Deep Thoughts Handy for Bruce
ATLANTA — Isaac Bruce was three steps ahead of his defender, Denard Walker, and had a clear field ahead.
If only he had the ball.
But St. Louis Ram quarterback Kurt Warner wasn’t even looking Bruce’s way. Instead, he was firing one of his trademark, quick-release bombs toward the other side of the field, toward Torry Holt, who would finish the night as the Rams’ top receiver with seven catches.
But on that particular play, Warner’s pass to Holt was incomplete.
It was the fourth quarter of that rarest of all football occurrences, a close Super Bowl game, and the Rams desperately needed any edge they could find against the Tennessee Titans.
So when Bruce came to the sideline, he told fellow receiver Ricky Proehl, “This guy [Walker] cannot cover me.”
And Proehl passed the information on to Warner, telling his quarterback, “Go on top to Ike. He has got it.”
Bruce said nothing. That’s not his style.
“Most of the time, when you say something, that’s when bad things happen,” Bruce said. “I let everybody else do the talking and I just go out and do the game.”
As Warner and Proehl stood on the sideline talking, what was once a 16-point Ram lead dissolved, Tennessee’s Al Del Greco kicking a 43-yard field goal to tie the score at 16 with just over two minutes to play.
After the kickoff, Warner trotted onto the field eager to see if Bruce was right about the coverage.
And confident that he could avoid overtime.
“We were just saying, ‘Hey, we got two minutes,’ ” Warner said. “We have been moving the ball up and down the field all day and there was no reason we couldn’t move it up and down the field for two minutes to put us in field-goal range or to win this thing. . . . By no means were we doubting whether we could win this game.”
The Rams had been rubbing their hands in anticipation all night whenever the Titans had blitzed, leaving themselves in man-to-man coverage against a team that had led the NFL in offense and a quarterback who had thrown 41 regular-season touchdown passes, second highest in league history.
“There’s no question,” Proehl said, “that if you go into man-to-man against us and blitz, you may contain us for awhile, but you will never stop us.”
Sure enough, as Warner hunched over the ball at the St. Louis 27-yard line, the Titans prepared to go man-to-man.
And Walker prepared to cover Bruce.
This time, calling play 999, Warner looked in Bruce’s direction as the Rams’ home-run threat streaked down the right sideline.
Bruce was wrong. He couldn’t shake Walker, who was not only matching him stride for stride, but was about to overrun him.
Warner and Bruce, however, have worked together enough this season to learn to improvise. So when Warner underthrew the ball, Bruce came back for it.
“I had to make an adjustment on the ball,” Bruce said. “God did the rest.”
As the ball settled in Bruce’s arms, Walker dived at the Ram receiver, but missed.
The only other Titan who still had a shot at Bruce was safety Anthony Dorsett, playing because starting safety Marcus Robertson had broken his leg the week before against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC title game.
Dorsett also dived and missed and Bruce was home free, racing into the end zone with what would be the game-winning touchdown in the Rams’ 23-16 victory.
“Isaac made a great play,” Proehl said, “and Kurt did what he has done all year.”
Bruce said he never doubted Warner would come through, not on Sunday’s 73-yard bomb, and not since the day in the preseason when starter Trent Green went down because of a knee injury and Warner, a product of the Arena League and NFL Europe, was given the starting job.
“I knew we had the talent,” Bruce said. “All he had to do was to get the ball in our hands.
“He only had a little time to prepare when Trent got hurt and look at how far he has come.”
Bruce, who played for the Rams when they were in Anaheim, took a moment to look back.
“This one is for Jerome Bettis, Troy Drayton and even Darryl Henley,” Bruce said. “This is for all of them. And this is for Los Angeles and St. Louis. We did it for both cities.”
