By Peter Yaukey
On January 19, 2003, coach Jon Gruden and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers stormed from their tunnel at Philadelphia’s Veteran’s Stadium into the frosty 26-degree air. They were focused on their immediate task: beat the heavily-favored Eagles and advance to the Super Bowl. But History would ascribe this game greater importance, layers of superlatives both good and bad. The first Buccaneer road playoff win, ever. Tampa Bay’s turning of tables on a nemesis who had beaten them in their last four contests, embarrassing them two years running in the playoffs. The greatest disaster in Philadelphia sports in twenty years, in the estimation of a ranking in Sports Illustrated. A new chapter in Philadelphia sports lore, infamous “Black Sunday.” The last NFL game in Veterans Stadium.
The 3 pm sun was casting long shadows, preparing to drop below the horizon in the third quarter. The steady 20 mph wind, gusting higher, dipped the wind chill to 160, a world away from the 60-something afternoons in Tampa. But the game’s weather would give it special significance. Tampa would accomplish something still unique in over two decades of NFL play, and relevant to many teams eyeing this year’s Super Bowl in New York. Gruden would take a team from a warm climate to a post-season victory in a cold city. With the mercury below 300. The last time it had been done was in 1989. Since then, sixteen other teams have tried. All have failed.
Having grown up in Ohio and Indiana, and coached as far north as Green Bay, Gruden knew the effects of cold weather on players. Physical responsiveness slowed, passes bounced off hands, kicks fell short in the dense air. Discomfort preoccupied players. Cold weather had afflicted Gruden more than most coaches. One year earlier, when head coach of Oakland, he had lost a snowy playoff contest in New England. Victory had been snatched from him in the final minutes by the infamous “tuck play”- the apparent Tom Brady fumble that was ruled a pass because his arm was moving forward. Adam Vinatieri then tied the game with a field goal, and won it in overtime with another. He became a kicking legend. The Patriots were launched toward the first Super Bowl of their dynasty. Gruden was traded to Tampa Bay.
The poor performance of warm-climate teams travelling north in the playoffs is worse than the mere handicap of being on the road. Home field advantage in the playoffs has not been overwhelming, despite home turf going to the highest seeds. Since 1989, northern teams hosting visitors from warm climes have won 94% of contests in sub-300 weather, while home playoff teams have only won 68% overall.
The stadium was prepared for jubilation after the game, with police on motorcycles and horseback in position to curb the rejoicing Eagle fans. The opening kickoff was fielded by the Eagles’ Brian Mitchell. As if scripted by the Philadelphia press, Mitchell returned it 70 yards to deep in Tampa territory. Moments later, Duce Staley took Donovan McNabb’s handoff and burst untouched through a ruptured line at right tackle, juked Tampa Bay defensive back Dexter Jackson, and scampered 20 yards to the end zone. Only fifty-two seconds had elapsed, but the crowd began counting down the minutes to the post-game celebration.
Gruden had prepared for this. He had warned his players before they took the field not to be daunted by early hardship, boasting confidence that his game plan would ultimately prevail. To neutralize specters of their preceding string of defeats at the Vet, Gruden had fed his team tape of a Buc victory there seven years earlier. They had even won in their orange jerseys- a team brand that had since been abandoned as a symbol of the Bucs’ futile past. If those Bucs won here, so could they.
Gruden’s selection of this film was ironic, and one of Black Sunday’s weird intersections of fate: he had been the offensive coordinator of the defeated Eagles. He later recalled that it had turned him locally from “Boy Wonder [to] Boy Blunder…people were throwin’ hoagies at me and everything.”
Fast forward again to 2003. The Buc offense quickly recaptured the momentum. Tight end Joe Jurevicius had surprised his teammates by showing up to play despite health complications with his newborn son. He promptly turned a crossing pattern into a 71 yard sprint-after-catch, somehow outrunning defensive backs as he angled toward the sideline, pushed out eventually only five yards from the goal line. Shortly thereafter, Mike Alstott, a thick-torsoed fullback of the Jerome Bettis-Michael Turner mold, rumbled in from one yard out to tie the game.
The Buccaneers had broken another ignoble team streak three weeks earlier, when they traveled to Chicago four days after Christmas. It was a cliché to predict that southern and dome NFL teams would falter in winter weather, and the Bucs had been its supreme justification. They had lost all of their 21 games below 400. On the field, Gruden and his players joked about the unfamiliarity of seeing their breath, feigning childhood wonderment. But Circumstance had dealt them a break. After a humbling season, the disheartened Bears had little to play for, and Tampa Bay beat them handily. Albatross removed.
