These Underdogs Have Real Bite

Let’s hope the Super Bowl is as good as the NFC and AFC championship games.

Let’s hope one of the New England Patriot quarterbacks can be as savvy, tough, gutty and clever as the Philadelphia Eagles’ Donovan McNabb. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the Patriot defenders will not be in awe of Kurt Warner and his flotilla of receivers, will not be overwhelmed by the running of Marshall Faulk.

The St. Louis Rams will be coming to the Super Bowl as huge favorites. We should thank the Eagles for giving all of us who love a contest, who yearn for the unexpected, hope that the Super Bowl will be fun. The Rams have already been made 14-point favorites. The Patriots will use that, being the big underdog. Again.

The Patriots will note that in Week 9 of the regular season,

they played the Rams tough, stayed within a touchdown, lost, 24-17.

“It was a great game,” Warner said. “They gave us fits. I’m sure they will again.”

The Patriots will remember

that Pittsburgh was supposed to whip them.

The Rams were supposed to whip the Eagles too. But the Eagles gave the Rams fits Sunday at the Edward Jones Dome before losing, 29-24, in the NFC championship game.

As this season progressed, the Rams seemed able to throw the football better than anybody. Warner had the strongest and most accurate arm. And he had more good receivers than any team should be allowed--Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Az-Zahir Hakim, Ricky Proehl, Ernie Conwell. And the Rams ran the ball better than anybody because Faulk was simply the best, the strongest, quickest, steadiest back in the league. And he could catch too.

And the Ram defense ranked No. 1 in the NFC. This hardly was fair, being able to score at will and then stop the other team from scoring. What was the point, really, of having the Super Bowl? That was the feeling around the league after the Rams demolished Green Bay in the NFC divisional playoffs.

Not anymore.

The Super Bowl won’t be a coronation. It will be a competition.

Philadelphia had a chance to beat the Rams on Sunday. The Eagles had the ball twice in the final three minutes. They had a quarterback, McNabb, capable of making miracles. They had heart and will and that they ended up losing was not an embarrassment.

It was proof that the NFL can be fun.

It was confirmation that football titles should be decided by playoffs and not a bowl championship series.

The Steelers weren’t supposed to lose to New England. The Eagles weren’t supposed to hang with the Rams.

The Super Bowl will be exhilarating.

New England will bring a quarterback controversy and a pretty cocky attitude to New Orleans.

The Patriots beat Pittsburgh, the big favorite, on the road Sunday in the AFC championship game.

They did it even though their young quarterback, Tom Brady, got hurt. They did it because their old quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, had something to prove.

These teams, these players, the ones with something to prove, they can be dangerous.

St. Louis will bring an unexpected joy and a renewed sense of purpose to New Orleans. They learned something Sunday.

“This is very, very rewarding,” Warner said.

“Everybody expected us to be on top. Everybody was shooting for us all year and that’s not always an easy position to be in. Every week teams got up to play us.

“Two years ago it wasn’t like that. So in that sense, this is more rewarding.

“Winning a game like this, that’s also rewarding.”

When Aeneas Williams intercepted McNabb, a pass that was intended for Freddie Mitchell, there was 1:55 to play in the game and the Rams reacted as if they were little boys who had just beaten their big brothers.

They all chased Williams into the end zone and jumped on him. Right end Grant Wistrom, a hulk of a man with long, wild hair and fierce, dark eyes, got down on his hands and knees and pounded the turf in pure joy.

As the Rams ran out the clock (the Eagles did get one, last, fruitless play with three seconds left), they were giggling and cavorting and clowning and being kids again.

It’s hard work being the target, just as Warner said. It makes your hair turn gray, it makes your stomach turn over.

And sometimes it becomes boring watching excellence. It becomes ho-hum when every Warner pass is spot on and caught by a swift, strong receiver. It becomes enervating to watch Faulk run over the defense, run around it and through it, watch him shrug off a tackler, run past another.

It isn’t sporting when one team seems to have all the best players.

But the Eagles played with insouciance, with a sizzling sense that their time had come, that they had, in McNabb, the singular star who could out-dazzle all the Ram stars. For a while he could. And then he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because the Eagles couldn’t get the ball. Faulk wouldn’t let them. The Rams ran 22 of the 28 plays in the third quarter. The Rams had the ball for more than 12 minutes of the third quarter. The Rams scored all 10 points in the third quarter.

As the Rams celebrated the victory and their second Super Bowl trip in the last three years, McNabb stood quietly in the tunnel and watched.

He stood there, he said, so he could feel what the Rams were feeling, so he could soak up the emotion and the amazement.

He wanted, he said, to capture the moment, implant the memory, make it his own so that he will not be happy without his own Super Bowl moment.

All season the Rams have offered excellence. The Eagles knew that only their own excellence would be good enough Sunday.

The Patriots know they will have to be excellent next Sunday and they proved against the Steelers that they understand excellence.

What the 2002 Super Bowl has are two teams ready to be excellent.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com