|
Jan. 31, 2000 By Len Pasquarelli SportsLine Senior Writer |
ATLANTA -- A week marked by frigid weather concluded with a hot time in Georgia on Sunday evening with St. Louis hanging on to defeat Tennessee 23-16. The game ended with Rams linebacker
The season that began with dreams concluded with the most glorious moment yet for Cinderella quarterback Kurt Warner, who filled out his burgeoning trophy case with the Super Bowl XXXIV Most Valuable Player award after setting a title-game record with 414 passing yards.
After squandering five red zone chances in the first half, and then surrendering all of a 16-0 third-quarter lead, the Rams characteristically won with the big play. On the first snap from scrimmage after Tennessee's Al Del Greco had tied the game with a 43-yard field goal, Warner threw deep up the right side.
Wide receiver Isaac Bruce made a brilliant inside adjustment on the ball to beat cornerback Denard Walker. He caught the ball at the Tennessee 39-yard line, avoided one tackle, cut inside and raced to the end zone to complete the 73-yard scoring play.
"We had five seconds to go before the two-minute warning and we wanted to take a shot with Isaac over there," Rams offensive coordinator Mike Martz said of the winning call. "I wanted to get the ball in his hands at that point. I just thought we'd take a shot. If we got it, great. And if we didn't, we'd go to the two-minute warning and talk about what we wanted to try. It turned out pretty good, though, huh? (It's) the kind of excitement we like around here."
The excitement wasn't over yet, though, with Tennessee quarterback Steve McNair rallying his team to the St. Louis 10-yard line with five seconds remaining. His slant pass to the right side hit Dyson in stride, but the second-year wideout could not shake Jones' sure tackle and time finally expired on Tennessee's miracle season.
In truth, the call by Titans offensive coordinator Les Steckel was a sound one. The Rams backed six defenders into the end zone and left Jones man-to-man on the speedy Dyson. The plan was to hit Dyson in stride and hope his momentum carried him into the end zone. But Jones, who is not regarded as a strong coverage player, made a terrific play to absolutely stone Dyson. Actually the Rams got lucky, because Jones seemed to come off his coverage responsibility on the tight end a bit too early.
"We didn't think there would be anybody in the middle of the field," Dyson said. "It was a great call, but give (Jones) credit for making a hell of a play on me."
The cliffhanger ending was hardly foreshadowed in the early going, when the Rams dominated the tempo and went up and down the field at will.
Warner completed 24 of 45 passes for a Super Bowl-record 414 yards and two scores. McNair was typically scatter-armed for most of the contest but set a record for rushing yards by a quarterback (64) and hit some big passes in the final quarter.
The first half, which ended with the Rams leading 9-0 on the strength of three Jeff Wilkins field goals, offered a graphic portrayal of St. Louis' superiority in the passing game. Warner completed 19 of 35 passes for 277 yards in the half, his only failure the inability to complete drives in the red zone, where the Titans blitzed up the middle on nearly every play and the former Arena League star appeared skittish at times.
St. Louis had five possessions and moved inside the Tennessee 20-yard line on all of them. In fact, 26 of the Rams' 44 snaps in the first half were in Titans territory and 15 of those were inside the 20-yard line. So dominant was the St. Louis aerial game that the Rams had two more plays on Tennessee's side of the field than the total snaps run by the Titans.
But the Rams botched a scoring opportunity on the game's opening possession when punter Mike Horan mishandled a snap on what would have been a 35-yard field-goal attempt and squandered another when Wilkins was wide right from 34 yards early in the second quarter.
"For whatever reason, I didn't scan the field real well down there and we kept missing chances," said Warner, the league's MVP during the regular season. "I don't think we were frustrated, but you can't keep kicking field goals and expecting to win. We're usually a good red-zone team, but you have to give the Titans credit, too, for playing so well down there. If we just cash in on a couple of those chances, the game would have been very different."
Martz promised to dig deep into the playbook and he virtually ignored the run, calling just seven rushing plays in the opening half and 13 for the game. Martz obviously wanted to go right at Tennessee free safety Anthony Dorsett, starting in place of the injured Marcus Robertson, and the fourth-year veteran was caught out of position on at least three occasions. Most glaring was a 52-yard pass to tailback Marshall Faulk, who was left uncovered in the right flat on a badly busted coverage by Dorsett.
That mental lapse didn't cost the Titans because of Wilkins' 34-yard miss, but the breakdowns in the Tennessee secondary against a craftily-designed passing game featuring plenty of crossing patterns and borderline-legal picks were costly. The Rams played in three- or four-wide receiver sets on 26 of 44 plays in the half, and by spreading the field against an undermanned Tennessee secondary they created one-on-one opportunities for wideouts Bruce and Torry Holt.
The common denominator in every St. Louis game plan is to force the opposition to put its third and fourth cornerbacks on the field at least 50 percent of the time, and few clubs have enough pure cover players to hang with the Rams fleet wide receiver corps. For all their big numbers, though, the Rams didn't get into the end zone until Warner threw 9 yards to Holt with 7:20 left in the third quarter.
The touchdown, which increased the St. Louis advantage to 16-0, came after 12 consecutive red zone incompletions by Warner. On the play, Martz had three wideouts in formation to the right, allowing Holt to work against reserve cornerback Dainon Sidney.
 | |
| Titans QB Steve McNair (9) is sacked by a trio of Rams defenders. (AP) |
Just three plays before the score, Tennessee lost strong safety Blaine Bishop, its spiritual leader on defense, to a neck injury when he made a head-first tackle on Rams tight end Ernie Conwell. But while the Rams scored on the series, the loss of Bishop ignited the Titans. As the medical crew treated Bishop for 12 minutes, coach Jeff Fisher huddled his troops and exhorted them to play the kind of physical style that got them to the Georgia Dome.
"I don't know that I used any magic words," Fisher said. "But there was a long stoppage, and I was told Blaine was going to be OK, so I wanted them to know that. But we got a chance to sort of regroup there, and basically I just said we weren't out of the game. And we went out and just played our style of football then. Really, we had them on the ropes, I thought."
The Titans got back into the game with the same offensive formula that worked for them earlier in the playoffs: pounding George between the tackles, getting McNair outside the pocket where he could improvise and throwing short to tight ends Frank Wycheck and Jackie Harris.
The comeback began with a 66-yard drive on which George carried on seven of 12 plays, McNair scrambled up the middle for 23 yards and then the star tailback pounded over left tackle from a yard out. Although a 2-point conversion pass failed, the Titans were back in the game.
"A lot of teams get down like that and abandon their offense," said George, who carried 28 times for 95 yards, including 21 rushes for 75 yards in the second half. "We still felt like we could get our running game going and beat on them for a while. Our line was just blasting off on people and we all got caught up in it. It just reached a point where we were dominating them on both sides of the line of scrimmage."
Said Rams defensive end Kevin Carter: "They were definitely a different team in the second half. Whether it was the injury (to Bishop) or whatever, they got all fired up. They ran misdirections and screens a lot more. To be honest, some of us were sucking wind. We were kind of just hanging on in there."
When the Tennessee defense held on three downs and forced a punt, McNair and George were at it again.
This time the touchdown drive was 13 plays, with George carrying eight times, again finishing the march with a tough 1-yard run to the right side. The score was set up by a 21-yard throwback screen to Wycheck. Once again the defense forced a three-and-out and this time the Tennessee offense stalled in Rams territory, but Del Greco tied the game at 16-16 with a field goal of 43 yards.
The tie lasted 18 seconds, long enough for Warner and Bruce to hook up on their big play.