Obeying Law Paid Off for Giants

There’s a war on. And so you’ll know it in Tampa this week, the National Football League has canceled its annual Super Bowl party.

But not its Super Bowl. The parties may be subdued, the balloons will be replaced by yellow ribbons, flag decals will decorate the backs of helmets.

But America’s tribal rite will go on as scheduled. The music will be muted, but there will banners and pompons and, if the war in the gulf permits, television interviews. These might be preempted from time to time by pictures of guys in gas masks--but war is hell.

When we speak of this moment in history, we will allude to the fact it is identified with a Roman numeral, like czars and Popes--and world wars.

It’s not unprecedented to hold games people play in the midst of conflict. The ancient Greeks used to interrupt wars to stage the Olympic Games. And not even World War II was cataclysmic enough to interfere with the public gambols on the green. Golf suspended its biggest tournaments, and race tracks were closed here and there to make internment camps, but there was a World Series and a Rose Bowl game (even though it had to be moved to Durham one year) and heavyweight title fights (usually for war relief funds).

So, Super Sunday is in good company and will be telecast on schedule. If Hitler couldn’t stop our national pastimes, why should Saddam Hussein?

Super Bowl XXV, even if upstaged by the new Thief of Baghdad, is going to represent in this year of Our Lord a terrific comeback by the state of New York, which has been on a bad streak of late. New York might have lost the Dodgers and the Giants, Darryl Strawberry, and the Yankees may have gone sour but, in Tampa Sunday there will be a lot of people who say “lodge” for “large” and “caught” for a place where they try criminals--but it’s a triumph of the spirit for the Empire State. Both teams are from one state for the first time in Super Bowl history. New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town (state).

It’s also a triumph of the will for the New York Giants, who may have gotten here on guts alone.

I hate to be immodest, but they got there by observing Murray’s Third Law of Winning Football.

For those of you unfamiliar with these modern theorems, let me explain that there are three things I have spent my career advising against on the football field. I have offered this advice out of the goodness of my heart and three generations of coaches have elected to ignore me.

The First Murray Law is: Never play the “prevent defense.” Rush the quarterback instead.

The Second Law is: On an obvious passing situation, the pro quarterback can help himself to 15 to 20 yards any time he wants to.

But it is the third Law that is at issue here. And the Third Law is: Never punt when you have fourth and short yardage near or on the 50-yard line.

This Law is most often disregarded, not to say resisted, by the coaching profession. My arguments, cogent, reasoning, penetrating, have fallen on deaf ears. Coaches always punt in that situation. Without fail.

It infuriates me. Most things do. But I ask the geniuses on the sidelines, “Why do you punt on fourth and one on the other team’s 46? The chances are, the punt will go in the end zone and all you’ll get is 26 yards net and lose the ball and a chance to make a first down. “

They shake their heads. “No,” they say, “we will put the opponent on his own three-yard line and pin him down there. “

Well, sports fans, let me cut you in on a secret: In the pros, no team is ever pinned down on its own three-yard line. On the opposing three-yard line, it’s more pinned down. On its own three-yard line, it has so many more options. The defense has to play so loose, it is relatively easy to cut your way out of coffin corner, sometimes all the way to a touchdown. The 98-yard drive is a fairly familiar staple in the grand game today.

I think the last team to stay pinned on its three-yard line was the 1908 Harvards--or maybe Fielding Yost’s team did it to Chicago in nought-five.

So, you can imagine with what joy I watched the New York Giants Sunday on fourth and two on their 46. They were trailing, 13-9.

The Book, that unwritten packet of bum computations, called for the punt. There was still some time in the game.

Did the Giants punt? No! The Giants know Murray’s Third Law, which is based on principles as sound as Newton’s Law of Gravity. San Francisco deployed to run back the obligatory punt.

The Giants centered the ball to a back, linebacker Gary Reasons, who was in to block. He ran 24 yards for a first down.

And that, sports fans, was the old ball game. The Giants didn’t take the lead. But they kicked a field goal to make it 13-12. And the next time they got the ball, they were in position to win with a field goal. Which they did.

I don’t expect any thanks.

But, was it a fluke?

Hardly. Come with me to the last Super Bowl the Giants were in. It is the third quarter and they trail, 10-9, and they have the ball on the 46-yard line, fourth and one. The Giants put the punter in.

But they snapped the ball to the quarterback, Jeff Rutledge. He made the first down. The Giants went on to score and take the lead, which they never relinquished, and went on to wipe out Denver.

I rest my case. Any team that cannot make a first down with only one or two yards to go past midfield does not deserve to be in the Super Bowl. That’s from the collected sayings of Vincent Lombardi--and James Murray. They should listen to me more.