SUPER BOWL XXVI : BUFFALO BILLS vs. WASHINGTON REDSKINS : Tough to Beat : Bills’ Linebacker Cornelius Bennett Is So Good, He Doesn’t Need Comparisons to Lawrence Taylor

Cornelius Bennett was 17 when he was first compared to Lawrence Taylor, one of the greatest linebackers ever.

Like a young pianist compared to Horowitz, it didn’t take long for Bennett to become full of himself, then fall off the bench.

By the time he was 24, Bennett was going home most nights in a rage and locking the door behind him. He might have punched out walls, friends or family had it not been for his drum set.

“I used to play the drums when I was a kid,” Bennett said. “So I got me some drums, and I’d go up and beat up on those drums and get rid of all the frustrations.”

You know, the frustrations that come with being rich, famous, immensely talented and completely miserable.

“It was a great release because I could beat up on those drums without getting in trouble with the law,” he said.

Bennett was a sensitive young artist. His canvas was a 100-yard stretch of field, but soon the colors started to bleed. Bennett had never heard a cross word about his work until 1989, when the comparisons to Taylor were replaced by criticism.

Until then, life had been a snap, usually followed by a sack. Ray Perkins, his coach at Alabama, tagged Bennett with the Taylor comparison.

No one ever called Perkins the next Vince Lombardi, but Perkins had coached Taylor in the star linebacker’s early years with the New York Giants.

Bennett did what he could to live up to the comparison. In 1986, he become the first linebacker to win college football’s Lombardi Trophy. In 1987, the Indianapolis Colts made him the second pick of the NFL draft. On Halloween of that year, the Colts, still unable to meet Bennett’s contract demands, triggered a three-team trade that sent Eric Dickerson from the Rams to the Colts and Bennett to the Buffalo Bills.

By 1988, Bennett was an all-pro.

By 1989, it was bang the drums slowly. Bennett believes he first injured his left shoulder in his rookie season after colliding with Bruce Smith. The muscles in Bennett’s shoulder slowly atrophied to the point where, by 1989, he could barely lift a two-pound dumbbell.

“I was playing with one arm,” Bennett said.

Bennett also sat out five games with a knee injury that season and some questioned his toughness. He took it as an affront to his manhood.

“It made me hate everything,” he said. “I was to the point where I wanted to give up football. I feel if I had been in Indianapolis with the situation they have down there, as far as losing is concerned, I feel I would have given up football.”

Bennett was 24.

“I would have took the money and got the hell out,” he said.

Two years later, Bennett has led the Buffalo defense to its second consecutive Super Bowl. Bennett made it to the Pro Bowl again in 1990, and this season he held together a defense that was ravaged by injuries along the front to Smith, nose tackle Jeff Wright and defensive end Leon Seals.

Bennett is glad now that he did not take the money and run. It might have had something to do with his father, Lino Bennett, a Birmingham steelworker who put a check on the table every other Tuesday, come rain, shine or criticism.

Lino never did much for himself. Realizing how lucky he was, Cornelius dropped his drumsticks and spent the 1989 off-season in the weight room, rehabilitating the shoulder.

“I had goals,” he said. “And the big one was that I had to earn the respect of my peers again.”

Under the circumstances, this season was probably Bennett’s best. He recorded nine sacks and plugged every conceivable hole in the defense. Bennett played inside linebacker, outside--he played everywhere.

“I wouldn’t be sitting at this table and you thinking I was a smart guy if Cornelius Bennett wasn’t on this football team,” Chuck Dickerson, Buffalo’s colorful defensive line coach said. “I’d be fishing for walleye right now instead of giving you all this philosophy of life. The guy brought us here.”

After playoff victories over Kansas City and Denver, Coach Marv Levy told Bennett he had played the two greatest games of his career.

It was a good thing Bennett didn’t quit. As it was, the Bills finished as the league’s 27th-ranked defense. Only the Cincinnati Bengals were worse.

“Statistics are for those people that have those Fantasy League teams,” Bennett said. “We’re here in the Super Bowl, so I believe that shows we have one of the two best defenses in the league. If we win the game, we’re the best defense in the league.”

There were logical explanations for the Bills’ defensive problems. Smith, the dominant defensive end in the game, missed most of the season because of a knee injury. Wright, the nose tackle, suffered a knee injury in September and is just returning to form.

“It’s no coincidence we started playing better defense when he got back in the lineup,” Dickerson said of Wright.

Seals also has played with nagging injuries.

“They were hurt, beat up. They went through all kinds of tough situations this year,” Dickerson said. “Bruce with his knee, Jeff with his knee. Leon Seals had a fractured wrist, spiral fracture of the leg. These guys, at times this year, couldn’t even walk. You think I’m not proud of that group of men?”

Of his team’s 27th ranking on defense, Dickerson said: “It’s all bull is what it is. They don’t let crappy teams play in the Super Bowl. There’s a rule against that. (Commissioner Paul) Tagliabue made a new rule: Great teams go to the Super Bowl. So here we are.”

Another explanation holds that Buffalo’s no-huddle offense scores so quickly that it puts excess pressure on the defense, leaving it on the field for too much of the game. The Bills have scored 44 times this season on drives taking three minutes or less.

Bennett said the Bills’ defense might, on average, be on the field 15 more plays a game than most teams’.

Dickerson, however, doesn’t accept the no-huddle theory.

“I don’t know who the idiot was who came up with that one,” he said. “How the hell can you score too fast? The next thing those dummies will say is that they score too many points. Are you kidding me? You put them up there as fast as you can put them on, and I’ll help you count the damn things.”

Anyway, why should the Bills be worried, what with the next Lawrence Taylor in his prime?

“It’s just something that goes along with the territory,” Bennett said of the comparisons. “Now I’m trying to create a situation for someone to follow in my footsteps as the next Cornelius Bennett. It’s the greatest compliment in the world to even be spoken in the same breath with Lawrence Taylor. If I can just stand side by side with him when I finish up I’m going to be all right.”