NFL NOTES : Competitive Super Bowls--a New Trend?

Keep your fingers crossed, but a XXV-year-old trend may be ending--dull Super Bowls.

Of the last three NFL title games, two have come down to the final minute -- last year’s 20-19 win by the New York Giants over Buffalo and San Francisco’s 20-16 victory over Cincinnati in 1989. In between, of course, the 49ers demolished Denver, 55-10, but that, of course, was ... well ... Denver.

This year’s should be another good one, the first since 1985, when San Francisco (15-1) played Miami (14-2), that the two best teams in the NFL are meeting for the title. Of course that dream matchup turned out to be a blowout, a 38-16 San Francisco win that started the NFC’s current string of seven straight titles.

There’s an interesting parallel between this year’s game and last year’s although the Giants were NOT as clearly dominant in the NFC as the Redskins are this year.

Last season, Buffalo was favored by a touchdown, give or take a point, largely because the Bills demolished the Raiders 51-3 in the AFC title game while the Giants squeaked by San Francisco 15-13 without scoring a touchdown. This year, it’s the Redskins who are favored because they blew out Detroit, 41-10, while the Bills were held without an offensive touchdown in their 10-7 squeaker over Denver.

The Bills are holding out that scenario as their reason for optimism. “It’s sometimes hard to convince your players they’re not as good as a 51-3 game,” says coach Marv Levy.

Levy likes the two-week break but some people think it can be a disadvantage.

“I don’t think I’d want to be any team that gives Joe Gibbs two weeks to get ready for me,” says one NFC personnel director who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Denver did something to stop them. I’m sure Joe and Richie Petitbon will be able to find it.”

Levy doesn’t think so.

“Denver didn’t do anything we didn’t expect,” he says. “We just didn’t execute very well on offense.”

Instant replay: Thurman Thomas, the NFL’s MVP this year, was a second-round draft choice in 1988, a huge bonus for Buffalo, which had surrendered its first pick that year for Cornelius Bennett. There were six running backs taken in the first round that year, none of whose career has approached Thomas.’

So were the Bills lucky or smart?

“Lucky,” says general manager Bill Polian.

How lucky? The Bills decided to draft him only after looking at a videotape of a knee operation performed on Thomas during his junior year at Oklahoma State.

Thomas was passed by the other 27 teams because of the knee surgery. When he took a physical with the Bills before the draft, he was flunked by the team physician, Dr. Richard Weiss.

“We had a feeling he might drop down and he had been a great college running back,” Polian says. “So we asked Dr. Weiss if he could look at the operation again to see the problem. He actually got a videotape of it, looked at the tape and said ‘OK.”’

Class act: As far as anyone can tell, Washington’s Matt Millen has a chance to become the first player ever to win Super Bowls as a member of three different teams.

The only problem: He may not play next week.

Millen, who was on the Raiders when they won in 1980 and ’83 and with the ’89 49ers, is the Redskins’ “first-down” middle linebacker, a run-stuffer.

So while he had 10 tackles against a run-oriented team like the Giants, he was inactive for playoff games against run-and-shoot Atlanta and Detroit, brushing it off with a characteristically classy: “Who am I supposed to cover, the guard?”

Buffalo is more conventional, but still uses three wide receivers, and Gibbs said this week he hadn’t decided whether to play Millen. “This is a business,” Millen says. “I’ll understand if I don’t play.”

According to NFL records, only one player has played in Super Bowls for three different teams--Preston Pearson, with the Colts, Steelers and Cowboys. But he lost with the Colts to the Jets in 1969.

For a long time, the only man to be on two different winners was Marv Fleming, a tight end who played for Green Bay in the first two Super Bowls and later played for Miami in 1973 and 1974.

But Plan B and a willingness to release veterans has resulted in three more -- Millen, Jim Burt (Giants, ‘86; 49ers, 89), and Dave Duerson (Bears ‘85, Giants ’90.)

Millen, 33, was signed by Washington as a Plan B free agent during the off-season.

“Why did I choose Washington?” he said early this season when it looked like a big year for the Redskins.

“I’m a good scout.”

Coaching caravan: One reason teams want to fill coaching vacancies as quickly as they can: to grab the first-rate assistants, particularly coordinators before someone else gets them.

One of the victims this year is Pittsburgh, which with Indianapolis are the last two of the eight teams with vacancies to make a decision.

The Steelers, who have interviewed 12 candidates, wanted to bring back Rod Rust, the former New England coach, as defensive coordinator. But while they were making up their minds, Rust was snatched up by the Giants.