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Near Perfect In SuperBowl Win- 20 Years Ago Today
Topic Started: Jan 25 2007, 06:21 PM (56 Views)
BlueHeart
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[size=7]Giants' QB was near-perfect in Super Bowl win [/size]
Thursday, January 25, 2007

By IAN O'CONNOR
RECORD COLUMNIST

He only needed a little sunshine on his tired, frostbitten bones. A quarterback so sick of being wind-whipped across the NFC East tundra only needed clear skies and a warm California breeze to deliver the NFL's answer to Don Larsen's perfect World Series game.

Twenty years ago today, Phil Simms rose to a brand new world. He had gotten three hours of sleep, maybe less, passing the time flipping channels and watching Joe Montana and Walter Payton co-host "Saturday Night Live."

Simms hit the lobby early, waited for Mass to start, and cabbed it over to the Rose Bowl with Chris Godfrey and Brad Benson.

"I'm nervous," Benson confessed during the ride to Super Bowl XXI.

Maybe the offensive lineman had reason to be nervous. John Elway was playing quarterback for the bad guys.

Simms said he wasn't nervous about facing the Broncos. "I feel great," he announced. He was in Pasadena, after all, two weeks after surviving 35 mph winds in the NFC title game victory over the Redskins.

The climate made him feel young, strong, alive. "A tremendous psychological lift," Simms said.

Like Larsen, he felt he was carrying his fastball to the park.

Once jeered on draft day, benched by Bill Parcells, and ravaged by injury, Simms didn't arrive at the Giants' first Super Bowl as anyone's idea of a mortal lock. His team had gone undefeated at home, had won 11 straight games, and had literally and figuratively knocked out Joe Montana in a playoff rout.

But even in this season of seasons, Simms had thrown 22 interceptions against 21 touchdown passes. He was 31 years old, and people wondered if he had the nerve to win the big one.

"I laughed at all that," Simms said Wednesday by phone.

No profound speech was given in the locker room, not that any was required. During warm-ups, Simms' feet never touched the ground. The footballs weren't made rock-hard by any arctic blast. They felt soft in his hands as he fired spiral after spiral in the pregame drills, hitting his receivers in the numbers every single time.

"Hey Blondie," barked Pat Hodgson, the receivers coach. "You are smoking."

Elway came out smoking in the first half, too, giving the Broncos a 10-7 lead. The two quarterbacks combined to go 13-for-13 in the first quarter, and threatened to stage the greatest Super Bowl gunfight of them all.

The Giants' defense of Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson and Carl Banks ultimately changed all that, stuffing the Broncos on first-and-goal at the 1, sacking Elway for a safety, and watching as Rich Karlis missed two short field goal attempts.

As Elway unraveled, Simms remained oblivious, locked inside his charmed little Sunday. The one fleeting moment he stepped outside the game, Simms found himself looking up at his own picture on the halftime board.

"It said I was 12-for-15," Simms said. "I thought, 'That's not too bad. What am I missing? We have some chances to do things out there.' "

Simms was 10-for-10 in the second half when the Giants passed and ran the Broncos right out of the Rose Bowl, beating them by a 39-20 count. With Simms throwing dart after dart, Denver's Rulon Jones later confessed to him, the Broncos were telling themselves they had to drive Simms out of the game to stand any chance of winning it.

"There were four or five times," Simms said, "when I threw the ball into an opening that wasn't much bigger than the ball itself."

Three touchdown passes, no interceptions, and a 22-of-25 performance that Simms knows could've been 25-of-25.

"I had a 20-yard out to Stacy Robinson that was 1 yard short because Karl Mecklenburg hit me as I threw it," Simms recalled. "I had a deep ball to Phil McConkey, who was open, and he got tripped and it should've been a penalty. And I had a deep ball to Mark Bavaro, who dropped it."

Bavaro also dropped a sure touchdown pass, a development that allowed for this Super Bowl's signature play.

"I hit him between the eyes, where I was supposed to throw it," Simms said. "If I throw that ball to Bavaro 1,000 times, he catches 999 balls."

And if Bavaro happened to drop 1,000 balls, McConkey wouldn't be in place to grab 999 of those rebounds.

The Giants' luck was merely the residue of their design. At game's end, with Parcells getting his traditional Gatorade bath, Benson and Bart Oates bathed Simms in ice water.

It was the only way to cool him off.

Never one to pass out compliments, Parcells would say Simms played "as good a game as ever has been played." Simms put the performance in a more modest context.

"We weren't playing the '85 Bears," he said. "What's the secret to a quarterback playing well in the Super Bowl? Play a defense that's not great. The Denver Broncos were a good team, but not a great one."

Four years after Simms became the first MVP to do the Disney World shout into the cameras, his fairy tale died. On crutches, he could barely bring himself to watch Jeff Hostetler lead the Giants past the Bills in Super Bowl XXV.

The broken foot had broken his spirit. Simms surveyed Buffalo's zone defense from the sidelines and thought, "Oh my God, this team was made for me to throw against."

Simms left the field long before Scott Norwood went wide right. He left the locker room before his healthy teammates entered and flipped it upside down.

"Pretty devastating," Simms called the experience. If he could've played against the Bills, Simms would likely be in the Hall of Fame.

But in his second career, he's developed into the best analyst in football, CBS' go-to man for the Colts-Bears Super Bowl. And he'll always have Pasadena on his mantle. Some five or six years ago, Simms was flipping channels in another hotel in another town when he happened upon a replay of Super Bowl XXI.

He sat on his bed and relived every precious second of the game. After spending a hard football life in the cold NFC East rain, Simms could almost feel the California sun come over him.

"I watched myself and my teammates on that tape and said: 'Damn, Look at us. We were young. We were strong. We were athletic. And wouldn't it be great to be all of those things just one more time.' "

E-mail: oconnor@northjersey.com
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G1..
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Thanks :cry: :ny:
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Monkey Boy
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Simms was THE man.......one of my favorite Giants....
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Rick5
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20 years ago. Holy shit that is scary. I'll be 60 in no time.
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Rick5
Jan 25 2007, 07:33 PM
20 years ago. Holy shit that is scary. I'll be 60 in no time.

Whats wrong with 60????? :gene3:
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Monkey Boy
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Giantone
Jan 25 2007, 07:41 PM
Rick5
Jan 25 2007, 07:33 PM
20 years ago.  Holy shit that is scary.  I'll be 60 in no time.

Whats wrong with 60????? :gene3:

Well, he is referring to it as age not an I.Q. .................so you're safe....nobody has a lower I.Q. than you on this MB.......... :P
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