14-12 Patriot Dud Has NFC Feeling Super Another Year

The Packers and 49ers must have gone to bed Monday night feeling mighty confident, chalking off two more duds in Miami and New England as playoff pretenders that join Detroit, Tampa Bay, the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings as no threat to their quest for glory.

If class holds form, the winner of the NFC Championship Game between Green Bay and San Francisco will be the prohibitive Super Bowl favorite once again to extend the NFC’s domination over the AFC to 14 consecutive years, and the Dolphins and Patriots will be home on their couches happy not to be a party to the carnage.

Let the record show for now that the Patriots (10-6) are AFC East Division champions, because they outlasted the Dolphins, 14-12, before 74,379 at Pro Player Stadium, thereby claiming the frigid home-field advantage for Sunday’s rematch between these two teams in the first round of the playoffs.

But hold your nose, because if next week’s contest is any less eventful, the snoring might drown out Drew Bledsoe’s attempt to audible to an incomplete pass.

The Dolphins (9-7), losing one touchdown because of poor officiating and later a game-tying, two-point conversion because of a holding penalty on tackle Richmond Webb, were in position with two minutes to play to save the game.

But on third and five at the Patriot 42, on what arguably was Miami’s biggest play of the season, quarterback Dan Marino stepped back in shotgun formation and began shouting, trying to change the play.

Miami center Tim Ruddy, hearing Marino’s voice, figured he was calling for the ball to be snapped, and so looking like it was all choreographed by The Three Stooges, he snapped it to Marino. Startled, Marino dropped the ball.

That made it fourth and 15 after the Dolphins recovered, and under siege, Marino threw the ball up in the air without looking, his pass coming down into the arms of New England safety Lawyer Milloy. That quashed Miami’s comeback.

Maybe Coach Jimmy Johnson forgot to mention it to the guys before the game, but the Dolphins have not won a playoff contest outside southern Florida since Jan. 13, 1974, and Monday night’s reported temperature in Foxboro was 17 degrees.

Oh well, the lingering pictures from this game, beyond the dropped passes, poor execution and uninspiring play, will be Johnson throwing a sideline tantrum with the officials, who reacted like the guards standing watch outside Buckingham Palace.

Johnson, already incensed with a botched call that wiped out a 36-yard fumble return for a touchdown because an official blew his whistle by accident, and a holding penalty on Webb that wiped out Karim Abdul-Jabbar’s run into the end zone on the two-point try to tie the score, went bonkers protesting the officials’ reluctance to penalize New England on Miami’s second attempt to tie.

“I was not pleased . . . when the referee tells me he screwed up and had an inadvertent whistle,” Johnson said, “and it should have been a touchdown, and he’s sorry, that doesn’t make me real happy.”

And then referee Tom White dropped his yellow flag to wipe out Abdul-Jabbar’s run, and Johnson lost it.

“The official called one of the eight or nine penalties he called against us,” Johnson said. “I think they had one penalty. We made it into the end zone, two points, but he called the penalty, and we didn’t make it.”

Marino tried a pass over the middle on the Dolphins’ two-point do-over after being pushed back 10 yards on the holding penalty, but tight coverage and an apparent grab of a jersey by the Patriots’ Tedy Bruschi prevented a reception.

“In this league you can call holding on numerous occasions, it just depends on when you want to call it,” Johnson said. “Any other questions?”

How did these two teams ever get to the point of playing for a division title?

Bledsoe, who threw away last week’s game in the closing minutes with an interception, once again was found wanting with pressure applied. Getting no help from the play-calling of Coach Pete Carroll, who called for a pass on third and one from the New England 29-yard line with a little more than two minutes to play, Bledsoe collapsed.

His third-down pass fell incomplete, allowing Marino back on the field after a short punt, and solidified Bledsoe’s failing reputation in big games in 1997: a 34-13 Monday night blowout in Denver; a 28-10 bomb against Green Bay on Monday night; and a 27-7 embarrassment in Tampa Bay.

And these guys expect to return as AFC Super Bowl representatives in San Diego come late January? Well, Carroll thinks so.

“It was great to see these guys play in championship form tonight,” he said. “I thought our players’ heart was so clear and obvious. We weren’t going to let this game get away. There were times during the year when people didn’t think we were going to be close, but we held out to meet our expectations.”