West Coast offensive

Super Bowl trip featured fine food, company and coaching

It was all you expect of a completely full flight, which means a test of your pain threshold. How much can you stand? I will get this said quickly, so you won't have to hear it again until next year, when I take another full shot at the airlines. If any other business operated like this business it would be out of business. At any rate, Continental dumped us off in the San Francisco Bay Area just in time for dinner.

The Northern California trip meant two terrific restaurants. Bay Wolf in Oakland is a place I hadn't been to in about 15 years. It has stepped up the tone in elegance and décor since its earlier days, but the food is still classy and the service is strictly big-league. Good feelings all around. The second one was knock-'em-dead, the best meal we had on our 10-day playoff and Super Bowl trip. The Slanted Door on Brannan, right off the Embarcadero, in San Francisco. The Flaming Redhead insisted on a visit there. She was introduced to it by an old friend named Tom Frank, an owner of a few P.F. Chang's franchises, and she had been telling me about it ever since -- to the point where I was kind of in a delirium of desire.

So we finally made it, for a late Saturday lunch, and it was everything she said it was. Simply marvelous. Highly spiced, meat-oriented dishes with a Vietnamese slant, everything done with a fine hand, terrific reductions of sauces. And where else but California are you going to find a Vietnamese restaurant with a wine list that tops out at $355 for the pricier Burgundies? A funny thing: A couple of local writers asked me where I ate, and when I mentioned Slanted Door each of them said, "How'd you know about that?" Kind of a secret. Not for tourists. But I'm telling you anyway.

After Oakland had done their number on poor Tennessee, I cruised the Raiders locker room trying to pin down something that had bugged me for a while about them -- the genesis of the unique offense that up to that point had terrorized the NFL. I had a Super Bowl advance to write, and that was another matter, but just out of curiosity and perhaps for a Super Bowl follow, were the Raiders to win, I wanted to know where this attack really came from. Marc Trestman, the coordinator, a cerebral type who had buzzed around the fringes of the Bill Walsh empire? Walsh himself, passed down through Jon Gruden, whose legacy still remained? Bill Callahan, the head coach, whose whole background seemed to be offensive line and heavy running but perhaps had seen fit to throw open the shutters and let the zephyr breezes blow? Who, where, what? A combination of all of them, perhaps?

Rich Gannon probably would have had some opinions on the subject, but not postgame, when the only things that came out of his mouth were cliches. I found Trestman, whom I have known for almost a decade. He was peering over his shoulder as he talked ... he actually whispered. He had a haunted look. Then I remembered that Callahan, who had been an assistant for umpteen years, was one of those coaches who puts his own assistants off limits to the press. Thus it was in the locker room on Sunday, even though one day later, when the pre-Super Bowl week officially started, the assistants were fair game to the interview process. There is some kind of sense attached to this, but I haven't figured it out yet. Some of these people feel that what they are doing is helping to save many lives, that it's equal to a cure for cancer.

I won't go through the week of interviews preceding the Super Bowl; you've heard enough about that. It's an artificial situation at best, and it has little bearing on anything. But some things do remain in the memory. One day I tried a brief chat with Barrett Robbins, the Raiders' center, only because I like to talk to offensive linemen out of a sense of bloodlines. I didn't get a good feeling here. There was kind of a nasty side. Difficult to pin down. I really enjoyed talking to the Tampa Bay defensive coaches, though -- Monte Kiffin, the coordinator, whom I'd known for many years, Rod Marinelli, the line coach, as well as the young linebacker and secondary coaches, Joe Barry and Mike Tomlin, aged 32 and 30, respectively. Bright guys with a sparkle in their eye and a passion for what they do.

"Two years ago I was at the Iolani Hotel in Honolulu before the Pro Bowl," said John Lynch, the Bucs' four-time Pro Bowl strong safety, "and coach Kiffin called me and said, 'I've got some good news for you. We found a new defensive backfield coach. I've got some other news, too. Are you sitting down? Well, you're older than he is.'

