Tennessee Snaps Out of This Streak

You know what they always say: It’s tough to beat a good team six times in a row when your quarterbacks are named Trent Dilfer, Elvis Grbac, Jeff Blake and Anthony Wright.

The Baltimore Ravens pushed it as far as they could with the Tennessee Titans, to the limits of sanity, and maybe beyond. The Titans have won 11 or more games in four of the last five seasons -- an iron-clad dynasty in today’s NFL. Over that stretch, they have been quarterbacked by Steve McNair, two-time Pro Bowl selection, flying first-class all the time.

By contrast, the Ravens have been going snail mail, entrusting their annual passage to a bunch of postal clerks, who had two specialties and two specialties only.

They were good at the menial stuff -- take the snap, hand it off, get out of the way.

And they were very good at beating the Titans, knocking them off twice in 2000 with Dilfer (before Dilfer wore out his welcome somewhere around halftime of his Super Bowl victory), twice in 2001 with Grbac (before Grbac announced his retirement immediately after the season), and once in 2002 with Blake (before Blake decided he’d have a better future in Arizona).

From the Titan perspective, that kind of 0-5 run can do things to a man.

Why else would Tennessee running back Eddie George, flushed from a streak-snapping 20-17 playoff triumph in Baltimore on Saturday, look into an ABC camera and tell sideline reporter Suzy Kolber, “All odds were [against] us. Nobody believed in me. Nobody believed in us.”

Coming into this game, Tennessee was 12-4. Baltimore was 10-6.

Coming into this game, Tennessee was a two-point favorite on the road.

Certainly, the oddsmakers believed in the Titans. So did the bettors, who tend to follow these things very closely this time of year, a.k.a. rally time after the weekly sackings of September, October, November and December.

Again, the Ravens came in with a new caretaker at quarterback, Wright, a career third-stringer who moved up Brian Billick’s depth chart when Kyle Boller got hurt and Chris Redman fumbled away Billick’s trust. Tennessee countered with McNair, relatively fit and recently named NFL co-most valuable player.

What, the Titans worry?

There was really no need, unless you paid attention to that 0-5 ink blotch ... and Billick’s 5-1 record in his first six playoff games ... and Wright’s fourth-quarter touchdown lob to Todd Heap ... and the two 17s that shone on the M&T; Bank Stadium scoreboard with less than a minute to play Saturday.

Tennessee needed the help of the oldest player in the league, 44-year-old Gary Anderson, to bury the streak. Anderson kicked his age, and then some, sneaking a 46-field field goal try just over the crossbar to break a 17-17 tie with 29 seconds to play.

The Titans emerged 13-4 on the season, not bad for a wild-card team, headed next for New England if Indianapolis defeats Denver today, bound for Kansas City if the Colts lose.

Form also held in Carolina, where the favored Panthers scraped at the rubber cement and picked at the paper clips that held Bill Parcells’ restoration project together for four months. The Panthers beat Parcells’ Dallas Cowboys, 29-10, another result that suggested the league, though mired in an obvious down cycle, had not quite hit rock bottom.

Saturday, the Titans and the Panthers proved you still needed a quarterback who didn’t sit on the bench behind Ryan Leaf in 2001 to win a playoff game in early 2004.

Wright and Quincy Carter were quarterbacks with the Cowboys in 2001. Dave Campo watched them awhile, figured out -- rightly so -- that they held his professional future in their shaking hands, so he brought in Leaf as a desperate stab at career preservation.

Leaf was gone by the end of 2001, Campo by the end of 2002, but as the NFL’s 2003 playoffs began, both Wright and Carter were still standing.

But not for long. A few hours after Wright threw two interceptions in the Ravens’ loss to the Titans, Carter went 21 for 36 for 154 yards and an interception in a 19-point loss to Carolina.

The Panthers, NFL debutantes in 1995, were dangerously precocious in their early days, reaching the NFC final in their second year, well before their time. Once they realized this wasn’t supposed to happen, they opted for a do-over -- looking very much like an expansion team during a 1-15 2001 season, trying to build all over again with other people’s rejects.

Coach John Fox interviewed for the Buffalo Bills’ head-coaching job in 2001 but lost it to Gregg Williams and was forced to spend one more year as a New York Giant assistant while waiting for the Panthers to go 1-15 and get desperate enough to give him a try. Quarterback Jake Delhomme was a bench-warmer in New Orleans. Running back Stephen Davis was unwanted in Washington, a victim of Steve Spurrier’s fling-it-or-bust philosophy.

Convening in Carolina, Fox, Delhomme and Davis led the Panthers to a surprising NFC South championship, and now a first-round rout of the Cowboys. Delhomme passed for 273 yards and a touchdown against Dallas, with Davis adding 104 yards in 26 carries.

Together, they are headed to the second round of NFL playoffs. Worth noting: Buffalo, Williams, Washington, Spurrier and New Orleans won’t be there with them.