Squirek covered himself in glory with one super play

Jack Squirek’s NFL career wasn’t much to write home about. A 6-foot-4, 230-pound linebacker, he served mostly anonymously and usually without flair or distinction.

Except, of course, in the biggest game of his life.

Twenty-five years ago this month, on football’s grandest stage, Squirek stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight, making a pivotal and memorable play to help the Raiders deliver Los Angeles its only Super Bowl championship.

“It’s everyone’s dream to win that game,” Squirek, 49, says from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio, “so to perform well and make a big play, that was a dream come true.”

Virtually unknown before Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa, Fla., Squirek wound up on the cover of Sports Illustrated after intercepting a pass from Joe Theismann and returning it five yards for a stunning second-quarter touchdown. Frozen in time holding the ball over his head in the end zone, the image of exaltation as Theismann looks on dejectedly, Squirek struck the defining blow in a 38-9 Raiders victory over the favored Washington Redskins.

“It wasn’t necessarily a great play,” the soft-spoken Squirek notes, modestly, “but the timing of it was great.”

In a game touted in advance as a potential classic -- the defending Super Bowl champion Redskins had rallied for a 37-35 victory over the Raiders during the regular season -- Squirek mostly watched from the sideline as the Raiders fashioned a 14-3 lead. A 1982 second-round pick from Illinois, he was a situational backup on a team full of stars, among them Marcus Allen and Howie Long, and seldom was used except in obvious passing situations.

But with the Redskins pinned deep in their own territory with 12 seconds to play before halftime, Raiders assistant Charlie Sumner played a hunch, grabbed Squirek and virtually threw him onto the field, instructing him to shadow running back Joe Washington. Three months earlier against the Raiders, Theismann had completed a screen pass to Washington for a 67-yard gain.

Sensing that the Redskins might turn again to the so-called “Rocket Screen,” Sumner summoned Squirek and pulled starter Matt Millen, who had to run off the field to avoid a penalty and later told reporters, “I was mad. I’d called a blitz, and I was cranked up for it, but he told Jack to play the screen and sent him in. I guess Charlie knows what he’s doing, huh?”

Theismann took the snap, drifted to his right and passed the ball back to his left, where Squirek was waiting.

“As he was drifting that way,” Squirek recalls, “Lyle Alzado recognized it was a screen and gave Washington a shove, which threw him off course. So when Theismann threw the ball, Washington wasn’t exactly where he should have been. I made a good break on the ball and scored.”

The touchdown gave the Raiders a commanding 21-3 lead and cemented Squirek’s name in Super Bowl lore.

“It’s amazing to me,” Squirek says, “that not only am I still remembered, but that play is considered one of the top defensive plays in Super Bowl history.

“I’m proud of it, it’s nice to be recognized, but I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

Seven months later, he was in the wrong place. Laid low by a vicious block by wide receiver Fernanza Burgess of the Miami Dolphins, Squirek suffered a broken jaw in an exhibition, the injury lingering for years in the form of severe headaches.

“That really knocked me back,” says Squirek, who played two more seasons with the Raiders but was never the same.

In 1986, after the Raiders cut him, Squirek played two games with the Dolphins before he was released again. He retired with regular-season career totals of one interception, two fumble recoveries and three sacks in 55 games.

“I would liked to have had a 10-year career, more playing time and all that, but it didn’t happen that way,” Squirek says. “But we did win the Super Bowl, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Making a play in the Super Bowl is the ultimate.”

An Ohio native, Squirek returned home after leaving the NFL, started a family and opened a business.

Married 21 years to wife Penny and a father of two teenagers, Squirek owns a Cleveland-area office-maintenance and janitorial service. His son, Jake, was an all-state running back as a high school junior last season, rushing for more than 1,500 yards in 10 games.

A framed Sports Illustrated cover hangs in his basement, Squirek says, and the ball he carried across the goal line in the Super Bowl is locked away in a safe-deposit box.

“There was a rumor going around that I’d lost it,” he says, “but I still do have it. In all the commotion after the game, I didn’t honestly know what had become of it, but then the equipment manager walked up and said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

“I was glad.”

In all the years since, Squirek notes, he has not met Theismann, whose ill fortune was Squirek’s good luck.

“I’m not sure that’s something I’d look forward to,” he says. “It probably would be uncomfortable, so maybe not.”

Why risk spoiling a perfect moment?

--

jerome.crowe@latimes.com