Titans Will Stand Tall at Finish

Pro football’s Tennessee Titans are hardly as famous as college football’s Tennessee Vols, or music’s Tennessee Waltz, or Tennessee’s favorite son, Al Gore.

Yet I can think of three very good things to say about the Titans:

A few months ago, they helped make Super Bowl XXXIV the liveliest big football game ever played even though they were disappointed on the last snap, when they lost to the St. Louis Rams by 36 inches.

Since that experience, when they fell behind in the third quarter, 16-0, then caught up, 16-16, and then fell back again, 23-16, before driving 87 yards to the Ram one-yard line--as the clock ran down and out--the young Tennessee pros have continued to improve and are now the best team in football.

And this year the Titans will win Super Bowl XXXV with the league’s most formidable 1-2-3 punch--Eddie George, runner, Steve McNair, passer, and McNair, runner--operating a new Ram-type offense featuring two new stars, Carl Pickens and Yancey Thigpen, who, I hold, are two of the NFL’s top 10 receivers.

*

MODERN OFFENSE AT LAST: The 2000 Titans are the team of the year, in short, considering what they did and didn’t do last January in the Super Bowl, and what they’ve done since.

What they didn’t have last time was a modern offense despite routinely impressive performances by McNair, their underrated quarterback, and George, who is second to nobody as a power runner.

A year ago, the Titans’ problem was a conservative, old-fashioned offensive approach they’ve left behind with a new offensive coordinator, Mike Heimerdinger, who spent the last four years learning modern football on the staff of the Denver leader, Mike Shanahan.

Tennessee Coach Jeff Fisher has also immeasurably improved the club’s three-receiver offense with the two players he needed most but didn’t have in Super Bowl XXXIV: Thigpen, who was injured, and Pickens, whom the Cincinnati Bengals didn’t appreciate.

Tennessee is ready.

*

NFL DRAMA IN SIX ACTS: The remarkable thing about the Titans is that they almost won the 34th Super Bowl with an offensive team that couldn’t score until the last minute of the third quarter.

What they had that kept them in the game was the league’s most physically fit 50-man squad plus the AFC’s best defense, which Coach Fisher mastered in his years with former NFL coach Buddy Ryan.

Accordingly, in the first half of their first Super Bowl, the Titans kept Ram quarterback Kurt Warner from running away, and, in the second half, their well-conditioned club wore the Rams down.

Never before in the long Super Bowl series had both teams taken turns dominating their opponents in such strikingly different ways.

Thus it was a game for the ages and, first to last, the most dramatic of the games that have engaged two strong football teams in America in at least a half century.

As a contest, it was a drama in six acts.

And because of what it meant then and means now to a new NFL season, the drama is worth recalling.

*

ACT I: THE SURGING RAMS: Spectacularly aggressive as Super Bowl XXXIV began, and seemingly unstoppable, quarterback Warner swept the Rams down the field every time they had the ball in the first half, penetrating the Tennessee 20 to reach the red zone on five consecutive possessions.

Had the 20-yard line been the goal line, the Rams would have been off to a 35-0 start.

Instead, the first-half Ram lead was a mere 9-0 even though, as a big-play architect, Warner was setting Super Bowl records.

On their five trips to the Tennessee 20, the Rams went so far so fast that they were only in third down three times, when Warner converted all three on big passes to Isaac Bruce (17 yards on third and seven), Ricky Proehl (11 yards on third and 10) and Torry Holt (16 yards on third and 13).

That was dominating.

*

ACT II: THE RED-ZONE TITANS: Curiously, the Titan defense was equally dominating in the red zone.

The wide-ranging Rams had been endlessly terrifying when lining up on or about either 40-yard line--where they could send the NFL’s fastest receivers far, far down the field--but the Titans endlessly suppressed them all on the narrower red-zone stage, where the nearby end line kept the Ram team from deploying its usual deep threats.

So the Tennessee 20 was like a stone wall. After Warner got that far, the Titans could play nearly perfect defense, holding him to nearly nothing.

The Rams on their five series inside the Tennessee 20 gained, in order, one yard, five yards, one, zero, and six yards.

In a championship game, there has never been a gap as big as the difference between the two first-half Ram offenses: the one that invariably stormed through the Titan defense en route to the Tennessee 20 and the one that, once there, stood still.

*

ACT III: WARNER JUMPS AHEAD, 16-0: On the Rams’ next series, their first of the third quarter, they advanced 68 yards on Warner’s six-for-six passing to break through the red zone at last.

