist attack at Tampa Stadium due to us being in Kuwait.
There was a sentimental feel in this whole stupid Superbowl...that since we're at war, the NFC should represent us as world champions.
It's only because New England's team is called the Patriots that anyone let an AFC team cheat on this stage.
So we go into halftime, and sure enough, Whitney Houston sings to the whole fucking Giants team while the Bills stand on the sideline behind her.
Thanks bitch.
For you now jinxed Bruce Smith's religious teammates.
What was worse for the Bills was that the drive to get the touchdown to Baker had been a virtual romp by Ottis Anderson and Dave Meggett.
Had this not happened, Parcells would probably have nothing to tell his men as to a possible Buffalo weakspot...
Sure enough, our undersized tackles can't stop him.
Leon Seals had been turned into a pass rusher for this game. WHY?!!!!
The Va-Giants go and eat up the extent of the 3rd quarter one ONE FUCKING DRIVE.
They score because Mark Ingram's knee was down thirty times before they called it.
So they score because Ottis Anderson runs it in.
17-12 Giants after three.
Now it gets fun.
Now at long last comes the part I want to talk about.
As soon as the Giants take this lead, Thurman Thomas runs for a 64 yard touchdown on just the FOURTH play of a ONE MINUTE DRIVE.
No huddle, no kidding.
19-17 Buffalo.
Think Buffalo's happy.
Think again.
Now their defense has to go right back out on the field for more exercise. Half of them hadn't even been handed water yet.
So the Giants of course give them another drive of rushes from Anderson.
And AGAIN...gets down field.
This time however Matt Bahr kicks a field goal.
20-19 New York.
This occurs with about six minutes left in the game.
The Bills end up having to punt, and so here comes the GIANTS AGAIN!!!
Yet once again, the Bills defense manages to keep them out of it...just barely.
Barely enough for the Giants to punt and give themselves EXCELLENT field position, for Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas will now have to start the game-winning drive from their own 5 yard line.
2:16 remaining. 20-19 New York.
The Bills drive down field.
This is made alot easier then you think, because the Giants coaches have their defenders all in the middle and secondary to confuse Kelly rather then sending a pass rush.
Thurman Thomas's bad ass drive would probably not happen if there's a cap on the bottle.
Yet this will leave Jim Kelly ALL DAY TO DO SOMETHING.
This slow bastard RUNS for two first downs.
But still...with 30 seconds left, the Bills were miles away from anything.
Same as with 20 seconds left.
Then he makes a short pass to Thomas WHO SCUTTLES PAST EVERYBODY AND IS OUT AT THE 29!!!!
This is incredible.
With 20 seconds left they were dead. Now with 8 seconds left, the Bills are a 47-yard field goal away.
So here we go.
Bill Parcells calls a timeout to make Bills kicker Scott Norwood think about it.
The Bills get ready.
Now before the game, Norwood was practicing kicks.
He was aiming straight on and missing.
Then he started kicking off to the right and they started hooking back and good.
This is why...Scott Norwood...would try to kick a straight ahead field goal here in the closing seconds of the Superbowl...by aiming right.
The ball goes up...
No good.
WIDE RIGHT!!!!!
The ball just squeeks directly off to the cheek of the right crossbar.
The Giants are world champions for the second time in 5 years, and Thurman Thomas gets denied the game MVP with over 150 yards rushing.
to be continued...
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