One Mistake by Ravens Is All Giants Need

TAMPA, Fla. —  With Kerry Collins at quarterback, the New York Giants have one chance today in Super Bowl XXXV.

If they guess right on one play--at a moment when the Baltimore pass defense makes a major mistake--the Giants can score a touchdown.

And this is a game that can be won with one touchdown.

Like any other defensive power, the Ravens have a weakness that is summed up in an old football truism:

No defense can be right on every play.

No defensive team can get into position to counter every possible offensive option on every snap.

Offensive teams, by contrast, need not constantly excel.

They can mess up half the time and still win if they guess right at the right times.

And that is Collins’ challenge.

The challenge for the Ravens, with Trent Dilfer at quarterback, is different.

Their question might be whether they can score if the Giants

score.

Not that they’re worrying about it.

For, going in, the Ravens are the better team by at least a touchdown, and they know it.

You can expect a game that looks like the 16-3 Raven-Raider game in Oakland two weeks ago, when the Bay Area folks saw a touchdown, a few field goals, and not much else.

Sooner or later, Dilfer, or somebody, will do something to get seven points in the Baltimore column, and this game will be history, unless, at just the right time, Collins makes a fabulous guess.

*

RAVENS: The Baltimore people are here with fewer good players than any team has brought to the Super Bowl in probably 20 or 30 years.

It’s no accident that they couldn’t score a touchdown in October.

Here’s how the Ravens have survived:

* Their coach, Brian Billick, is an offensive specialist and onetime collaborator with Bill Walsh, the former San Francisco coach who has always advised, privately, that you talk about offense and win with tough players, particularly tough defensive players.

* Baltimore’s defensive coach, Marvin Lewis, an old linebacker, has perfected an airtight defense that is more effective and more consistent than all but two Super Bowl defenses in 35 years: Pittsburgh’s in the 1970s and Buddy Ryan’s in 1986, when Ryan was the Chicago Bears’ defensive leader.

* Of at least equal importance, the Ravens, with but one superstar--linebacker Ray Lewis-- swaggered through the playoffs, knocking off quarterbacks left and right, disposing of the only players who could have taken them out of the Super Bowl.

On a team with Baltimore’s defense, Kurt Warner would score a million points.

Before halftime.

*

GIANTS: The New York team won its way to Tampa running the ball through the regular season and passing it in the playoffs.

Abandoning their silly thunder-and-lightning ground game, the Giants scored or set up five touchdowns on Collins’ passes in their final NFC test, routing Minnesota, 41-0.

That’s the way this club did it in the Bill Parcells era, when, at the Super Bowl once, Parcells spoke lyrically of the wonders of a running-play offense, then sent quarterback Phil Simms out to complete 22 of 25 passes, still the Super Bowl record.

This year’s New York offense, with Collins throwing to running back Tiki Barber and wide receivers Amani Toomer and Ike Hilliard, is clearly more spirited than Baltimore’s, which offers sharp Shannon Sharpe at tight end and not much more.

Even so, if the officials let the Ravens play their normal game, the Giants’ only chance against that suffocating defense is to keep it close and pray for a mistake.