SUPER BOWL XXI: DENVER vs. NEW YORK GIANTS : Some Little Truths About Playoffs and the ‘Super’ Bowl

It’s not Armageddon, it’s just a football game. But the hype that will begin flowing over Super Bowl XXI like lava down Kilauea will be enough to convince a stranger from another planet that he has stumbled on a watershed event in human history. A summit conference could not attract such lavish, energetic media coverage.

Jimmy the Greek, the sport’s oracle, has already pronounced one of the participants, the New York Giants, “the best defensive team ever in football.” Take that, Fearsome Foursome, Purple People Eaters, Steel Curtain.

But we get one of those a year nowadays. It was only last year that the Chicago Bears’ 46 defense was the best in history. Then history caught up with it.

But the sport lives and dies by its myths. They are as hardy as dandelions. Before wagering hard-earned money on them, though, you may want to examine the performance of a few of the more common of them. Such as:

--Field position is all important in this game. The Denver Broncos, trailing, 20-13, with a little more than four minutes to go, got the ball on their two- yard line Sunday. Game’s over, right?

Wrong. Utilizing almost all running plays at the start, the team drove to a tying touchdown and the chance to win in overtime.

A fluke? How many times have you seen a team buried near its end zone do exactly that?

Reason: The team with the ball in that situation is initially intent only on improving its position, getting the ball the hell out of there. A touchdown, the bomb, is furthest from its thoughts. It concentrates on solid, basic block-and-tackle football.

The other team, on the other hand, has these nightmares of the quick, lucky touchdown. It flares off into something it thinks of as a “prevent” defense.

A team with bad field position concentrates all its efforts on achieving good field position, presumably for an eventual punt. It plays hard, sensible football. A team with good field position is like a sailor on shore leave with six months’ pay. It does very foolish things.

--The best quarterback is the pure passer.

Maybe so, but it is the notion here that, late in the game, in an obvious passing situation, any quarterback who can move without a cane can help himself to 15 yards any time he wants. He has only a three-man pass rush to negotiate. Every other defensive man has peeled back toward the horizon in a panic over the pass threat.

John Elway waving the ball threateningly can cause more havoc than John Elway letting go of that ball. Check the number of times he has has reached out and taken a gift first down from back-pedaling defenders in key games.

--You use the running attack to establish the passing attack. You use the running attack to establish the running attack. You can use it to establish the game, if it’s good enough. The Giants ran the Washington Redskins right out of the Super Bowl Sunday. They threw only 14 passes, completed only 7.

Bob Griese won a Super Bowl--No. VII--for the Miami Dolphins once with only 11 passes. He completed eight. You occasionally get a Super Bowl where the running is redundant--San Francisco vs. Miami, for instance--but more often it is critical.

--Your sophisticated, hard-to-read, three-man front and nickel back defenses, which are tricky and hard to solve, are what rule the line of scrimmage and win you games.

First, you might try the old 11-men-on-the-field defense. Cleveland, in rotating its defenses, wound up with only 10 men on the field when Denver scored its critical first touchdown Sunday. The touchdown was made, barely, on fourth down. It’s probably a good thing. If that 10-man defense had stopped Gerald Willhite, a lot of teams probably would have put it in.

--Your game plan is all important. You have to control the game.

What the New York Giants controlled Sunday was the coin toss. They won it and elected to take the wind at their backs. Since that wind was a New York howler, they put 10 quick points on the board while the Washington Redskins were just holding onto their hats. Meteorology wins as many January games as X’s and O’s.

--Prepare for a tough, hard-hitting, close game.

Prepare for an execution. Almost every Super Bowl has been as one-sided as a train wreck. The last three have been total wipeouts--38-9, 38-16, and 46-10. The team scoring first has won 15 of 20. The only Super Bowl games with any suspense have been the two Pittsburgh-Dallas games and the Dallas-Baltimore game. The rest have been football equivalents of the Johnstown flood.

--A great passer such as John Elway can make the difference.

In 1940, the Washington Redskins had the man who was probably the greatest passer in all the ages of football, Sammy Baugh. By the time the championship game was over that year, the Chicago Bears had won it, 73-0.

--The New York Giants are unbeatable.

Unquestionably. The last team I saw that was so far ahead of its opposition in every department was the 1969 Baltimore Colts. The Giants are the surest thing since Tom Dewey in ’48.