ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701270107
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Pack is back right where Green Bay began this Super Bowl stuff, and so is the opponent.
Think about it. Thirty years ago, before the first Super Bowl, the question was the same as it is today:
Will the team from the American Football League/Conference ever win this game?
Of course, the New York Jets answered that question two years later after a brash quarterback's guarantee. That began a span of 16 seasons in which the AFC champion won the Lombardi Trophy 12 times. The AFC hasn't won in the past dozen years.
As for armchair-quarterbacking New England's chances to upset the Packers tonight at the Superdome, well, to paraphrase a debating Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle, Drew Bledsoe is no Joe Namath.
Patriots coach Bill Parcells can deny all he wants that a decision has been made on his future on the New England sideline. We're not taking the bait from ``The Tuna.'' While he has spent the week dodging questions about whether he's headed for the New York Jets, he also masterfully has deflected much of the attention - and pressure as lopsided underdogs - from his New England Chowderheads.
Parcells could become the first man to coach two franchises to Super Bowl victories, adding to his 2-0 record with the New York Giants. He is a big-game coach, and if the Patriots win, they will become only the second team in NFL history to go from losing record one year to Super champion the next (San Francisco, 1980 and '81).
The Packers ranked first in the NFL in scoring offense and scoring defense during the regular season. The defensive numbers are the team's best since the pre-Super Bowl, Lombardi-coached NFL champs of '62. Their defensive line is better than New England's offensive line.
If the Patriots are to have a shot at victory, those up-front protectors will have to spring running back Curtis Martin into the secondary, where his slashing and speed will be more meaningful on artificial turf. He needs a 100-yard game if the Patriots are to have a chance, and he needs some significant gains on first down if Bledsoe is to make play-action an option.
New England can shorten the game and keep Packers quarterback Brett Favre and his multiple offensive weapons off the field only if it can run the ball. To do that, Bledsoe can't play as he has in two playoff dates and the past two weeks of the regular season, in which he's thrown nine interceptions and two touchdown passes.
In two playoff victories, Green Bay has been the antithesis of pro football. The Packers' attack has featured 64 percent running plays. Edgar Bennett and Dorsey Levens have run through San Francisco and Carolina as if the 49ers and Panthers were a bunch of Swiss cheese-heads. If New England rushing linebackers Chris Slade and Willie McGinest get caught too deep in pursuit of Favre, the Pack will run to a third Super title.
Giving a Parcells-coached team 14 points is dangerous. The Tuna's career may be rooted in the basics and defense, but he will make the kind of calls the Patriots will need. A halfback-option pass. A reverse. A coaching staff that includes Ray Perkins, Al Groh and Bill Belichick gives the Patriots the kind of experience they don't have on the field.
The Packers also have the better special teams. If New England has learned anything from watching tape of the Green Bay playoff wins, it's that the Patriots must punt the ball toward a sideline, cutting down the width of the field for Desmond Howard returns.
Howard, a Heisman Trophy winner forgotten as a receiver, has become the NFL's most exciting return man. New England punter Tom Tupa never has seen one of his punts returned for a touchdown. Never. Not even as a pee-wee punter. Here's where history could be made.
Never, in 30 years, has a punt been brought back for a touchdown in a Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl MVP is anybody's guess, but the game's big cheese already is decided, and he's not a cheesehead. It's Parcells. If he Jets off, he becomes the 11th NFL coach among 30 teams to leave a club for one reason or another since the start of the 1996 season. It's gotten so crazy in the NFL that Dom Capers, with two years at Carolina, has the longest tenure among NFC West Division coaches.
It hasn't gotten so crazy that the AFC will win the Super Bowl, not this one anyway.
Cheeseheads 27, Chowderheads 16. Don't be surprised if either or both are back next year, too.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB