Redemption

At 2:20 A.M. on Monday, amid 2,500 partying fools who were celebrating the Rams' Super Bowl victory at the team's suburban Atlanta hotel, Dick Vermeil was dancing to Soul Man with the grandmother of St. Louis tight end Roland Williams. Vermeil sure didn't look 63. Dressed in a blue button-down Oxford shirt and tan khakis, he looked as if he'd discovered the fountain of football youth.

"Oh, my god!" he yelled, throwing his arms around a weather-beaten man. They hugged for a full 10 seconds, rocking back and forth. "My buddy!" The surrounding crowd was wondering who the heck the guy was until Vermeil turned and explained, "He's my waiter from an Italian restaurant in Delaware! A great man!"

Vermeil seemed the happiest for his old Eagles, the men he'd led to the Super Bowl 19 years ago, and anyone else from the Philadelphia area, such as the waiter, who had been a part of the experience. That 27-10 loss to the Raiders in New Orleans plus his nutcase 18-hour workdays had left him just shy of a nervous breakdown and contributed to his departure from the game in 1983. He returned to the NFL in '97 with the Rams and, after two exasperating seasons, scaled the heights. "I only hope that in some small way the guys from that [Eagles] team can share this, and that it takes away some of the hurt from that game," Vermeil said.

Ron Jaworski, his old quarterback in Philly, brought Vermeil a Wheaties box with the Super Bowl-champion Rams on the front. Jaws got a hug from his old coach and then said that yes, Vermeil's triumph was a salve for the pain that had lingered since 1981. "Everyone on that team shares a love for him we can't describe," Jaworski said. "I guarantee that every single player on that Eagles team is filled with pride right now. I'm not happy. I'm ecstatic!"

Someone asked Vermeil how it felt to lead the NFC team with the worst record of the 1990s to this heady moment. "I didn't do it," he said. "We did it. What makes this special is the sharing of it. I love sharing. Just love it. Look at how happy everyone in here is. You can imagine how happy the people in St. Louis must be."

A few hours earlier, as he was leaving the Georgia Dome, Chiefs president Carl Peterson, who was the Eagles' director of player personnel in the early 1980s, also expressed joy for his old friend. Then, in thinking back to coaching hires he had made in Kansas City, Peterson shook his head and said, "I should have hired him."