Frightening in a Bottle

The spirit of the season, among other things, was in the air in the NFL on Sunday as Dennis Green played mall Santa in Michigan, the Chicago Bears opened up their offense and discovered a post pattern, and football fans in Cleveland gathered early for the traditional exchange of their favorite yuletide gifts, half-drunken bottles of beer.

They were throwing helmets in Pontiac after the Detroit Lions, the Tiny Tims of professional football, finally won a game in their 13th try in 2001 with a 27-24 victory over Green’s Minnesota Vikings, without whom the Lions and the Carolina Panthers would be going winless for Christmas.

They were throwing long passes, of all things, in Chicago, where the Bear coaching staff proved it was merely waiting for the right moment--another game against Tampa Bay--to take the wraps off quarterback Jim Miller, who passed for two touchdowns in a 27-3 victory over the Buccaneers.

And they were throwing beer bottles in Cleveland, toasting the officials’ decision to reverse a crucial call that killed off the Browns’ last-minute drive, knocked the home team out of the playoffs and had soccer fans in England watching the telly and wondering why they can’t do anything about the football hooligans over there.

(Serving the fans their beer in paper cups instead of bottles might be a good place to start. Let’s see: Beer. Football. Dawg Pound. December. Bottles. Those sound like the basic ingredients for “Football Riot In Cleveland,” and if Brown management was smart enough to hire Butch Davis, how could it be so stupid to stock those concession stands with bottles? Response from Browns management: Hey, those bottles are plastic!)

With 48 seconds left on the clock and the end zone starting to look like the day after Woodstock, referee Terry McAulay, fearing for the safety of his crew, declared the game over and ordered his men to run for cover. The numbers on the scoreboard would stand: Jacksonville 15, Cleveland 10.

But once the officials hustled into the tunnel and huddled inside their dressing room, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue placed a call to Cleveland and ordered that the game must go on, flying projectiles or not.

This is crowd control, NFL style: After a delay of about 20 minutes, both teams returned to the field, after most of the fans had already dispersed, playing the remaining 48 seconds in front of an estimated 5,000 spectators, not nearly as sizable a threat as the original 72,818.

The play that touched off the frenzy was a fourth-down pass from Brown quarterback Tim Couch to Quincy Morgan, who juggled the ball as he hit the turf. If ruled complete, Cleveland would have first-and-goal at the Jacksonville nine. If not, the ball would go to the Jaguars on downs.

Initially, McAulay and his crew ruled the pass complete. On first down, just as Couch was readying to spike the ball to stop the clock, McAulay was buzzed by a replay official who had reviewed the play in the press box and decided to reverse the call.

Couch’s fourth-down pass was ruled incomplete.

Couch’s ensuing first-down spike never happened.

Jacksonville took over on downs ... and the Dawg Pounders took matters into their own hands.

Jaguar wide receiver Jimmy Smith said he and his teammates “feared for their lives.”

Nonsense, responded Brown owner Al Lerner and President Carmen Policy, who contended that these were just good fans, simply showing how much they cared about their team.

It’s a good thing the Lions didn’t score their historic first victory in Cleveland.

The Lions, the fifth team since the 1970 merger to open a season 0-12, finally ended their luckless streak--the last nine losses by eight points or fewer--by overcoming a 24-20 fourth-quarter deficit on Cory Schlesinger’s one-yard scoring run with 10:36 left.

When it was over, the game and the streak and a long run of late-night comedy fodder, Lion wide receiver Johnnie Morton pulled off his helmet and flung it 30 yards before running off the field and into a sideline television reporter and shouting into the microphone, “Jay Leno can kiss my (posterior part of the anatomy that rhymes with pass)!”

Later, in the locker room, Morton tried to compose himself, but failing, told reporters, “It sounds awkward to say that this is one of my best moments in sports, but after all we’ve been through with our record and injuries, this is the best.”

In the other locker room, Green wasn’t feeling particularly downcast about his Vikings’ defeat. “Everybody in this league deserves to win a game,” said Green, the league’s purple-clad Kris Kringle, whose team is the only thing separating the 1-12 Lions and the 1-12 Panthers from 0-13.

Good things come to those who wait (with the notable exception of fans sitting through a replay review in Cleveland).

In Chicago, after waiting for weeks, fans finally saw a Bear quarterback throw deep downfield, more than once--and, surprise upon surprise, the passes were completed, for sizable positive yardage gains. Two, even, resulted in a play sometimes referred to as “a touchdown pass.”

Meanwhile, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers, having waited seven years, finally saw Kordell Stewart emerge as a winning big-game quarterback, in the Steelers’ biggest game of 2001. With 1,000-yard running back Jerome Bettis sidelined with a groin injury, it was up to Stewart to manufacture enough points to defeat the defending Super Bowl champion Ravens in Baltimore--and he did, running and passing the Steelers to a 26-21 triumph, an 11-2 record and a three-game lead in the AFC Central over the Ravens.

And in New York, where the Jets usually take December off for the holidays, long-standing tradition ran head on into the Cincinnati Bengals and, as you might have guessed, the Bengals lost.

It wasn’t much to look at, a come-from-behind 15-14 victory against the NFL’s losingest team of the last decade. But a win in December is a win in December, and the Jets, in the last 12 years, are now 16-35 in December.

Afterward, Jet fans celebrated the occasion, oddly enough, by hoisting their beer bottles in the air, tilting them southward and drinking from them.