Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Goats deserve better

David J. Neal Knight Ridder

MIAMI – When things go right, the powerful and the famous get credit. When things go wrong, the powerful and the famous get off. Others, less well-known, get scapegoated.

Sad that what happens too often in the real world also seeps into sports. Especially that grandest of sporting holidays, Super Bowl Sunday.

Ask anybody to come up with a list of Super goats and you’ll hear the usual names: Craig Morton, Jackie Smith, Fred Swearingen, Neil O’Donnell, Scott Norwood. You won’t hear Tom Landry, Roger Staubach or Andre Reed.

Similarly, glamorous players such as Staubach, Len Dawson, Marcus Allen and Tom Brady own Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards for days on which they were supporting players to lesser known teammates.

In the cases of Allen and Brady, their teams’ defenses shut down record-setting offenses to make the win possible. Allen’s 74-yard, this-way-and-that gallop came at the end of the third quarter and the Raiders leading Washington 28-9. Brady’s first Super Bowl MVP, on a day Ty Law outscored the St. Louis Rams receivers he covered, shows why fans shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

More key than Staubach, 12 of 19 for 119 yards, to Dallas’ 24-3 romp against Miami in Super Bowl VI were the Cowboys’ 252 yards rushing and two turnovers garnered by linebacker Chuck Howley. Dawson was honored two years earlier for a similarly pedestrian day during which the Kansas City defense forced five Minnesota turnovers.

The goat gets so tabbed for failing in one of a game’s last or most easily identified pressure situations. But what about those whose earlier failures set the table? Let’s look at the two most famous Super goats.

Norwood has said after his missed 47-yarder in Super Bowl XXV left Buffalo one short of the Giants, 20-19, both Reed and Darryl Talley consoled him by pointing to their earlier errors.

In the second quarter, Buffalo was up 10-3 with the ball at midfield, momentum from a touchdown on its previous possession and seven to 10 points from forcing the ground-bound New York Giants out of their power running game.

Reed dropped a third-and-1 pass over the middle to kill one drive. A safety after the punt pushed the lead to 12-3. Two possessions later, on third-and-7 from the New York 44, Reed ran a 5-yard crossing pattern, then couldn’t get the extra 2 yards. He remembered that.

What Talley remembered were two third-and-longs in the 75-yard, 9:29 drive that put the Giants up 17-12. On each play, a third-and-8 and a third-and-11, the Pro Bowl linebacker blew a tackle that would have snuffed the Giants’ thrust.

When it comes to NFL innovation, Landry ranks up there with Paul Brown. Under Landry, Dallas played in five Super Bowls in nine years.

But Taciturn Tom and his staff had a tendency for some odd calls for which they were never excoriated. Smith’s dropped touchdown pass and Swearingen’s controversial pass interference call on Dallas’ Benny Barnes got the Cowboys coaches off the hook for Super Bowl XIII, a 35-31 loss to Pittsburgh.

Dallas took the kickoff and moved 38 yards on three runs by a flying Tony Dorsett. Then, Landry succumbed to his lone vice, the early Super Bowl gadget play. When Drew Pearson fumbled a double reverse halfway to Homestead, Pittsburgh recovered. Seven plays later, 7-0 Steelers.

Landry nearly mothballed Dorsett until the second half, stunning everyone paying attention, including Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown. Brown used this in his 1989 autobiography as an example of when to junk the game plan for a hot running back.

Dorsett was rediscovered for the drive that ended with Smith’s drop and a Dallas field goal. Yeah, Smith should’ve caught the pass, but Staubach has said he threw it too low and too softly.