SUPER BOWL XXVI / WASHINGTON REDSKINS 37, BUFFALO BILLS 24 : Monk Sums Up Redskins: Silent and Dangerous

I can give you Super Bowl XXVI in two words.

Ho. And hum.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before--but the National Football Conference outclassed the junior conference Sunday for the eighth time in a row. One more and they get permanent possession of it to hang on their den wall.

Forget the final score. Buffalo didn’t get in this game till it was as long gone as the Titanic. The Bills started to put late, desperate points on the board when the score was 37-10 and Washington players began rehearsing their victory speeches.

Washington was bigger, stronger, hit harder and played smarter. Apart from that, there wasn’t much to choose between the teams.

It looked, in poor light, like pros playing their kid brothers. It was as one-sided as a cave-in.

Washington played as a unit. As methodical as a guy laying brick. It was the team from the board room. Corporate America.

Buffalo looked more as if it was making it up as it went along. Washington didn’t have stars, it had cogs. All the Redskins needed was a little oil.

Buffalo was supposed to have this confusing, hurry-up, no-huddle offense. It appeared to confuse, all right--it confused Buffalo.

As if to show its disdain, Washington showed up with a no-huddle offense of its own. The Redskins even had the better receivers. They caught four of Buffalo’s passes, to give you an idea.

There is an axiom in football: If you pass the ball 50 times, you lose. Jim Kelly passed the ball 58 times Sunday. He lost.

Kelly-to-Brad Edwards may one day rival Unitas-to-Raymond Berry or other famous combinations. Trouble was, Edwards was not in the Buffalo pattern. He was a Washington safety. He intercepted two Kelly passes for 56 yards. That made him third on the Buffalo receiving corps.

The win now elevates the Washington coach to another level. Joe Gibbs is a coach whose modesty takes him to a new category. Even after his fourth Super bowl appearance Sunday (and his third victory), Gibbs was still saying things in public like “I’m not very smart” and “I feel very humble to be given credit when it’s the team that takes the credit.”

Humble he may be, but “not very smart” is no evaluation to apply to Joe Gibbs. He now takes his place with the Lombardis, Landrys and Paul Browns. His game plans are as meticulous as Napoleon’s. Sunday, he caught an undersized but fast opponent--and he effectively stifled them with blitzes and confusing defensive patterns that neutralized the Buffalo speed.

The MVP trophy went to quarterback Mark Rypien. But the game, as usual, was an Academy Award performance for the man who was recently voted the best player in the history of the Washington Redskins--an extraordinary honor when you consider this was the franchise that had Sammy Baugh in its lineup, John Riggins, Sonny Jurgensen, Bill Kilmer, not to mention receivers such as Charley Taylor and Roy Jefferson.

Art Monk is an artist on the field. He plays football the way a Spencer Tracy plays a priest or a John Gielgud plays Shakespeare.

He is probably not only the best player in Redskin history but maybe the best receiver in the game’s history.

Only one player in all-time league history tops him in lifetime receptions--Seattle’s retired Steve Largent. Art Monk’s 71 catches this season vaulted him over Charlie Joiner and gave him second place with 801 lifetime receptions. He has 13,195 yards, which puts him in the lead in that category by 106 yards over Largent.

But, if Spencer Tracy was an “actor’s actor,” Art Monk is an end’s end. James Lofton, who was opposite him in Sunday’s game and who is himself in third place in the all-time list, speaks of Art Monk in the tones of a man describing his boyhood idol.

“You look at Art Monk and the things he does with his feet and you have to hit yourself on the side of the head. I mean, he has the feet and the moves of a guy who’s 5-7, 5-8, 155 pounds. But he’s 6-3, 210. He has the grace of a guy doing Swan Lake. I don’t want to say ballet moves, but if you’re an end, you catch your breath when you see what he does. Not too many people have the nimble moves he does.”

The problem with Art Monk is, you don’t know if that’s a name or a description. Even on the monosyllabic Redskins, he’s the silent majority. He is quoted barely more often than the abbot of a monastery with vows of silence.

He stood before the press after a typical Monkish performance in Super Bowl XXVI Sunday and talked as if his seven catches for 113 yards were just a routine day at the office. “We were able to pick some holes,” he said diffidently. “They tried to keep us off-guard but we’re the type of offense that exploits weaknesses.”

His coach is not fooled by modesty. “Art caught 106 passes one year (a league record) and 55 of them were over the middle,” Joe Gibbs says.

Catching a ball over the middle is a job they usually leave to the rookies. It’s dangerous work, combat duty. But Art Monk heads for the open position. His whole profession is dangerous. A guy catching a football is as exposed as a dictator riding in an open car. It is the business of safeties to hit him as hard and unexpectedly as they can to: 1) knock the ball loose; and 2) make him come into the zone next time on tiptoes like a guy going through a dark cemetery or a lonely stretch of Central Park after dark.

There used to be an end in this league whose moves were so graceful and elusive he was known as “Bambi.” Art Monk is bigger than Lance Alworth was, he is more like an eight-point stag. But he has the same ability to blend into the surroundings and suddenly reappear with the football cradled to his chest coming down in the end zone.

You won’t find it in the record books, but Art Monk did that Sunday. He caught an eighth pass Sunday, a touchdown. He leaped over defender Kirby Jackson at the rear of the end zone. He came down with what the officials ruled was a touchdown.

But, for only the second time in Super Bowl history, a call was reversed. It was the first time a touchdown was nullified. The cameras appeared to show Art Monk coming down with just one big toe hitting the line.

Art Monk doesn’t complain. Art Monk never complains. Art Monk is perfect for Washington. He is a star who doesn’t act like one. If he had a different personality and was on a team with a different personality, he might be Crazy Legs, or a Disney character. Here, he’s content to be A. Monk.