SUPER BOWL XXVII : Narrow Margin : One Kick in the Super Bowl Made Jim O’Brien; Another One Broke Scott Norwood

Scott Norwood lives somewhere in Virginia now, his exact location a secret to all but a trusted few. He has put a “Do not disturb” sign on his life and the Buffalo Bills, his old team, are not allowed to issue his new phone number to anyone, especially reporters. He changed it three months ago, further distancing himself from the inevitable, from the question that won’t go away:

What happened?

Two years ago, he stood on the Tampa Stadium field and tried a 47-yard field goal in the waning moments of the Bills’ game against the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV. Fair or not, a career and a reputation were defined in four heartbreaking seconds.

Had you been listening to Buffalo radio station WGR that day, you would have heard the tense, anguished calls of longtime Bills’ play-by-play announcer Van Miller and analyst Ed Rutkowski as Norwood readied himself for the kick:

Rutkowski: “It’s not all Scott Norwood. You have to have almost a perfect snap, a perfect hold and then it’s all up to Scott.”

Miller: “He’s made only six of 11 outside the 40. And here we go. . . . Linger ready to snap it back to Reich. Eight seconds to play. Norwood takes a practice swing with the right leg. Everyone up on their feet, watching intently. Norwood reaches down, takes something off his left cleat. Now does it again, still standing up near his holder--concentrating, waiting for the snap.

“Here we go. The Super Bowl will ride on the right foot of Norwood. Waiting for the snap. Reich, arm extended, puts it down . . . on the way . . . it’s long enough and it is . . . no good! “

Rutkowski: “Ohhhh.”

Miller: “He missed it to the right with four seconds to play. It was long enough, but it was no good! And Norwood, walking slowly and dejectedly off the field. Scott Norwood missed a 47-yard field goal that would have won the Super Bowl.”

Giant players flopped to the ground in joy. The Bills, dazed by Norwood’s miss, walked toward their locker room as if they were auditioning for “Night of the Living Dead.”

The game had come down to a single kick, which, considering previous Super Bowl results, was a rarity in itself. Usually the games were lopsided affairs during which kickers did little more than punch through meaningless extra points or try to look busy on the sideline.

There have been exceptions:

--Jim O’Brien’s last-second field goal gave the Baltimore Colts a 16-13 victory over Dallas in Super Bowl V.

--Garo Yepremian’s shotput pass to Washington Redskin defender Mike Bass almost gave Miami Dolphin Coach Don Shula a heart seizure in Super Bowl VII.

--Don Chandler’s four field goals and three extra points helped the Green Bay Packers to a 33-14 victory over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II.

But Norwood’s kick marked the only time a miss meant defeat.

Afterward, Norwood relived the play for each wave of reporters that washed against his locker. He blamed no one, not Adam Lingner, the snapper, nor Frank Reich, the holder. Norwood kicked it. Norwood missed it.

Shortly after the team’s return to Buffalo, a rally was held at the city’s Niagara Square. An estimated 70,000 were there to welcome the Bills home and, in a strange way, to forgive Norwood.

“We want Scott! We want Scott!,” the crowd yelled.

And Scott they got. An emotional Norwood stepped to the microphone and promised to help Buffalo win the next Super Bowl.

Instead, the Bills were beaten soundly by the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXVI, 37-24. Norwood kicked a 21-yard field goal in the third quarter, but by then it didn’t matter.

A few months later, Norwood, the team’s all-time scoring leader, was released. When no other NFL club signed him, Norwood returned home to Virginia. He spoke to Buffalo sportswriters shortly afterward but hasn’t been heard from since.

Was it because of a single kick?

Jim Turner watched Norwood miss that day. Turner, who kicked in two Super Bowls for two teams--Super Bowl III for the New York Jets, Super Bowl XII for the Denver Broncos--said he knew what would happen next.

“I’ll tell you what went through my mind and it proved true: His career is through,” said Turner, a sports talk-show host in Denver. “You can’t recover from the kick. The dream of Walter Mitty is to kick the winning field goal. I knew he wouldn’t recover. I knew it would cost him his career and it did. He just missed it. Too bad. It literally cost a very good kicker his career.”

Turner tried six Super Bowl field goals, five in the Jets’ upset of Baltimore in 1969--the game in which New York quarterback Joe Namath had “guaranteed” a victory. Turner made three against the Colts, including a nine-yarder that is tied for shortest kick in Super Bowl history, and one against the Cowboys in 1978. He knows how lonely a job kicking can be.

“You know your teammates are as nice as they can be,” he said. “But when you’re not around, they’re blaming you for that.”

Of course, Turner didn’t have to apologize for anything during the 1968 season. He had 34 field goals that year and scored 145 points, regular-season records that stood for 15 years. So important was Turner that Jet Coach Weeb Ewbank approached the kicker as the team prepared for its game against the heavily favored Colts.

