With Super Bowl Sunday fast approaching, here’s hoping we have another exciting contest.
Once thought to be an annual blowout the Super Bowl has delivered a number of exciting contests of late. Here we rank the best six:
6. Super Bowl XXXVI, Feb. 3, 2002: (14-5) Patriots 20, (16-3) Rams 17—Game MVP: Tom Brady. Ranked here because: Exciting, yet masterful upset gives this one the very slight edge over the Jets monumental win in Super Bowl III.
This New England team was the first of the Brady-Belichick era and they caught most people by surprise. The lightly regarded Patriots were 14-point underdogs to St. Louis’ awesome aerial show.
Brady, less than two years removed as a sixth-round pick had only become the starter after an injury to the incumbent Drew Bledsoe. Belichick, meanwhile, was in his second season at the helm of New England just five years removed from an unsuccessful stint as head coach of Cleveland.
The game saw the underrated Patriots convert three Ram turnovers into a 17–3 fourth-quarter lead, before Kurt Warner’s offense finally came alive for a pair of late touchdowns to tie it up with just 90 seconds left. As it turned out 90 seconds was plenty of time for Brady, who drove his team 53 yards on nine plays before watching place kicker Adam Vinatieri hit the game-winning field goal as time ran out.
5. Super Bowl XXV, Jan. 27, 1991: (16-3) Giants 20, (15-4) Bills 19—Game MVP: Ottis Anderson. Ranked here because: The great escape. A little more exciting than the contest above as the Rams looked confused for three quarters, this one had two great teams playing their best and easily could have gone the other way.
The Giants had Bill Parcells running the show and his right-hand man Bill Belichick running the defense—maybe the best coaching duo in history—and they needed every ounce of game-planning out of them. Their task was to keep the Bills no-huddle offense off the field with their own offense led by backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler.
Judging especially by the time of possession, the plan worked.
New York held the ball for a little over 40 of the game’s 60 minutes, an astonishing number, yet the Bills still found themselves in position for a very makeable 47-yard field goal try with time running out that would have won the contest. Scott Norwood’s pressure-filled attempt of course, sailed wide in probably the most famous Super Bowl ending of all time.
4. Super Bowl XXIII, Jan. 22, 1989: (13-6) 49ers 20, (14-5) Bengals 16—Game MVP: Jerry Rice. Ranked here because: The drive. It wasn’t Elway’s drive against Cleveland in the ‘87 playoffs but Joe Montana’s calmly executed 92-yard touchdown-march with just 3:20 left and his team trailing by a field goal, cemented his status as Joe Cool and gives this contest a better-renowned signature moment than the one above.
San Francisco, even with its awesome Montana-to-Rice connection, had played catch up the entire second half, thanks in part to four turnovers, but still had forced the Bengals into a field goal late in the game to put the deficit at 16–13 when Montana and the offense took over. Eleven plays and nearly three minutes later the Hall-of-Fame quarterback found John Taylor in the end zone with to win it. All-Pro receiver Jerry Rice had a Super Bowl-record 215 yards receiving.
3. Super Bowl XXXIV...
3. Super Bowl XXXIV, Jan. 30, 2000: (16-3) Rams 23, (16-4) Titans 16—Game MVP: Kurt Warner. Ranked here because: A thrilling final-second play, with nothing to do with relying on field goals, gives this game a slight nod over Joe Cool.
The Greatest Show on Turf' was the Rams offense, in 1999 they were held to just three field goals in the first half, though their defense held up nicely for a 9–0 halftime lead. After a Kurt Warner pass to Torry Holt put the St. Louis up 16–0 in the third, the Titans started turning things around. But following a pair of Eddie George touchdowns and an Al Del Greco field goal to tie things up, Kurt Warner hit Isaac Bruce for a seemingly back-breaking 73-yard score to go up 23–16 with two minutes remaining.
The Titans made a valiant last-second comeback effort ending with quarterback Steve McNair hitting receiver Kevin Dyson inside the 1-yard before being tackled by linebacker Mike Jones just inches short of the goal line as time expired.
2. Super Bowl XLIII, Feb. 1, 2009: (15-4) Steelers 27, (12-8) Cardinals 23—Game MVP: Santonio Holmes. Ranked here because: A thrilling fourth-quarter finish preceded by an amazing game-changing play by Steelers linebacker James Harrison in the second quarter gives this one the slight edge over the previous contests.
After Harrison’s 100-yard interception return for a score just before halftime altered the way the game looked to be going (14-point swing for Pittsburgh) and deflated Arizona, the Cardinals came back.
Three straight scores, (including a safety,) the last of which was a 64-yard touchdown pass to Cardinals All-Pro receiver Larry Fitzgerald improbably gave Arizona their first lead at 23–20 with 2:37 remaining. But the Steelers came right back with an eight-play drive, culminating in a 6-yard touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes with 35 ticks left to seal the game.
1. Super Bowl XLII, Feb. 3, 2008: (14-6) Giants 17, (18-1) Patriots 14—Game MVP: Eli Manning. Ranked here because: Multiple reasons.
The buildup leading up to the contest with the still-perfect Patriots attempting to be the first team since the ‘72 Dolphins to go undefeated while facing an unheralded Giants team was as lopsided as any projections had ever been. Few, if any were willing to predict an upset.
In addition, the back-and-forth fourth-quarter drama with three lead changes in the final 12 minutes and two in the last 2:42 is hard for any Super Bowl to top.
But finally, the amazing one-handed catch by Giants receiver David Tyree, which made the comeback possible, was perhaps the best in a Super Bowl since Lynn Swann hauled in a miracle reception for the Steelers in Super Bowl X. The play might not have even happened though, had it not been for the surprisingly elusive Eli Manning who escaped several would-be tacklers in the pocket and found just enough room to hit Tyree down the field.