Did snapping this streak prime the Bucs to exorcise another ghost, their curse at the Vet? Possibly. But the cold weather handicap is sure to be played up if any southern NFL team visits East Rutherford this February. And given their shocking failure rate in cold venue playoffs, with only the 2003 Tampa team having returned home victorious since the late 1980’s, it may not be hype.
If a New York Super Bowl poses a weather handicap for franchises from the South, are there any plusses that compensate? Some fans and network executives would say there are. Inclement weather adds drama, setting the struggle of combatants against a complicating backdrop of hostile conditions. Winter weather has a mystique as an arbiter of destiny. It muffled the sounds of George Washington sneaking past the Hessians, and denied Hitler Moscow. The frigid 1967 NFL Championship between Green Bay and Dallas is among the most famous in NFL history, and the best known episode of the Vince Lombardi legend. The winning sneak by Bart Starr is arguably the most famous play of his career. Thanks to the -150 weather, the signature play of a Hall of Fame quarterback is a one yard run.
Many other memorable NFL moments have been intertwined with cold or snow. Dallas great Leon Lett still endures references to his misguided attempt to recover a blocked field goal against Miami, on an unusual Thanksgiving Day in Dallas- yes, a snow game in Dallas. Miami recovered the squirrely ball and kicked again to win the game. But for Miami, the snow both giveth and taketh away. Patriots coach Ron Meyer will forever be both lionized and vilified for sneaking between the statutes and ordering a snow plow, driven by a convict on probation, to clear a spot for the field goal that beat the Dolphins in Foxboro in 1982. The plow now hangs victoriously in a Patriots museum in Gillette Stadium.
Foibles aside, seeing football played in the snow somehow invokes the game’s roots as a raw and primal competition. Before the age of astronomical salaries and pampered superstars, when players played both offense and defense, travelled by bus from city to city, and were a fraternity united by their love for the game. When, as in 1948, stadium officials could ask spectators to bring a shovel to help clear the snow at an NFL Championship game, and both the Cardinal and Bear squads could be recruited to help remove the snow-laden tarp from the field. When the Viking mascot haunted the sidelines of old Metropolitan Stadium in his frosty beard and horned hat, steaming from his nostrils. Perhaps we remember childhood pickup games in which snowflakes attached to our eyelids and dusted our shoulders, and we slipped and slid on a frozen lawn developing a coat of white. Whatever the reason, football in the snow is appealingly anachronistic. It recalls a time when the game- and society- contained more substance and less hype.
And such was the nature of the Tampa Bay team: old school. It triumphed on the back of punishing defense, a hallmark of good football from its earliest days. Tampa Bay had been the only NFL defense to allow fewer than 200 points that season, and had allowed the fewest yards. They had held San Francisco to a pair of field goals in their divisional playoff.
And that defense came to play. In the second and third quarters, the Buccaneers forced two fumbles that squelched potential Philadelphia rallies. The first came in the last minute of the first half, after Brad Johnson had led Tampa on an 80-yard march, capped by a 9-yard touchdown pass to star wide-out Keyshawn Johnson, putting them up by seven. Leary of kicking to return man Brian Mitchell, who had followed his lengthy return of the opening kickoff with another of 43 yards, the Bucs had squibbed the kickoff. The Eagles had advanced from their own 40 via passes of 9 and 23 yards to Antonio Freeman, and were knocking on the door of the Tampa Bay red zone, positioned to tie the game and carry momentum into half time. But Simeon Rice forced quarterback Donovan McNabb to cough up the ball, recovering it himself. Then, on the Eagles’ first possession of the second half, Ronde Barber blitzed from the corner position, coming like a blur behind McNabb near mid field. Barber knocked the ball from his cocked hand, and hefty Ellis Wyms recovered. Ultimately, after the contest’s opening minute, Tampa allowed only three points despite the Eagles penetrating within field goal range six times- three of them within the red zone.
Defense is exciting, but today’s fans have different expectations. The NFL has cultivated quarterback play, and luminaries such as Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees have made offensive pyrotechnics commonplace. Dan Marino’s iconic 5000 yard passing season of 1984 was repeated by three different quarterbacks in 2011 and by two this year.
