Eli’s Coming

The supposedly vaunted New England Patriots, the closest thing to an NFL dynasty since the 1980s 49ers, haven’t won a Super Bowl in seven years.

Meanwhile, Eli Manning and the New York Giants have won two in that time frame—actually, in the past five NFL seasons.

Both times, the Giants made the Pats their patsies.

Is this a baton passing we’re witnessing? A changing of the guard? Out with the old, in with the new and all that rot?

Eli Manning is all the rage now, as he should be. He’s up, 2-1, in Lombardi Trophies over his big brother, and is just one behind Hall of Fame-bound Tom Brady, whom Eli victimized twice.

Could Eli follow both those quarterbacks into Canton? Will we one day see the kid toting his own bust, posing for photographers in front of the Hall?

As Keith Jackson would say, “Whoa, Nellie!”

Super Bowl success does not, as some would have you think, punch you a ticket into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But it could help you scalp your way in.

Eli Manning has the most time left in the NFL of he, Peyton and Brady. And as impressive as Eli has been, growing up before our very eyes, any HOF talk is premature.

Let’s see if he can grow some facial hair first, for example.

Remember when the Giants were the team all Lions fans wanted to play in the playoffs? Remember when the Lions’ loss to the Packers on the regular season’s final Sunday was rued, because it meant a trip to New Orleans instead of New York?

Remember the fury in Motown when it was announced that Eli Manning was named to the Pro Bowl instead of Matthew Stafford?

Hey, remember when it looked like the Giants might not even make the playoffs?

From such humble post-season beginnings did Eli lead his team to Super Bowl XLVI glory.

There’s something different about Eli as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

He’s got a lot of “Aw, shucks” about him, number one.

The championship quarterback is supposed to be a cocky, reckless gunslinger who is in TV commercials and on the covers of video games. He is supposed to be tall, Hollywood-handsome and frequently seen with a striking beauty on his passing arm.

He makes guarantees and kicks his offensive linemen in the shins when they don’t block. He tells the coaches how to coach and gets into the face of a receiver who breaks off his route too early.

The championship QB isn’t supposed to shake his head in wonder of what he just accomplished—he knew it all along.

Eli Manning still looks like the 12-year-old little brother whose hair the adults ruffle after they realize that he’s in their presence—after fawning over the big brother.

“That’s cute, kid, the way you throw a football,” the adults say. “Now go take a bath while we talk to your brother.”

Eli Manning plays in New York. That’s about as bodacious as he gets, and that’s just a matter of geography. He wanted to play there, of course—but mainly because he didn’t want to play in San Diego.

Truth is, Eli would be out of place in both cities.

He’s not a New Yawker and he’s not a California beach bum. Unless the NFL opens up shop in Des Moines, I don’t know that he fits in anywhere.

But he has authored two stunning, gripping, game-winning Super Bowl drives, in the final minutes, staring down the barrel of Brady’s gun both times.

Eli Manning doesn’t fit in anywhere, except under center.

Is he a Hall of Famer? No, not yet.

But, to quote Three Dog Night, “Eli’s comin’!”

Colts’ Super Loss To The Jets Left A Bad Taste For Years

(every Friday during the NFL season, OOB will run a nostalgic feature about the Lions’ upcoming opponents)

When rookie kicker Jim O’Brien nailed the 32-yard field goal at the final gun to win Super Bowl V for the Baltimore Colts, it looked as if O’Brien’s team was the happiest bunch of football players on Earth. The kick was followed by the usual jumping up and down, screams of elation, and the hoisting of the head coach toward the sky. O’Brien, of course, was in the center of the mob.

Turns out many of the Colts were satisfied. They were glad they won. But they were hardly happy.

“That should have been our second Super Bowl win,” sneered linebacker Mike Curtis for NFL Films years later. And with Curtis, sneer was the right word. Curtis always sneered — even when he was happy, which he most certainly was not in the days and weeks and months and even years after Super Bowl V in Miami, in which the Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys, 16-13.

A lot of the Colts were still stinging from their upset loss to the New York Jets and Joe Namath two years prior, in SB III.

“There’s no way — no way — we should have lost to the Jets,” lamented d-lineman and the pride of MSU, Bubba Smith. “I’ll go to my grave believing that we should never have lost to that team.”

Namath, beating the Colts and scarring them for life, apparently

The Colts were as much as 19-point favorites over the AFL’s Jets, who became the first AFL team to win a Super Bowl. The 1968 Colts were 13-1 and made the rest of the vaunted NFL look helpless in the process. So how could the Jets, who barely made it out of the supposedly weaker American Football League, even hope to give the Colts a game, let alone beat them?

Over-confidence. Cockiness. And that was from Namath, who boldly guaranteed a Jets win in the days leading up to the Big Game. But where those foibles helped Namath, they positively wrecked the Colts, who felt that as soon as the Jets saw the horseshoe on the helmet across from them, they’d roll over and die.

That lack of taking the Jets seriously has been confirmed by a number of former Colts who played on that ’68 team. In a way, who could blame them? The Green Bay Packers had made mincemeat out of the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in the first two Super Bowls. SB III didn’t figure to be much different.

Ah, but it was, and it left fierce competitors like Curtis gnashing their teeth, even to this day.

“I really took no enjoyment from that game,” Curtis revealed, referencing SB V. “All I could think about was (losing to the Jets). I never really got over that.”

So instead of pure joy, most of the veteran Colts felt relief that they at least won one of the two Super Bowls they played in. And even that relief was tainted by the realization that if they were to have split the games, the win should have been over the Jets and the loss should have been to the Cowboys. No satisfaction.

