The Quest for Redemption

By Paul A. Witteman

THE SUPER BOWL IS OFTEN A GAME in search of a theme. Hundreds, perhaps thousands will be proposed before the official kickoff at 3:18 p.m. PST this Sunday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Can the coach who was a Phi Beta Kappa at Coe College (Buffalo's Marv Levy) outsmart the good ole boy who once presided over the obstreperous hired guns at the University of Miami (Dallas' Jimmy Johnson)? Can the American Football Conference ever win another Super Bowl, having lost 10 of the past 11 to the National Football Conference? Will the half-time show be a total bore, Michael Jackson's participation notwithstanding? The correct answers are maybe, maybe and absolutely.

( But one central theme of this Super Bowl No. 27 (enough of the Roman numerals!) is obvious: redemption. The Buffalo Bills have played in the Super Bowl for the past two years, expecting to win both times. Instead, they lost by a hair to the New York Giants, then were scalped by the Redskins. After the Bills thumped the Miami Dolphins 29-10 last week to earn their third straight trip to "the Show," as players prefer to call it, there was little euphoria. Instead, there was a sense of mission. "I don't think we want to celebrate yet," said nose tackle Jeff Wright.

The Dallas Cowboys' quest to redeem themselves actually qualifies as full- blown resurrection. When owner Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989 and fired coaching legend Tom Landry in favor of Johnson, some Texans were ready to run Jones and Johnson all the way to the Arkansas border. And when Johnson posted a woeful 1-15 record in his rookie season, hanging was held to be too humane a fate for the interlopers.

But while Buffalo was fighting its way to the Super Bowl, Dallas was losing and stockpiling blue-chip draft choices like running back Emmitt Smith, quarterback Troy Aikman and wide receiver Michael Irvin. All of which proves the axiom that losing in the Super Bowl is actually worse than going 1-15. If you finish last, you at least get to pick first in the draft. Defeat in the Super Bowl, on the other hand, is a bitter bone to chew with nothing but snowbanks and February staring you in the face.

Dallas got a taste of that on a January afternoon in San Francisco's Candlestick Park back in '82, when the hometown 49ers upset the mighty Cowboys 28-27 in the N.F.C. championship game. The grainy replays still haunt the faithful: Joe Montana throwing in the final minute, Dwight Clark leaping in a corner of the end zone, then "the Catch" that propelled the 49ers to the top of the N.F.L. pyramid -- a position they were to hold, more or less, through much of the subsequent decade.

For those who revered the Cowboys as America's Team, it was the beginning of a decade of galling frustration. They were to have precious few playoff opportunities to put on their ten-gallon hats and lizard-skin boots, pose by their pickups and act nasty. Or ogle the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders as they sashayed their postseason routines across the hallowed petroleum-byproduct turf at Texas Stadium. Instead, there was Sunday upon Sunday filled with ignominy and gloom. No divisional championships. No Super Bowls.

When Dallas again took the field against the 49ers in the rain last week, not a single Cowboy remained from that transitional instant in franchise history. Perfect symmetry was denied the victors as Smith scored the winning touchdown in the end zone at the opposite end of the field from Clark's '82 catch. But the pass he caught was delivered by a young quarterback, Aikman, who executed a game plan as masterfully as Montana once did. For his part, Smith made the 49er defensive team, gifted athletes all, look like rejects from a Pop Warner tryout, so often did they bounce off his Teflon body or flat-out miss him.

Some Buffalo fans turned off their TVs and fell into a despairing coma with the Bills trailing the Houston Oilers 35-3 in the third quarter three weeks ago, but it's long since time they woke up and smelled the coffee. Since that juncture in wild-card weekend, the Bills have outscored their three opponents (Houston, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami) 91-16. The team looks like the most attractive underdog the Super Bowl has seen since Joe Namath and the Jets swaggered onto the field against the Baltimore Colts in 1969, during pro football's Mesozoic Era.

Dallas brings youth to the party, as well as the conviction that they've already defeated the best team in the tournament, the 49ers. Buffalo arrives immune to the hoopla that often undoes first-time participants. They also realize that if starting quarterback Jim Kelly goes down, backup Frank Reich, who engineered the miracle against Houston, can get the job done. Dallas may have to wait another year to achieve Super Bowl grace.