Giant Owner Mara, 84, and Ravens' Modell, 75, See Their Teams Reach Super Bowl

By MIKE PENNER

Jan. 15, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —

The secret buried deep in the bowels of Giants Stadium was unearthed, abruptly and dramatically, by New York Giant linebacker Jessie Armstead on Sunday.

Figuring no one would have believed him any other way, Armstead interrupted Giant Coach Jim Fassel’s postgame news conference, used the podium like a blocking sled and reached underneath to reveal a wadded-up piece of paper.

“I put this here before the game,” Armstead announced as he unfolded the paper and read what he had written hours earlier: “New York 31, Minnesota 17.”

It was a prediction, a projected final score for the NFC championship game the Giants had been told, again and again, they had no chance of winning.

“And,” Armstead added, beaming as he held the paper aloft, “it was even better than that.”

Try New York 41, Minnesota 0.

Try telling the Giants now that they’re not good enough to win the NFC East, that they don’t deserve home-field advantage, that they have no business getting near Super Bowl XXXV without tickets.

The Giants, top-seeded in the NFC yet underdogs at home, ambushed a Viking team that expected to send Randy Moss deep and Cris Carter wide and keep throwing until the scoreboard glowed with more points than Minnesota’s 28th-ranked defense could plausibly allow in four quarters.

Well, wad up that game plan and shove it some place dark because the best-laid strategy of Dennis Green and his men came up 42 points short.

“I don’t even know what to say,” said Red McCombs, the Vikings’ shell-shocked owner. “Some days it rains, some days it floods. Today, we got a flood.”

And with Minnesota defensive backs making like rats desperate for dry ground, New York quarterback Kerry Collins passed for more yards--381--and more touchdowns--five--than Charlie Conerly, Y.A. Tittle, Phil Simms or any other Giant quarterback during a postseason game.

Completing 28 of 39 passes, Collins, the oft-maligned Carolina and New Orleans castoff, set the franchise record for most passing yards in a playoff game and became only the seventh quarterback to pass for five touchdowns in a postseason game.

And the Giants are going to the Super Bowl for the first time in a decade, with a team that defied preseason predictions of fourth or fifth place in the NFC East and won 14 of 18 games, if very few admirers, along the way.

Too dull, too charmed, too many dogs on the schedule--the Giants heard it all, week after week, until Wellington Mara, the team’s 84-year-old owner, stood at midfield with the NFC championship trophy and told a roaring crowd of 79,310 that he had heard enough.

Admonishing a media report describing the Giants as “the worst team to ever win the home-field advantage in the National Football League,” Mara said that “today, on this field of painted mud, we proved that we’re the worst team to ever win the National Football Conference championship. I’m happy to say in two weeks we’re going to try to become the worst team ever to win the Super Bowl.”

Credit the Giants’ startling performance to the power of negative affirmation. Fassel used the nobody-respects-us shtick to whip his team into a lather, resulting in a 14-0 lead before the Vikings’ first offensive play, a 34-0 halftime advantage and no small amount of gloating in the aftermath.

“A lot of you people look shocked in here,” Giant defensive end Michael Strahan chortled in front of an interview room full of reporters. “What’s the problem?”

Scanning the audience, Strahan said, “I don’t think anybody in this room can look me in the eye and say they thought we would be here. I see you looking down. I don’t think anybody in this room picked us to win this week. That’s the sweetest thing about this. We proved everybody wrong--and by the margin that we did.

“We showed this is a team sport. This is not about an individual, not about media or about any other player. This is how we played as a group. And if the group plays the best they can on one day, you can beat anybody.”

On paper, the Giants looked deficient at all the skill positions. Moss and Carter were purported to be the best receivers on the field, if not the league. Minnesota quarterback Daunte Culpepper will start a Pro Bowl game Collins will watch on television. Viking running back Robert Smith led the NFC in rushing with 1,521 yards--515 more than New York’s top rusher, Tiki Barber.

But in scouting the Vikings, Fassel saw one matchup he believed his team could exploit: the Giant wide receivers against the Viking defensive backs.

“Our game plan was to come out and attack,” Fassel said. “We felt our matchup with our receivers and their secondary was the best matchup we had . . . We were coming out throwing.”

Collins completed his first six passes--with his third and fourth throws going for touchdowns. On the Giants’ fourth play of the game, Ike Hilliard beat Minnesota cornerback Keith Thibodeaux badly on a fly pattern for a 46-yard scoring play. After the Vikings fumbled the ensuing kickoff, Collins made it 14-0 on his next pass, a 18-yard toss to fullback Greg Comella.

The Vikings were beaten before they had begun.

“It was definitely tough for them to be down, 14-0, without their offense being on the field,” said Hilliard, who caught 10 passes for 155 yards and two touchdowns. “It’s tough to play catch-up in this league.”

Still, the Vikings had a chance to cut the lead in half after Thibodeaux intercepted a deflected pass at the New York 37 late in the first quarter. Minnesota advanced as far as the Giant 22 before Culpepper threw into the end zone for Carter, who lost a wrestling match with Giant cornerback Emmanuel McDaniel for the ball. It was the first of three interceptions for Culpepper, who completed 13 of 28 passes for only 78 yards.

Moss, who scored touchdowns of 68 and 53 yards in Minnesota’s divisional playoff victory over New Orleans, managed only three catches for 18 yards. Carter, playing in possibly his final game, had three receptions for 24 yards.

“Forty-one to doughnut,” Moss said. “I think that’s the worst defeat I’ve ever been in in my life. I’m not really pointing fingers, making excuses. The New York Giants wanted it more than us.”

Appearances can be deceiving, as Giant linebacker Mike Barrow was only too delighted to remind everyone.

“It’s not figure skating or synchronized swimming,” Barrow said. “It’s football. I was like, do we look that ugly when we play? As long as we get the job done, it doesn’t matter.”

NATIONAL FOOTBALL CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP: N.Y. GIANTS 41, MINNESOTA 0

SUPERBOWL XXXV, Jan. 28, Tampa, Fla., 3:15 p.m., Channel 2

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Truly Offensive Performance

How the Vikings’ big four and their offense fared Sunday compared with their season per-game averages:

Daunte Culpepper

*--*

Att. Comp. Yards TD Int Season average 29.6 18 246 2.1 1 Sunday vs. Giants 28 13 78 0 3

*--*

Robert Smith

*--*

Att. Yards Avg. TD Season average 18.4 95.1 5.2 0.4 Sunday vs. Giants 7 44 6.3 0