ESPN.com - Fingerprints of the gods

ESPN.com: Page 2

Friday, January 10, 2003
Updated: January 11, 9:55 AM ET
Fingerprints of the gods

By Eric Neel
Page 2 columnist

Forget quien es mas macho. Forget toughness, want-to, and will. Screw talent -- talent's cheap. Speed? Put it out of your mind; it's overrated. Smarts? Just another word for luck. Don't talk to me about matchups because they've got nothing to do with nothing.

You want to know how it's gonna go down in the NFL playoffs this weekend?

Ask yourself this one question: Who is the most worthy?

See, the thing is, at this level, at this point in the season, everybody's good. Come playoff time, what happens on the field is not determined by the actions of the players, the decisions of the coaches, or even the longing of each team's fans. No, my friends, the difference between winning and losing is not nearly so concrete, not nearly so human. Come playoff time, things are in the hands of the football gods.

True story: It's the night before Super Bowl III and Joe Willie knows he's been a bad, boastful boy, predicting a win over the mighty Colts and all. He has faith in his arm and believes in his guys, but he knows if there's to be any chance at all, he's got to get right with the football gods. So he begs for an appearance before the council. They agree and he hops in a cab -- no full-length fur coat or shades this time, just a cotton tee, sweats and pious bare feet; cabbie thinks for a minute he's taking him to the hospital.


	How did Dwight Clark make "The Catch"? The gods smiled upon him.

There are six of them, like the Elders on "Shazam," and they're hanging out in their motor home, parked on the side of the road somewhere outside Miami, you know, playing cards, sipping cold ones, smoking stogies and planning a nice, tidy come-limping-gamely-off-the-bench-in-the-third-quarter-to- throw-three-touchdowns-and-win-the-MVP kind of afternoon for the immortal Johnny U, when Broadway comes a knocking.

They're not hearing him at first, cuz of course, cocky does not sit well with the high court of all things pigskin. But he wears them down. He apologizes for the prediction thing; lost his head, so much love for the game, couldn't help himself, and so on. Then he hits them how the Jets are the meek, waiting to inherit the earth, and he pleads with them to show their magnificence and benevolence, and now, like any good buttered-up deities, they're listening. Unitas has '58, he has the "Greatest Game of All-Time" under his belt, Joe Willie says. Can't you see your way clear to give me this one little upset?

A playoff outcome requires a unanimous decision, and the council is split now -- three of them think the kid's passion is impressive, three think Unitas' flat-top is the very height of grit and professionalism and undermining it might mean the onset of a precipitous sort of moral decline the likes of which the world has never seen.

Then Namath plays the humble trump card: I'm not asking for me, I'm asking for the good of the game, he says. A win for the Jets and the AFL isn't an ugly-kid-sister any longer, a win for the Jets and the whole game gets bigger, bolder and better in a hurry. A win like this energizes the people, makes folks from Poughkeepsie to Pasadena fans for life. A win like this, on TV, with Curt Gowdy at the mike, and we're talking a popularity explosion, we're talking the greatest thing to happen to football since, well, the "Greatest Game of All-Time."

Case closed. Jets 16, Colts 7. Unitas gets off the bench, but it's too late to make a difference, because the football gods have deemed that his continuing legend, great as it is, is less worthy of their favor than the birth of Namath's, and with it, the birth of the new NFL.

True story.

And it happens every year.

You've heard of the "Immaculate Reception," right?


	Tommy Maddox leads the Steelers back to Tennessee, where he was injured in November.

"The Catch"? I ask you: Can a man actually jump that high? Only if he's got a little help.

"The Drive" ring a bell?

Remember Super Bowl XX, the Bears' blowout of the Pats? The motor home was in the Big Easy and Ditka was on bended knee before the council, just hours before the game. He was passing fruity mixed-drinks around, putting Mardi Gras beads around all the gods' necks, and getting teary-eyed about how Walter Payton had played on so many ugly, pathetic teams for so long, and how he deserved this one win. The council was swayed (although they revealed a wicked sense of humor when they denied Walter a touchdown in favor of one for the Fridge; Ditka would say later he had no idea what made him send the big man in on the goal-line play).

And last year? The Patriots eeking out a win over the Rams? That's right: Adam Vinatieri worked an in-honor-of-Jim-O'Brien, for-the-love-of-Scott Norwood thing with the gods, and threw in a Kurt-Warner's-already- got-his-trophy chaser. Went straight through the uprights with no time left.