“Remember, Jim, we’re going to need you in this game, too,” Ewbank said.

Three field goals later--the difference in the final score--Turner and the Jets had their unlikely championship.

“I knew it was going to come down to the kicking,” said Turner, who keeps a plaque of the Jets’ game plan on a wall in his home. “I missed my first attempt at 37 yards or so. But I always had the feeling, ‘Put me in the pressure game, that’s why I’m here. The pressure didn’t bother me.’ ”

It apparently didn’t bother any of the Jets, who provided the former American Football League its first Super Bowl victory in only three tries. And against the mighty Colts, no less.

Afterward, in the raucous Jet locker room, Turner noticed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s arrival for the trophy presentation. Yelled Turner: “Hey, Pete, welcome to the AFL.”

Turner had earned the right to pop off.

“We were a very confident team,” he said. “Joe gets all the credit, but that was a very, very good New York Jets team. To me, the shame of the whole Super Bowl III is that only one person gets the credit.”

True enough. Namath was voted the game’s most valuable player, and rightly so, but Turner could have been considered.

So far, 14 quarterbacks, five running backs, three wide receivers, two defensive ends, one linebacker, a safety and a defensive tackle have won Super Bowl MVP awards. The linebacker was Cowboy Chuck Howley, who became the first and last player from a losing team to earn the award. He can thank Baltimore’s O’Brien for the distinction.

“The Super Bowl was the Super Bowl, but it hadn’t been Hollywood-ized yet,” said O’Brien, now chief operating officer of Pacifica Corporation in Westlake Village. “I was a 23-year-old rookie who didn’t know anything anyway. I was just oblivious to it anyway.”

O’Brien had a dream that week. Somebody, either he or Dallas’ Mike Clark, would kick the game-winning field goal.

“Late in the game, it looked to me that Mike was going to win out, but then (Colt linebacker) Mike Curtis intercepted a pass,” O’Brien said.

That’s when O’Brien knew the game would be won on a field goal, his field goal.

“It was a foregone conclusion,” he said.

Just before he jogged onto the field for the kick, a teammate patted him on the back and said: “Even if you miss it we’re still tied. Just do the same thing you’ve done all year.”

Dallas called a timeout. O’Brien, in an attempt to stay calm, asked holder Earl Morrall if there was any wind. No, said Morrall. And after that, a nervous O’Brien entered some sort of cosmic zone.

“It was probably the best kick I ever hit in my whole life,” O’Brien recalled. “I don’t remember hearing Earl, not a word. I don’t remember seeing the ground. I saw the kick and it was going straight. I knew we were going to win the Super Bowl. It brings chills to me, even sitting here now.”

As the ball cleared the crossbar, Morrall and O’Brien looked at each other in amazement.

“I jumped about eight feet and he jumped four, which was good for him,” O’Brien said. “Then the rest of the team mobbed us.”

O’Brien gave the NFL Hall of Fame one of his kicking shoes and kept the other. Its place of glory?

“It’s out on the shelf in the garage,” he said.

O’Brien does display the game ball he received from his Colt teammates, as well as the actual ball he kicked to win the Super Bowl. His career lasted only four seasons and he knows exactly why.

“You don’t know how you beat that kick,” he said. “But I’ll take it. I could have played 12 years and not won anything. There’s a lot of those guys.”

And only one of him.

“Hey, it beats being Jack the Ripper,” he said.

Or Scott Norwood, who O’Brien still wishes would have made that 47-yarder against the Giants.

“I thought sure he was going to make it,” O’Brien said. “I cried. I felt sorry for him.”

So did Rich Karlis, who watched many of those same Giants beat his Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. Karlis kicked a Super Bowl record-tying 48-yarder against New York in the Rose Bowl, but also missed two of three other attempts.

“Once the game started, I remember being as nervous as I’d ever been in a game,” said Karlis, who works for a sports marketing firm in Denver. “To this day, I don’t know why. I had never been that way in any other game. I was just really hyper, where you could feel your heart pounding. I missed kicks that I normally could make with my eyes closed.”

Denver led at halftime, 10-9, but was overwhelmed in the second half by the Giants, who eventually won, 39-20.

“We hurt ourselves because we could not score touchdowns,” he said. “And missing the field goals was like icing on the cake. I just added insult to injury. It was 10-9 (at the half), but we probably should have led, 17-0, or 24-7.”

The Broncos and Karlis got another chance the next season, but once again were overpowered by their NFC counterpart, in this case, the Washington Redskins. Denver lost, 42-10, but the day wasn’t without its anxious moments for Karlis.

When he returned from the team pregame meal, Karlis found his pregnant wife, Dena, crying in their hotel room. She was in tears because she thought her labor had started.

It wasn’t labor, it was nerves. Andrew Karlis wouldn’t be born until Feb. 28, nearly a month after Karlis had made one of two field-goal attempts against the Redskins.

