Fisher Is No Longer a Well-Kept Secret

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —  You know Super Bowl coaches. A Super Bowl coach is Vince Lombardi. Or Tom Landry or Don Shula or Bud Grant or Chuck Noll. Or Bill Walsh or Joe Gibbs or Bill Parcells. There were busts of them ready to go into the Hall of Fame even while they were still on the sidelines.

Jeff Fisher? Well, it’s doubtful anyone in Canton, Ohio is dusting off a shelf for the Tennessee Titans’ coach. Not yet anyway.

First of all, he looks like he should still be playing. One of his former USC teammates, Bruce Matthews, is still playing--at left guard for Fisher’s team.

“I’m still working on that,” Matthews said Sunday, even though he’s been playing for Fisher since he became the coach 10 games into the 1994 season.

“I respect the office, so to speak. I understand that he’s the head coach and I’m a player. It’s just hard to believe he’s my head coach.”

Asked whether he addresses Fisher as coach, Matthews laughed out loud, as if the thought never crossed his mind.

“I call him Jeff,” he said.

When this season began, there was some question about how much longer Titan owner Bud Adams would call Fisher coach. A 32-38 record, including three consecutive 8-8 seasons, was barely acceptable for a man who fired Bum Phillips, the most popular coach in Houston Oiler history, after back-to-back 11-5 seasons.

“I think they understand where we are coming from, with this idea of being 8-8 three years in a row and with the talent we have,” Adams said last winter.

He didn’t call it an ultimatum.

He didn’t have to.

“I expected to do better this year than last year,” Fisher said. “No one had to tell me.”

The Titans did better. They finished the regular season with a 13-3 record, won three playoff games, including the 33-14 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars at Alltel Stadium on Sunday, and now Fisher is a Super Bowl coach.

*

What did he do to deserve that distinction? I mean, besides coaching a team into the Super Bowl? He didn’t invent the Flex defense or the West Coast offense. His defenses haven’t become legendary like “The Steel Curtain” or “The Purple People Eaters.” He hasn’t even earned a nickname for himself like “The Big Tuna.”

I’ll tell you what he did. He coached a team that didn’t play a home game for four seasons and held it together, assuring his players that the nomadic life as they moved from Houston to Memphis to Nashville would make them stronger and making them believe it.

I’m pretty sure Lombardi and Landry and Shula could have done that. I’m even more sure they were glad they didn’t have to. If Fisher hadn’t survived as the Titans’ coach, he could have been a commander in the Foreign Legion.

“Two years playing in Houston when everyone knew we were moving, one year in Memphis in front of 17,000 fans, the year at Vanderbilt, all that stuff,” Matthews said. “My brother, Clay, said we were battle-hardened, and we were, man.

“Through it all, Jeff told us that everything was going to be better when we got into our own stadium in Nashville. When I look at him, I think he’s exactly like some of those great coaches. He doesn’t give you guys a lot of great quotes or say a lot of wild things on his radio show. He doesn’t say much at all. But when he does say something, there’s a reason for it. You know it’s the truth. Now look at us. We’re in the dang Super Bowl.”

*

As far as the games go, Fisher did his best coaching job yet Sunday.

You can’t blame anyone for believing he and his Titans were lucky in their first playoff game against Buffalo, with the Music City Miracle of a kickoff return, or even in the second one against Indianapolis, with the Colt punt return that was called back thanks to the technology of instant replay.

Fisher alluded to that last week when he said his most important meeting leading up to the AFC championship game would not be with his offensive or defensive coordinators or quarterback Steve McNair but with “Lady Luck.”

He figured to need her again.

The fact that Tennessee had beaten the Jaguars twice seemed to work against the Titans because no team had ever beaten another a third time in a season when that third game was on the road.

“When people said we couldn’t win three times against the same team, we never batted an eye,” Fisher said. “When they said the Jaguars were looking forward to playing us, we never batted an eye.”

The Titans did bat an eye when Fisher on Saturday night showed them the Jacksonville players’ rap video, “Uh Oh, the Jaguars’ Super Bowl Song.”

Fisher’s former team, the Chicago Bears, unveiled their “Super Bowl Shuffle” video during their 1985 championship season, but they were good enough to back it up. Fisher challenged the Titans to prove that the Jaguars weren’t.

“Jeff doesn’t usually motivate that way,” Matthews said. “But this was really cheesy.”

More important, Fisher and his coaching staff again devised a good game plan, at least good enough to beat the Jaguars, something no other team has done this season. Many of the plays they called worked. Many of the others, McNair made them work.

“That thing I said about luck, that was tongue-in-cheek,” Fisher said afterward. “We run the football, throw high percentage passes and play aggressive defense. That’s the blueprint for getting to the Super Bowl. It’s no secret.”

Now, neither is Fisher.

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com