The Bucs-Eagles contest was without an offensive touchdown in the second half. Anemic offense has also characterized some other iconic cold games. In the January 1981 AFC divisional round in Cleveland, in a -160 wind chill, both the Raider and Brown quarterbacks completed fewer than half of their passes, and combined for five interceptions. In an October 1984 regular season game beset by an early Denver blizzard, usually weather-hardy Green Bay, evidently still not in the winter mindset, fumbled on their first two plays- and the Broncos returned both for touchdowns.
Will the East Rutherford matchup live up to the evolving expectations of NFL fans for a circus game? Despite famous cases of bumbling winter offense, maybe not. Among last December’s 64 outdoor games, those played in 50+ degree weather averaged only six more passes and 34 more passing yards those played in the 20’s. In fact, cold weather could generate excitement by reducing kick attempts, which often go afoul in foul weather. Last December, kickers made 87% of field goals when it was in the 50’s or warmer, but only 71% below 400. In their Black Sunday victory, Tampa Bay followed their recovery of McNabb’s mid-field fumble with a punt shanked out of bounds six yards downfield. In the 1981 game in Cleveland, after a blocked extra point, bumbled hold, and two missed field goals, the Browns passed into the end zone rather than try a game-winning field goal with 41 seconds remaining (and regretted it- Raider safety Mike Davis intercepted to seal the game).
Could modifications of equipment help a southern team in a frigid stadium? In the famous 1934 “Sneakers Game,” Giants coach Steve Owen obtained sneakers for his players in the third quarter from a college basketball team- and scored 27 unanswered fourth quarter points to beat Chicago 30-13 in the second ever NFL Championship. In one of the coldest playoff games on record, linemen on the Cincinnati Bengals in the 1982 AFC Championship warmed their bare hands on hot water bottles in their pants in the -370 wind chill. Bewildered San Diego, icicles in quarterback Dan Fouts’ beard, was playing in temperatures 1250 colder than in their 880 win in Miami the week before. They were held to seven points. In the Buccaneer win, quarterback Brad Johnson wore gloves for the first time in his quarterbacking career.
This season’s playoff menu includes three southern clubs. Carolina has the easiest approach to East Rutherford, climatologically: their only possibility of a cold road game before the Super Bowl is at Seattle- which averages only 40 colder than Charlotte. New Orleans must accomplish the improbable two or three times to get a shot at the Lombardi trophy: win in Philadelphia, Seattle, and perhaps Green Bay. San Diego has to pass through Cincinnati, Denver, and perhaps New England or Kansas City. And although they are a stretch for the label “southern,” the 49ers must travel to Green Bay, which averages 330 colder than the Golden Gate in January. Any of these that reach the Big Game will most likely face a northern opponent less disadvantaged by the East Rutherford cold than they.
What about Indianapolis, a northern dome team? Curiously, northern teams accustomed to indoor play do not appear to suffer the same cold weather handicap that southern teams do. The Colts, Lions, and Vikings have not won fewer playoffs outside in cold venues than have visiting teams in general.
Back to the 2003 NFC Championship. Philadelphia made one final bid to rescue the game from infamy. With 6:31 left, McNabb took over at his own 18, opened with a 24 yard strike, and completed four of his next five. The Eagle star seemed revived, completing a 14 yard pass to the ten yard line after weaving sinuously through tacklers and reaching arms, ball exposed precariously. With just under 4:00 remaining, a score would pull them within three with enough time to get the ball back without needing to try a risky onside kick.
But the day belonged to defense. Ronde Barber feigned an inside blitz, then backed off after reading a shallow curl pass to the tight end- and returned the interception 92 yards to seal the game. Repeatedly looking over both shoulders as if unwilling to believe nobody was in pursuit, he finished in a trot, ball held out in his hand like McNabb in his scramble a few plays before. After employing an ineffectual lateral on the ensuing kickoff, the desperate Eagles finally turned the ball over on downs at the Tampa 30.
With mean daytime highs of about 400 and nighttime lows of 200 in early February, if the normal rate of evening temperature decline occurs during the Super Bowl, it will drop below freezing. Will the game scheduled for Groundhog Day be the blur of aerial assaults fans have come to expect, or a retro display of defense? Perhaps the woodchuck will be so absorbed in the pre-game that he will neglect his own prognosticatory duties- as helpless to predict the outcome as the rest of us.