"You know something? Coaches who played, who didn't play, who are young, old, what's the difference? They either know what they're talking about or they don't. They either have passion for it or they don't. And I guarantee you that both these young coaches, Joe Barry and Mike Tomlin, are going to be head coaches some day."

The final half dozen -- Bethea, Marcus Allen, Lofton, Carson, Joe DeLamielleure and George Young -- were subjected to only a yea or nay vote. Eighty percent yeas, out of the 38 selectors gathered, would result in enshrinement. I always make the mistake of figuring that anyone who's made it to this last leg of the journey would be in, and I congratulated the New Jersey Bergen Record's Vinny DiTrani, the presenter of the Giants' Carson and Young, for the good job he did.

"Not yet," he said, and how right he was, because both of them got dinged on the final ballot. Both failed to make it. Why, I don't know, because in the general discussion, neither had received a negative comment.

DiTrani was visibly upset. "It's got to be an anti-New York bias, pure and simple," he said. "Next year I'm going to flush them out, find out who the negative votes are and let them state their case."

I told him I'd done the same thing when Dwight Stephenson, a player I'd spoken for with considerable passion, was dinged on the final yea-nay. The following year I called for a show of assassins, the guys who hide behind the door with the gun, the silent destroyers. One surfaced, and we had it out, publicly, and on his second go-round, Stephenson made it. I told Vinny I'd help him in any way I could, but he was too upset to really tune in. It is sad that worthy people who come so close are then killed by the final cut.

Bethea's enshrinement, though, was a heart-warming thing because I never thought he'd clear the original list of 74 and make it to the selection meeting in the first place. Once he got there, though, it was a matter of convincing people what a truly great player he was.

Bethea and Lee Roy Selmon were, I believe, the two greatest 3-4 ends who ever lived. They were both built the same way, 6-foot-2 or 6-3, chunky but not massive, contoured for leverage, for fighting the double team and closing down the run. They spent their careers in the teeth of the meat grinder, and when they could go outside and rush the passer, which both of them did with considerable skill and burst, it was like a vacation. It takes a special type of player to be a good 3-4 end. The slender speed-rushers who were this year's consensus all-pros, Simeon Rice and Jason Taylor, would get chewed up in the 30-defense.

Fred "Curly" Morrison, fullback for George Halas' Chicago Bears and Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns. Billy Wilson, who spent 10 years catching the passes of the 49ers' Frankie Albert and Y.A. Tittle and John Brodie. And how many Sundays did I sit in the end zone in Kezar Stadium cheering myself hoarse for Albert and Wilson and Gordie Soltau and the rest of that great cast? And then the greatest of all of them, The King, Hugh McElhenny, the Barry Sanders of his day, the finest back in Niners' history.

I don't want to sound schoolgirlish here, perhaps a trifle giddy. I'd met McElhenny a few times before, but to hear him standing there and telling my wife, with a kind of self-deprecating smile, "Your husband has written some nice things about me, and I'm thankful for it ..." I mean, my God, it makes your knees weak. Written nice things? This is The King we're talking about. The King!

"George Halas?" I heard him telling Morrison, about the guy who signed Curly's paycheck for four years. "Kicked me in the head once. I was tackled out of bounds by their bench and next thing I felt was this clunk in the head from a kick. I didn't know who did it, but the films showed it very clearly. It was Halas. Just ran over and planted one on my helmet."

Later, in recounting the magic of the evening, my wife was almost in tears.

"I was just thinking about how much my father would have loved sitting and talking with all of them," she said. Her father had been a high school coach in Michigan.

"Such great people. So modest. Absolutely no pretense at all. My father would have loved it." As we did.

The Commissioner is joining Chargers owner Alex Spanos in punishing the city and its taxpayers for not getting up $200 million, half the cost of building Spanos a new stadium. Until they break down and help buy this rich boy another toy, they'll have the wrath of the league to deal with. That's the way the NFL is, a corporation run by a former corporate lawyer, a reverse Robin Hood, soak the citizens to enrich the rich.

