Super Bowl Heroes by Barry Wilner & Ken Rappoport

Author:Barry Wilner & Ken Rappoport [Wilner, Barry & Rappoport, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2016-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Super Bowl XXVI

Most teams who frequent the Super Bowl over a short span are guided by the same quarterback. You know, Starr and Tarkenton and Staubach. Bradshaw and Montana. Aikman and Brady.

Not the Washington Redskins. In a span of nine years, they went to four Super Bowls behind three different quarterbacks. Credit the coaching acumen of Joe Gibbs for knowing how to put together a contender regardless of who was behind center. Also credit Gibbs for getting the most out of decent but not outstanding QBs who happened to fit the Gibbs offense well.

He won a lot of games with Joe Theismann, Jay Schroeder, Doug Williams, and, in 1991, Mark Rypien. A sixth-round draftee out of Washington State and that rare Canadian passer who makes it to the NFL, Rypien took a circuitous route to the starting job. “I played hockey before I played football,” he said, although his family moved to Spokane when he was five.

Rypien was one of many raw players with plenty of upside that teams would stash on injured reserve in the 1980s, when the roster rules were much less strict than they became in later years. So Rypien spent his first two pro seasons on IR, first with a knee injury, then a back problem. No one was sure when (or if) he got hurt, and Gibbs wasn’t saying. In the meantime, as Rypien said, “I was learning the offense, learning what my teammates could do, understanding Coach Gibbs’ game plans.”

And in 1989, Gibbs turned to Rypien, who went 16-8 in his starts during his first two seasons, despite plenty of complaints that he was sporadic, his arm was a scatter gun, and he didn’t like to be hit in the pocket (what quarterback does?).

In 1991, Rypien evolved into a second-team All-Pro behind Buffalo’s Jim Kelly. Washington went 14-2 as Rypien threw for 28 TDs with 11 interceptions, and the Redskins scored 485 points. Not even the Bills with their vaunted K-Gun Offense could match that, and the Redskins had a strong defense to boot, yielding only 224 points, less than everyone but New Orleans.

Rypien had to have dangerous targets and productive runners operating behind solid blockers to score what was then a record number of points. Washington had all that, from the Hogs on the offensive line, to the three-headed RB corps of Earnest Byner (1,048 yards rushing), Ricky Ervins, and Gerald Riggs (11 TDs), to the Fun Bunch—wideouts Art Monk, a future Hall of Famer, Ricky Sanders, and Gary Clark.

The defense was led by another player headed to the Canton shrine, cornerback Darrell Green, and sackmaster Charles Mann. “We had everything you could want on that team,” Green said. “We felt unbeatable when we took the field.”

Atlanta and Detroit couldn’t touch them in the NFC playoffs, but the Bills supposedly were another story. They’d barely lost the previous Super Bowl on Scott Norwood’s missed 47-yard field goal at the gun. They clearly were the best team in the AFC, a maturing group under a Hall of Fame coach, Marv Levy.

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