As much as we might try to cast the Super Bowl as just another game, it’s not. It has Roman numerals attached. It asks a team that has just been handed a trophy and crowned champion of something to accept civic and nationwide congratulations and then, after a fortnight of basking and taking bows, go play again. It comes after a week of simmering and then a week of hype that doesn’t just border on hysteria but embraces it.
And the whole world watches.
Some teams handle it. Some do not. In February, the 17-1 Carolina Panthers saved their worst for last, losing to a Denver team that amassed 194 total yards. Two years before, the same Broncos — who’d just set the standard for points in a season — trailed 2-nil after seven seconds and lost to Seattle 43-8.
Those diverse Denver experiences — two years apart with the same quarterback and many of the same players (but a different coach) — tell us that you can’t always predict how a team will fare. As much as we in the media trumpet the value of Super Bowl Experience, how much is it really worth? The Pittsburgh Steelers won their first four times there. The Buffalo Bills lost four years running. (The third time around, Thurman Thomas lost his helmet.)
We around here regard the Falcons’ one previous excursion as a case study in how not to handle a Super Bowl — Step 1: Don’t get arrested — but the aim today isn’t to rehash Eugene Robinson’s night on Biscayne Boulevard or Ray Buchanan’s dog collar or Terance Mathis’ snit fit over how Dan Reeves let Pro Bowlers exit first after touching down in Miami. This is more about a young team, a team that entered 2016 off three consecutive seasons without a winning record, going where it hasn’t gone but needing to act as if it has been there before.
Dan Quinn, who coaches these Falcons, was defensive coordinator for the burgeoning Seattle team that graced consecutive Super Bowls. (Won the first, should’ve won the second.) “There are going to be distractions,” he said, meaning the media frenzy that awaits in Houston. “But our process can stay consistent. We’re doing the bulk of the work here.”
Is it possible to approximate that which cannot be approximated? (Pretty sure a mock “Opening Night at the Super Bowl” in rustic Hall County wouldn’t have the same sizzle.) “We try to simulate,” Quinn said. “We have fun with it. If you have any suggestions, (team publicist) Brian Cearns’ email is wide open. But we tell them: The media can only jam you up if you allow it to.”
(Sample question, culled from a Super Bowl of yore, directed to Oakland quarterback Jim Plunkett: “Jim, is it ‘dead mother, blind father,” or the other way around?”)
Five of these Falcons have been part of Super Bowl teams. Two scarcely play: Safety Dashon Goldson and defensive lineman Joe Vellano. The other three: D-lineman Courtney Upshaw, part of Baltimore’s Super Bowl victory in 2013, and linebacker Phillip Wheeler and defensive end Dwight Freeney, teammates in the Colts’ losing Super Bowl run of 2010. (Freeney also played on the winning Indianapolis team in 2007.)
Has Freeney sought to edify his teammates as to what’s ahead? “I try; I try,” he said. “It’s kind of hard. You can explain it all you want, but there’s nothing like actual experience — running through that tunnel, hearing your team name, hearing the crowd, seeing the flashes on kickoff. Those are the things you just can’t explain enough for them really to understand you. They have to experience it themselves.”
If Freeney had one piece of advice as to how to handle a Super Bowl, it would be … what? “I think coach Quinn has done a great and he’s continuing to preach this: ‘Stick to the process; stick to the process.’ What that means is — this is Wednesday, right? We’re not playing the game today. Don’t worry about the game today. Worry about what Wednesday’s focus is today. Tomorrow’s Thursday. That’s the focus of today. Bury yourself in that process, and then when you look up, it’s going to be next week. And when you look up again, it’s going to be Super Bowl Sunday.”
The disconnect of any Super Bowl is that, while it’s not like any other game, you can’t play scared — though teams invariably do. There have been 50 Roman-numeraled games. The biggest deficit overcome to win any of those 50 is 10 points, which is nothing by contemporary NFL standards. But it’s not nothing when you think of all those people gathered around TVs eating nachos and critiquing Lady Gaga. It’s not nothing when the whole world is watching.
For better or worse, it’s the Super Bowl. These Falcons will grace its 51st edition. Wish them well. Then cross your fingers.