I've always felt that any honest writer must continually maintain an adversarial relationship with the NFL, and he's kidding himself and his readers if he doesn't. That was made clear by the league's posture during the week that culminated in the Barrett Robbins incident.

Many years ago our Pro Football Writers Association fought for and won the right to have a pool reporter present at each team's practices during Super Bowl week. The purpose was to report on any injury or disappearance by a particular player, to keep things kosher, to keep the gamblers from getting an edge, which was once a major concern of the league. The understanding was that strategic matters would never be discussed, and this understanding never had been violated. Being a pool reporter was basically a pain in the butt. I did it for the '78 Super Bowl and didn't like the time it took away from my other work. But it was something necessary.

This year the Raiders told the league the system had to be changed. The pool reporter had to be kept out of the practice during the middle chunk, when the real stuff was put in. Thirty minutes, 40, 45 -- it would be up to the club's discretion. And the league bowed to this club, which sues the NFL just to stay in practice, and removed in an instant a right that had been dearly won many years ago, despite the fact that the system had worked without a hitch.

On Saturday our pool writer for the Raiders, Sports Illustrated's Peter King, was denied access to the practice facility by security guards. He tried to reach an NFL official. By the time he got in, "the players were walking off the field," as he told me. He asked coach Callahan if anyone was injured and couldn't play. "No," said the coach. Peter asked him if there was anyone on the 53 man roster who would be unavailable for the game. "No," said the coach, although Callahan had already decided to deactivate Robbins. Lying, hiding injuries, withholding information, is part of the honored tradition of this club. Callahan, the son of a Chicago policeman, has slipped into this mode nicely.

In the press box I asked an NFL official how he felt about the way the Raiders had handled the situation. "The league's position is that Robbins has been deactivated," he said.

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

I told him that there were five rows of press people in that box and each one of them would be practicing his own brand of vitriolic journalism if that's the way the NFL wanted to play it. He got mad and stormed off. Fifteen minutes later he was back.

"Look," he said, "we don't like what happened and we know we have to do something. But it's too much for one writer to handle. It might be better if the league has one or two people there to monitor the injuries and absences."

I tried to explain my views as one of the founders of the Pro Football Writers Association, that you don't keep removing powers and privileges from the writers, you try to work with them. The solution, from my standpoint, would be to restore the pool reporter system as it once was, backed up by one or two league reps at the practices, just to make sure that security doesn't get out of control again, as it did with Peter King.

What did Robbins' loss do to the Raiders? Prevented them from going heavy at the middle of the Tampa Bay defense. But I don't think they would have chosen that approach anyway. When they came out running against the Jets, they got stuffed. Maybe they'd have tried it as a mixer, but I don't think it was part of any game plan. And besides, the Bucs' undersized nose tackle, Chartric Darby, the guy everyone picks to run at, wasn't much of a factor in the game anyway, facing a backup center.

But even with time to throw, I don't think Gannon would have done much against that matchup zone, which locked onto the receivers more quickly and firmly than he was used to. The defenders were simply in his head, whether it was because Gruden had, as they said, shown them the Oakland attack since the spring, or because Kiffin and his position coaches had done such a great job of preparing them, or they were simply that smart and quick and gifted athletically.

After the game I spent quite a while in the room of the Bucs' assistant coaches. There was no security person on the door, no heavy to snarl at you and tell you, "Off limits to the press!" These guys were proud of what had happened, they wanted to share it with you.

"How do we rank all time?" Tomlin asked me. I told him it wasn't the kind of question to ask an old person because nostalgia is always lodged in the major portion of the brain, and to me the Steelers of the '70s would always reign supreme.

"How about for one game -- against the No. 1 offense in the league?" he said, and now we had something going because, yes, I'd have to rate it the best one-game coaching job for a defensive unit I'd ever seen, the best preparation, the best job of covering all contingencies and nullifying a superior quarterback.

But for those who had read it right, and I wasn't among them, we should have seen it coming. In three straight weeks, facing three styles of offenses, the Bucs had taken a trio of quarterbacks with Pro Bowl credentials, Garcia, McNabb and Gannon, and made them look very bad.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

 

Related information

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video