Monday Milestone: The Greatest Show on Turf
“We’ll rally around Kurt Warner, and we’ll play good football”
– Prophetic words of St Louis coach Dick Vermeli in August 1999 after Trent Green tore his ACL in pre-season.
This Week in History:
2000, January 30
The St Louis Rams complete one of the great NFL turnarounds by winning Super Bowl XXXIV.
They came for the Rams in their thousands.
The Georgia Dome was stacked to capacity that day. Whilst the Tennessee Titans didn’t mind travelling, that day the punters came for the fairy tale.
Five months earlier, the St Louis Rams had entered another season with understandable expectations of enduring mediocrity. The most recent winning Rams season (and subsequent playoff appearance) had been a decade before. Glory was skinny in the Rams locker rooms, and now new quarterback Trent Green had just been ruled out for the season. Fans were forgiven for their pessimism, with his replacement some unknown named Kurt Warner.
But when Warner threw four TDs in the opening half against the San Francisco 49ers snapping a seventeen game losing streak, and taking his side to 4-0 that year, the NFL began to pay attention. By Thanksgiving, the Rams remarkably stood at 8-2, already their best season for since 1989. They’d been unstoppable indoors on their Trans World Dome AstroTurf, incredibly averaging almost 30 points per game.
Fans were asking: who was this Kurt Warner?
A star, it turned out. Warner would break all sorts of records that year, finishing as NFL MVP. Suddenly his lowly Rams, slated to finish last, were now forcing pundits to ask: how deep would they go in the post-season?
First Minnesota came. Down at the half, St Louis proceeded to post five consecutive second-half TDs to progress to the Rams’ first divisional playoff in 20 years. Then against the Buccaneers, in an unusually defensive match, with 4:44 left, Warner found Ricky Proehl to snatch an 11-6 victory, and suddenly, inexplicably, the St Louis Rams were off to the Super Bowl.
As over seventy thousand crammed into the Georgia Dome, Tennessee proved they were worthy finalists, restricting the Rams’ signature free-flowing offence with St Louis only leading 9-0 at the half. But even after Warner connected with Torry Holt, in the third quarter, a remarkable Super Bowl was just heating up.
Sixteen unanswered points from Tennessee locked up the scores with 2:12 remaining, 16-16. Wow. The fairy tale suddenly in doubt, Georgia Dome fans were on their feet. But still, there was another twist.
On the subsequent drive, Warner went long. Way long. A seventy-three yard Hail Mary pass for the win remarkably found Isaac Bruce who shrugged off two defenders to score. The Rams led again 23-16.
Yet still it was not over. The best was saved for last.
Tennessee drove down the field one final time as the clock wound down. Ten yards out, with six seconds left, Kevin Dyson caught the final pitch. Scrambling, reaching, yearning, Rams linebacker Mike Jones pulled him down just one yard short of the line in one of the all-time historic great tackles. The game was over. The Rams had won.
Such a fitting finale, worthy of this fairytale. The floundering, perennially underachieving St Louis Rams with a no-name quarter back had somehow, incredibly, inexplicably, just won the Super Bowl.
No one would forget that day.
Just five months before, the St Louis Rams had been nobodies. Now they were Super Bowl champions.
And had become the Greatest Show on Turf.
Milestone Five: Integral members of the “Greatest Show on Turf”
5. Az-Zahir Hakim:
In 1999 Hakim caught 36 passes for 8 touchdowns. Among the league leaders for punt returns
4. Torry Holt:
A rookie his touchdown was pivotal during Super Bowl XXXIV, going on to be a recipient of the most passing yards
3. Isaac Bruce:
Arguably one of the best pure route runners to play wide receiver, a veteran, he finished with over 15,000 receiving yards, and caught that 73 yard pass in Super Bowl XXXIV
2. Marshall Faulk
Drafted in the off-season, with over 1,000 rushing and receiving yards that season, Faulk was Warner’s key target, named Offensive Player of the Year that season.
1. Kurt Warner
A washed up 27 year old quarterback when thrown a lifeline by the Rams, his 41 TD passes (a franchise record) and 4,353 yards, with a pass completion of 65% rated him alongside Joe Montana and Steve Young. His 414 yards in Super Bowl XXXIV was also a record.
With thanks to Getty Images North America for the picture.
