They’re Still Giant in Stature

Phil Simms threw the go-ahead touchdown pass with 1:07 left to play. Then with 54 seconds left, Lawrence Taylor stripped the ball, sacked the quarterback and recovered the fumble to secure a New York Giants victory. This would make a nice Geritol commercial except that nobody filmed the sequence in a studio.

It really happened, at Soldier Field, in the season opener, at a time in their lives when each should be a plaque on some locker room wall. The game might as well have been played in Jurassic Park because two old fossils, Simms and L.T., had a tag-team flashback; the Chicago Bears were 26-20 victims.

Simms’s afternoon started -- and almost ended -- when he was knocked senseless by Richard Dent and suffered a gashed chin that required three stitches, yet he still completed 24 of 34 passes for 277 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. “Today, I didn’t feel it,” he said of his advanced football age, 37. “I didn’t even get close to making a really bad mistake.”

On an afternoon that started with Taylor asking himself: “Am I a hindrance to this team?” the 34-year-old linebacker recorded two sacks, five hurries and two knockdowns. He played every defensive play in his first game after surgery to repair a torn Achilles’ tendon.

Old coots.

A year ago Simms sat behind Jeff Hostetler and L.T. talked openly of retiring. At present, they’re largely responsible for the Giants and new coach Dan Reeves being 1-0. Reeves, a lot smarter man than his predecessor Ray Handley, gave L.T. and Simms a game ball.

It was a fairly interesting game for two has-been teams starting over. The Giants kept eating up huge chunks of yardage only to settle for field goals three times in the first half for a 9-0 lead. The Bears, playing for the first time for new coach Dave Wannstedt, drove once for a touchdown, blocked a Sean Landetta punt for another (where have we seen that before?) and a 17-9 lead before L.T. and Simms got really busy.

L.T. wasn’t going to lie about the questions in his own mind about whether he could still play. He admitted afterward to wondering: “How’s my leg? Do I feel like I can make plays? Am I a hindrance to the team. . . . You think about things like that when you get older?”

Simms, after the first play of the second quarter, was simply trying to figure out where he was. Dent, one of the many Bears who claims to be rejuvenated now that MIke Ditka’s on TV and off the sideline, had nearly ripped Simms head off twice early, though neither hit resulted in a sack. A third hit, helmet-to-helmet, left Simms struggling to reach his own corner. “It was a good lick,” Simms recalled. “I couldn’t remember the (next) play so I knew I had to come out.”

For one play. Blood was all over his jersey but Simms came back. “He’s a warrior,” L.T. said. “Unless something’s broken, he’s going to play.”

Neither the Giants nor Bears looked particularly sharp. The difference is Chicago’s Hall of Famer-to-be, the retired linebacker Mike Singletary, was sitting in the press box and the Bears’ quarterback, the frequently booed Jim Harbaugh, is no Simms. Down 17-9 and seemingly out, Simms used a flea-flicker to fire a 40-yard touchdown pass to Mark Jackson. “I just kind of slung it out there,” Simms said.

Down 20-19 and facing third-and-18 with 3:07 to play (after an incompletion, a sack and a penalty), Simms hit Chris Calloway for a 24-yard gain. Granted, the Bears had no idea what they were doing in Wannstedt’s new defense, but Simms threw a beauty down the middle. Next play: Simms to Mike Sherrard (yes, that

Mike Sherrard) for 38 yards. Bears corner Anthony Blaylock decided he would try for an interception in the end zone by vaulting off Mark Jackson’s shoulder. After the interference penalty put the ball at the 1, Simms fired a touchdown pass to Jarrod Bunch.

By this time, of course, former coach Ditka would have thought about hitting somebody, probably starting with Blaylock. But Wannstedt, a kinder, gentler, more constructively critical coach, tried to rally his team and convince the Bears they could score a touchdown in the final minute.

L.T. needed all of one play-first down-to destroy any possibility of a sappy ending. Some kid named Jim Leeuwenburg, a center-guard, hadn’t played tackle since high school but lined up there Sunday because the Bears barely have any healthy linemen. L.T. called him, “Lowmiller,” or something like that. Just another speed bump on the way to the quarterback. “I can’t say there was something spectacular about it (the sack),” L.T. said. “I made a move on their tackle and beat him. Harbaugh held on to the ball. . . . “

You know the rest. If you don’t, ask the Redskins. Ask Joe Theismann, ask Joe Jacoby. Ask Danny White and Gary Hogeboom. (Amazingly enough, in five previous games against Chicago, the Bears had held L.T. sackless.) In the old days, he could pull it off 12 to 15 times in a season, most of them in the fourth quarter or when somebody’s offense was about to score. Nobody knows how often he’ll be able to produce this season. But in one game, on the road, the first day back after a serious operation, L.T. looked fresh and nasty. Why didn’t Reeves take him out for a rest now and then? “I’m not going to say, “Lawrence, you look tired,’ ” Reeves said. “He’s got to tell us. Anyway, him not at 100 percent is better than a lot of people at 100 percent.”

Joe Montana, Phil Simms, Lawrence Taylor. You bet against any of them, you’re a fool, no matter how old, how hurt and how injured they appear to be. All they’ll do is beat your brains out every Sunday if you’re not good enough or smart enough to stop them. The Giants may not be as talented as the people they line up against every week, but if Simms and Taylor can stay healthy, the Giants will be better than .500, maybe a playoff team.

“Great players making great plays is what it boils down to,” Reeves said. “They’ve still got a lot left in them.”