Curtis respected the game of football, and abhorred anyone who didn’t — whether that was a player or a coach, or even a fan. Case in point: the celebrated instance when Curtis knocked senseless a drunken fan who had wandered onto the field in old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The fan had grabbed the football and started running with it. Curtis would have none of that. He took a few steps, built himself some momentum, and crashed his entire body into that of the scrawny fan, who went down like he’d been shot. But, as a testament to the dude’s inebriation, he could be seen grinning and laughing, as if he was proud that he’d just been leveled by the great Mike Curtis.

“Bubba (Smith) told me, ‘Mike, you shouldn’t have done that,’” Curtis recalled years later. “I said, ‘That man was violating a city ordinance, and I was just doing my duty in helping Baltimore’s finest enforce it.’”

That was Mike Curtis for you.

You can see the incident below.

Giants’ Win Big, But Not Bigger Than Namath’s Jets’ Upset

Yesterday’s Super Bowl was truly super. That makes the Big Game 20-for-42, by my count, in being super as opposed to being a dud. And, frankly, this one might have been in the top three or four in terms of excitement and history and with the upset factor thrown into the mix.

The gushing and overstatements and forgetting of history has begun, however.

This is the biggest upset in Super Bowl history!

That’s what some would have you believe.

Even usually sane, right-thinking media folks are getting sucked into the New York Giants’ 17-14 win over the New England Patriots yesterday. They’d have you forget the biggest upset of all-time, in order to force-feed this game into that spot.

For purposes of an objective argument, “upset” should be classified as any game in which the underdog comes out victorious — based on the pre-game point spread.

Using that as a barometer, the Giants — 14-point ‘dogs in most books — have indeed pulled off one of the biggest upsets. The 2001-02 Pats, when they beat the St. Louis Rams, and the 1997-78 Denver Broncos — upsetters of the Green Bay Packers, are being mentioned along with the 2007-08 Giants in that regard, mainly based on point spreads.

Oh, and the New York Jets are mentioned, too — the 1968-69 team of Joe Namath — almost as an afterthought.

Wrong!

Don’t even go there with me. Don’t tell me that what Eli Manning and Company did to the 18-0 Pats, while impressive, trumps what Namath’s AFL Jets did to the mighty NFL Baltimore Colts in Miami in January 1969 (Super Bowl III).

There’s the point spread, for one — though that’s hardly the only reason. The 13-1 Colts were 18-19 point favorites over the Jets. But the NFL was 2-0 in Super Bowls, with the Packers easily handling the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in I and II. Both games cemented, in many people’s minds, the NFL’s dominance over the AFL. There was little reason to believe otherwise, frankly.

Yet Namath, and the Jets defense, rather easily handled the Colts. It was stunning, really, how easily the Jets beat the Colts. The final score was 16-7. The Colts contributed to the cause with turnovers, but the Jets probably would have won anyway. The AFL proved it could play with the NFL. And, for good measure, the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings the next year to even the NFL-AFL Super Bowl record at 2-2 before the 1970 merger.

But the Jets’ win was landmark, and was not only the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, but one of the greatest upsets in sports history. It wasn’t the 1980 US Hockey Team beating the Russians, but it was pretty damn close.

So don’t let the gushers and forgetters of history con you. Yesterday’s win by the Giants was amazing, but not the most amazing. The ’68 Jets will probably always hold that title.

A Trivial Pursuit

It’s two days before the Big Game. The work week is about done, and you’re ready to put your game face on — at least when it comes to the food and drink. With all the parties going on this Sunday, “spread offense” might as well mean your strategy as you attack the buffet table.

So before your brain turns to mush thanks to the imminent onslaught of carbs and sugars, how about a little Super Bowl trivia?

Answers will be revealed Sunday. As an added twist, e-mail me your answers at gregger63@gmail.com, and the poor sap who gets the most right (a drawing from a hat will break any ties) will get a little somethin-somethin from yours truly.

Here we go….

1. The Cowboys have appeared in eight Super Bowls, but only in one of them did they wear their blue jerseys. In which game did they do this?

2. Prior to the Broncos’ win in XXXII, they’d lost four Super Bowls, all with a QB who wore no. 7. Three of those losses came under John Elway’s leadership. Who was the other loser who wore no. 7 for Denver?

3. This Super Bowl-winning coach eventually did a one-year stint as Lions head coach before tragically dying of a heart attack during training camp of 1974. Who is he, AND what team did he win a championship with?

4. What former U-M player was the MVP of XXXI, thanks to his kick-returning abilities?

5. What was unusual about the televising of Super Bowl I?

6. This running back won Super Bowls with both the Steelers and the Cowboys. Who is he?

7. This was the first African-American QB to start a Super Bowl. Who is he?

8. Who caught the game-winning pass in the final minute from Joe Montana to win XXIII for the 49ers over the Bengals?

9. These coaches are the only two men to win both an AFL title game and a Super Bowl. Who are they? (Hint: one of them won an NFL title as coach of the ’58 Colts)

10. This coach dressed as a bellhop to loosen up his team as it arrived at its hotel. Who is he?

11. This U-M DB caught Garo Yepremian’s feeble pass in VII after a blocked FG attempt and returned it for his team’s only score. Who is he?

12. These are the only teams that have yet to play in a Super Bowl. Name them.

13. Multiple choice. When Joe Namath made his famous victory guarantee a few days prior to III, he did it where?

a. Poolside
b. At a dinner
c. After practice
d. At a press conference

14. This Texas city hosted the state’s only Super Bowl. Name it.

15. This team is another four-time loser of the Super Bowl. Name it.

Good luck– both with this and at the buffet table!