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"I couldn't begin to tell you my emotions," running back Eddie George said. "I'm still emotionally involved in the game."

"I looked up with a second left and was just praying they would stop the clock for some reason," receiver Kevin Dyson said.

Even standing there in his five-button suit, gold shirt and gold tie, Dyson looked as if he wouldn't have been surprised if they had called him back on the field for one more play. One more chance to pull it out. Maybe the season wasn't going to end with an imperfect metaphor for the Titans -- Dyson's futile reach for a game-tying touchdown on the last play.

This is the team of the impossible wild-card victory at Buffalo on the final play. The team that won its first three playoff games on the road. The team that trailed 16-0 on Sunday and had to watch safety Blaine Bishop take a painfully slow ride off the field on a cart that said "Med Stat." Thank God his neck injury wasn't serious

This game was about everything that makes football good.

"Make it a great day!" said the sign over the exit in the Titans' locker room. The NFL put it there, a cheesy bit of good cheer as if these guys were on their way to a mundane 9-to-5 job and not violent combat for a global audience.

The Titans, despite a vulnerable secondary but with gutsy quarterback Steve McNair and the gritty George, did make it a great day. They made it a great game, one that will be talked about for years.

There should be solace just in being a part of this, even if the result was a 23-16 loss to the St. Louis Rams. The mix of emotions was evident in the reaction of coach Jeff Fisher's wife, Juli. She stood to the side of a podium where her husband talked, dabbing her eyes with a tissue -- but fighting to smile.

"We made it somewhere today," Fisher said. "We didn't fail."

That notion is a tough sell, though.

"Man, to come this far and be a yard short was a sick feeling," Dyson said. "I hate losing. I didn't come all this way to be a yard short."

For all his attributes, McNair looked as if he couldn't throw downfield even if it meant avoiding another move for the franchise next season to Murfreesboro, Tenn. But there he was on the game's penultimate play, exhausted, barely avoiding two tacklers and firing a pass to Dyson at the Rams' 10-yard line.

After a timeout, the final play set up exactly as the Titans had planned.

"As soon as I caught it, all I saw was yellow paint," Dyson said.

The end zone. Overtime. But he couldn't fight his way into the end zone, or will himself there.

"When he got his hands on me, I thought I was going to break the tackle," Dyson said of Rams linebacker Mike Jones. "Then he went to the foot. I looked up at the clock with one second left. I knew we didn't have any timeouts. The play worked perfect. The guy just made a great tackle."

So much for Tennessee as a "team of destiny," a silly sports cliché often rolled out this week.

The Titans' Kevin Dyson kneels on the field after the final play of the Super Bowl.(AP)

"I never played to that destiny thing too much," Dyson said.

It is the destiny of Super Bowl coaches to take phone calls from presidents. Fisher talked to President Clinton while reporters watched. Afterward, they wanted to know if the Titans had been invited to the White House.

"He said if anybody in the organization was there, please stop by," Fisher said.

Then the game's Most Valuable Player, Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, walked past, giving Fisher a wave and congratulating him.

"Kurt Warner showed how tough he was today," defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said. "He got pounded and he got up and made the plays."

The Titans got pounded, too. They reacted by making plays, too.

Except for the one that was a yard short.