“If we could have just won one of those,” he said. “I think as a player you just want to win one, just one. To get there is such an accomplishment, but if you don’t win, you’re looked down upon, you’re chokers. Heck, they didn’t choke to get there.”

That’s why Karlis will never blame Norwood for the Bills’ defeat several years later.

“Scott Norwood got a bad hold on the one he missed,” he said. “(Reich) never got the laces around. As soon as I saw the hold (on the replay), I said, ‘Shoot, no wonder.’ That was a long kick not to have the laces in front.”

Pressure is relative. Norwood had the fate of two teams riding on his kick. Green Bay’s Chandler had the glare of Vince Lombardi to deal with, to say nothing of the pressure felt by the Packers in the first championship game against the upstart AFL. Miami’s Yepremian had to contend with the demands of perfection, the result of the Dolphins’ 16-0 record at the start of the 1973 game against the Redskins.

“I think our whole team was nervous,” said former Packer Chandler, who now works in real estate in Tulsa. “I think Lombardi was nervous because a lot of pressure was put on him by the other NFL owners. He was definitely motivated for that game. That first one was a tough deal. There were so many unknowns.”

Chandler did little kicking that day as the Packers, ahead by only four points at halftime, won, 35-10, over the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL got the victory it expected, Lombardi got the victory he craved, and the Packers got the first of two consecutive Super Bowl rings.

Chandler retired after Super Bowl II, a game in which he kicked four field goals and accounted for 15 of Green Bay’s 33 points. He had a wife, three children in school and earned about $30,000, plus the $15,000 bonus for the Super Bowl. He had had enough of pro football and anyway, Lombardi was moving from coach to general manager.

“But we got those rings,” Chandler said. “And that meant more than the $15,000.”

Lombardi promised the Packers a ring to remember if they beat Oakland in Super Bowl II. His idea: a three-karat diamond in each one.

Yes, well, that was before Lombardi learned how much a three-karat diamond cost.

“We ended up getting rings with three one-karat diamonds,” Chandler said. “I’ve got it on right now. It looks like a big, green stoplight.”

Yepremian owns two championship rings, too, but wears only the one from Super Bowl VII, the climax to the season that has never been duplicated by any NFL team. Perfection. A pristine 17-0 record.

“The most important game of my life,” said Yepremian, who lives in Lancaster, Pa., and works as a broadcaster, as well as a banquet and motivational speaker.

The Dolphins were ahead, 14-0, and well on their way to a convincing victory when Yepremian’s field-goal kick with 7:07 remaining in the game was blocked by Washington defensive tackle Bill Brundige. Yepremian scooped up the ball and rather than fall down--as Coach Don Shula later said he was supposed to do--attempted an awkward pass that wobbled into the hands of Redskin Mike Bass. Bass returned it 49 yards for a touchdown and suddenly Washington was back in the game, sort of.

Miami regained control and Yepremian, forever a Super Bowl footnote, was saved.

“That’s all you hear about for the last 20 years,” Yepremian said, none too pleased about the memory. “Every time, they all talk about the missed field goal by Garo Yepremian.”

Yepremian likes to remind everyone about an offside penalty by a Miami receiver that cost the Dolphins a touchdown earlier in the game. And contrary to what Shula might say, Yepremian insists that he was instructed to try to salvage the play if a kick were blocked.

“I can throw the ball,” he said. “The ball slipped out of my hands and they picked it up for a touchdown.”

As it turns out, the play made Yepremian “a lot of money.” He still gets requests for speaking engagements and almost always he talks about the muffed pass.

Even so, Yepremian remains a bit sensitive about his role in the game. As legacies go, he could do without this one.

“Someone told me that Shula was quoted in the paper, ‘That was the most important game for me. I could have killed Garo,’ ” Yepremian said. “Well, it was a very important game for me, too. After 20 years, enough is enough. (Shula) is still brooding about what happened 20 years ago. That year I won three games with field goals I kicked. So many kicks I made that year kept that undefeated season going.”

The next year, when Miami beat Minnesota in Super Bowl VIII, 24-7, Yepremian enjoyed an uneventful game. He kicked one field goal, three extra points and didn’t throw a pass.

“I was so relieved after the game,” he said. “I had not screwed up in this game. I was going to celebrate this time. I didn’t celebrate after the previous Super Bowl at all.”

Immediately after the ’73 game, Yepremian was told that his pregnant wife might have lost their baby. Rozelle dispatched several security personnel to accompany Yepremian to a Houston hospital. Once there, Yepremian discovered that his wife had already checked out, that all was well.

Yepremian missed the parties that night, too. He stayed with his wife and then left for the Pro Bowl the next day. He kicked five field goals in the Pro Bowl game and not long after that received the news that mattered most:

It’s a boy. Garo Jr.

And so what if Yepremian is best known for a pass that he shouldn’t have thrown? He could have worse fate. He could be Norwood, who has faded from view as easily as that 47-yarder faded to the right.