There are a lot of tough calls to be made this year. Legit heroes and stalwarts abound. Worthy causes on each side of the field. But you don't get to be one of the football gods by equivocating. You can't sit on the high council if you get squeamish when it comes time to make a call. You consider the various factors, you weigh the intangibles, then you decide which little piggies get roast beef and which little piggies get none. Period. No second thoughts, no do-overs.

If it's an especially tough decision -- if, say, you think the margin between Jeremy Shockey's worthiness and Terrell Owens' is pudding-skin thin -- then you have the game's outcome come about in a storm of confusion and possible injustice: wayward snaps, not-really-offsetting penalties and such. But still, you make a call, you tap the shoulder of one young knight, one team, and not the other.

I can't say with absolute certainty which way the gods will go this weekend, because the ways of the gods are sometimes capricious (or, if you're a little more gods-fearing, they, you know, surpasseth all understanding and whatnot), and I'll probably be smitten, or worse, sentenced to a life of Bengal ball, for being insolent enough to guess at them, but what the hey, my playing days are over anyway. I'll take a stab at it.

Steelers vs. Titans
What makes Pittsburgh worthy?


	Steve McNair battled injuries all year yet threw for 22 TDs and 3,387 yards.

Try Tommy Maddox coming back from maybe never getting off his back, and doing it in Tennessee. He was lost between tomorrow and yesterday, between now and then, and now he's back where he started, here we go round again, day after day he gets up and he says, I better do it again, do it again. That's brave. You know what else it is? It's Kinky, as in the Kinks, my friends, and the football gods are big Kinks fans -- they listen to 'em all the time on the eight-track.

So, the Steelers have that working for them, plus they have Bill Cowher, who calls up all that good Sam Huff-Ray Nitzschke-Jack Lambert intensity sort of mojo that the gods, in all their throwback ways, are so fond of.

They also have the whole Steel Curtain tradition thing, while the Titans were once the Love Ya' Blue Oilers the Curtain was always coming down on, in some nasty, ice, sleet and snow game that featured Dan Pastorini sliding and spinning on the turf for 12 minutes, or in which Mike Renfro would get a foot down that nobody saw, or some such sorry madness.

Pittsburgh's playing on six days' rest, which might inspire a little pity from the gods, too, and there's one other thing: they've got the names, the funky names the football gods love to hear people say out loud. Forget "Shazam!" You want super powers granted to you? Start saying "Fuamatu-Ma'afala" over and over again. Throw in a little "Amos Zereoue," maybe some "Antwaan Randle El," see if that doesn't get you a little something extra in the good karma kitty.

What makes Tennessee worthy?

One, Steve McNair is playing in a body held together with well-placed wads of chewed Bazooka gum and strands of bailing wire. He's a marionette back there, a tired, beat-up, quit-yanking-my-strings marionette. He's got nothing left. He can barely stand. And still, still, I tell you, he stands in, finds open men, fires bullets.


	Donovan McNabb returns after missing the season's final six games. Will the gods have some sympathy?

He is a silent pillar of strength, just doing what his momma told him to do: play hard and never give up. The football gods fancy themselves pretty courageous folk, but every single one of them has asked himself whether he would, whether he could, summon the strength and fortitude young Steve has put on display week in and week out this season.

Two, one yard. The gods brought the Titans tantalizingly close a couple years back, but they had to shut the door on them, in favor of Kurt Warner's Hy-Vee-to-riches story.

Now, Tennessee can say they also served who came up one yard short, and cash in their when-is-it-gonna-be-our-turn chips (the ones Bum and the Tyler Rose handed down to them years ago).

Which way will the gods go?

On paper, it looks like the Steelers all the way, but the gods feel kind of bad about that outstretched arm of Kevin Dyson's, I think, and I think they consider themselves the gods of second chances, so I'll say it's the Titans.

Falcons vs. Eagles
Atlanta's worthiness?

If you're Michael Vick, if you're touched by the gods, sprung forth from their heads, made in their image, born out of their hope for the world -- you don't really implore them, and they don't really judge you. You just sort of live and play in the glow of their grace and kindness and when you run you feel their pleasure.

Philly's case?

1. They won with their second-string quarterback, with their third-string quarterback, with the guy who folds towels in the locker room taking snaps, and with a fourth-grade Punt, Pass and Kick semifinalist under center (after the two finalists were injured making bad cuts on the Vet Stadium turf). That's resiliency, that's let's-put-on-a-show, Brady-Six-buying-the-platter-for-Mike-and-Carol gumption. The football gods are down with that.