This, their sixth consecutive big drive, looked a lot like the first five, meaning that on their first third-down play, seven to go, Warner picked up eight yards, this time with a throw to running back Marshall Faulk.

On the next play he passed to Bruce for 31, and on the next to tight end Ernie Conwell for 16.

Then at the Tennessee 10, the Rams started another red-zone trip the same old way, with a first-down incomplete and a second-down one-yard run.

But, ominously for the Titans, their defense had by then lost both safeties to injury, Blaine Bishop a moment earlier and Marcus Robertson a week earlier.

Thus depleted, they finally gave up a touchdown on a third-and-nine pass and run, Warner to Holt.

Rams 16, Titans 0.

*

ACT IV: MCNAIR CATCHES UP, 16-16: Seemingly dead, the Titans, whose stodgy offense couldn’t budge the Ram defense when the champions were fresh and rested in the early acts of the drama, suddenly arose when the Rams began to tire.

An energetic exercise program is one of Fisher’s secret weapons--tailback George, for example, runs wind sprints after daily practice--and in their march to the 1999 AFC title, the Titans’ extraordinary physical condition repeatedly paid off.

At the Super Bowl, therefore, long before the third quarter was history, the St. Louis defense, invincible earlier, could no longer keep up.

As the Titans drove 66 and 79 yards to touchdowns and another 28 yards to the game-tying field goal, 16-16, they assaulted the fading Rams with a continuous three-threat offense: George’s running, quarterback McNair’s passing, and, most menacing of all, McNair’s running.

On every key play, the Ram defense could easily handle two threats but not three.

Confined as a passer to short plays, McNair, whose long suit is the accurate downfield throw but who, this time, didn’t have that kind of offense or that kind of receiver, nonetheless completed eight for nine during the 16-point rally.

And that changed the momentum.

*

ACT V: THE BOMB: With their last gasp, the Rams changed it back.

To win a 23-16 game in the last two minutes on a 73-yard play that was wholly unexpected--coming, as it did, in the midst of the Titans’ second-half rally--Bruce ran Warner’s 35-yard pass another 38 yards.

It was a long, angling throw against a rush that was no more than a third of a second late as Titan defensive end Jevon Kearse bore in.

Down the field where the ball came down near the sideline, Bruce, who was obligated to deceive the nearest defensive backs if he could, did.

The pass seemed underthrown, but on such well-coached teams as the Rams, Denver’s, Washington’s, the 2000 Titans and the 1980s 49ers, among others, good receivers are trained to go for long passes in several ways, depending on what the defense is up to.

Sometimes, for example, Bruce speeds up for the ball, pretending it’s overthrown, then comes back for it, or steps left at the last instant, or right.

As one of football’s great receivers, he’s learned that a successful long pass in the NFL is a lot more than a long throw and a long run for the ball.

A last-moment change of plans is normally required; and on Bruce’s winning bomb, where a less-skilled receiver would have slowed down helplessly while the ball was batted away, Bruce play-acted and adjusted and got it. Then his skillful crossfield run to the end zone beat Tennessee.

*

ACT VI: THE NEAR-MISS: Finally, on the most electrifying 87- yard non-scoring drive in Super Bowl history, McNair stood in shotgun formation nine times--five times in the last minute--to complete seven passes, the last a quick, short toss from the Ram 10 on first and goal.

That one was the signature play of Super Bowl XXXIV--featuring Titan receiver Kevin Dyson’s sprint to the one-yard line and Ram linebacker Mike Jones’ desperate, firm tackle there--but in terms of 2000, the game’s key figure was McNair.

A steadily improving passer, the Tennessee quarterback has already perfected the hard play, the deep sideline pass, but like John Elway in the 20th century, McNair is an athlete whose great value is that he’s a constant double threat, perhaps the Elway of the 21st century.

Running the ball, he gained more yards than Elway or any other passer ever had in a Super Bowl game to set the quarterback-rushing record with 64 yards.

At 6-2 and 225 pounds, McNair is a 27-year-old fullback with a quarterback’s arm and, now, five years of NFL experience.

But the Titans also have a 27-year-old working fullback, George, 6-3, 240, who’s had four years of NFL experience.

Undoubtedly, in earlier acts of the Ram-Titan Super Bowl, Warner won it with the wondrous air show that produced an NFL championship-game record 414 yards passing; but when the Rams pulled up, panting, the athletes who sustained the drama through the sixth act were George and McNair.