2. Come on, man. McNabb played a game, and won it, with a broken ankle. Old. School.

3. They feature a guy named Duce.

4. They play defense -- a whole bunch of it.

5. They're due.

6. They're looking to avenge that 14-13 wild-card loss to the Falcons in '78 -- check the inside of their helmets; every one of them has written "f*$!k Bartkowski" on a strip of tape and stuck it just above the right ear-hole -- and the football gods admire long memories and simmering resentments.

Which way will the gods go?

Sometimes, no matter how much you love him, even because you love him, you have to hold your chosen one back a little, show him a little patience and humility, introduce him to a little hunger. So they smile on Donovan and crew this time out, but they do it out of devotion to Michael and his gang.

Jets vs. Raiders
The Jets have a lot going for them, they really do. Their quarterback is a decent chap who does nothing but throw touchdowns, their halfback welcomes a load and brushes off abuse like it's nothing, and their coach (who, by the way, was Johnny-on-the-spot when the football gods punished Joe Pisarcik and the Giants for hubris in 1978) made an utterly believable and moving no-quit-in-my-guys speech earlier this year, when the bandwagon was a lonely, ramshackle thing barely trudging through town.

What's more, they have a plucky, part-Largent/part-Joiner wide receiver who just gets open, they sport fine, Jet-age unis, they have Joe Willie's calling card, and they've got the big Mo in their corner.

Only problem is, none of this is going to be enough.

First, the football gods resent the way people are always giving momentum credit for their handiwork, so they'll be looking to hobble Mo from the jump.

Second, one of the very best pleas you can make to the gods is to say this is your last, best chance, and the Raiders' Rich Gannon, Tim Brown and Jerry Rice are something like a combined 240 years old.

Seriously. Gannon used to wear a leather helmet and a striped wool sweater; made his own cleats. Brown's first catch was on a ball thrown by Daryle Lamonica. Rumor has it, Rice twice voted for FDR.

No chance the gods are turning their backs on guys who've been this good for this long.

And third, well, all I'm going to say is: "Fran Tarkenton ... Chad Pennington." "Chad Pennington ... Fran Tarkenton." Those who do not learn from history, and march blindly into big games with names whose sound and rhythm seem to echo names that have displeased the gods in the past, names that the gods have found worthy of teasing and humiliation, are doomed to lose to the Raiders in the divisional playoffs this Sunday. (I told you, the gods can be cruel and whimsical.)

49ers vs. Buccaneers
Jeff Garcia approaches the council and says:

"24 points back last week was nothing to me. I played JC, I played in San Jose, I played in Calgary. I've come from a long, long way off. I'm like Omar Sharif coming at you across the desert in "Lawrence of Arabia," only barely, only just now, coming into focus. I've got happy feet and I dig the no-huddle, but I made my way here patiently, kept my cool, and when it was my time, I delivered. I deserve to be rewarded."

The gods are impressed ... by his resilience, by the Omar Sharif reference, by the fact that he managed to beat the Giants with almost no help from his defense.

They're thinking about giving him the nod, and then Warren Sapp busts through the door and says:

"Look at my legs, at my ankles ... is there any way a man as big as I am ought to be getting around on skinny pipes like these? No, sir, no there isn't, and yet I do, I do get around, now don't I. Yes, yes, you know I do. Ain't I a miracle? Don't you just marvel at me?

"Now listen to me. I don't need you. Like to have you on my side, sure I would. But I don't need you. I'm coming to get what's mine, one way or the other, with you or without you. I'm taking what belongs to me. Garcia, Barlow, Owens -- makes no never mind to me, I'll take 'em all down.

"And another thing, too. I'll score if I have to. You heard me. I've been running routes in practice -- you heard about that -- and I've been returning kicks, too. That's right. You think they're ready to stop me on a runback? Neither do I. I mean that would take some very, very special special teams, don't you think. Yes, yes, you do, you know you do."

The football gods have heard this sort of thing from Warren before. They usually take him down a peg or three, and they usually advise him to be a bit more humble, but they're really only half-hearted about it. Truth is, they find him charming.

They haven't decided yet whether to indulge him all the way to the Lombardi Trophy this year, but it hasn't taken long for them to forget about young Jeff and his steady march across the desert.

Eric Neel is a regular columnist for Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.