Winning the Super Bowl in the Preseason

Posted by Mike Wendt on August 23, 2010   Jump To Comments

Not many people are lucky enough to attend the Super Bowl and watch their favorite football team bring home the Lombardi Trophy in person. In my lifetime, the Packers have only gone to the Super Bowl twice, and they brought back football’s ultimate prize one of those times. I was lucky enough to watch the Packers win the Super Bowl in person when I attended Lambeau Field for my first Packers game on an early August night in 1996. I know most of you think the Green and Gold hoisted the trophy on January 26th, 1997 down in New Orleans, but let me explain myself.

I was seven years old when I attended my first Packers game. I loved the Packers, but I was also a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan because I liked their helmets and because my older cousin was into the Steelers. So when my father scored Packers tickets to the Steelers vs. Packers game in Lambeau, I was pretty excited. I didn’t care if it was a preseason game, I was going to get four quarters of Packers and Steelers football at Lambeau. My uncle and cousin also got tickets, so when that Sunday rolled around we loaded up the van and drove up to Green Bay. It was surprisingly cold for an August game, but my Packers jacket and hat kept me warm while my cousin donned a hat bearing the hypocycloids of Pittsburgh.

We watched Favre and Kordell Stewart lead their teams up and down the field for a while, but by halftime most of the players I knew had been taken out of the game. I didn’t care that Favre was out of the game, we were staying until the final whistle blew, and we’re lucky we did because that’s when the magic happened. As the third quarter was coming to a close, Pittsburgh punter Shayne Edge lofted a punt into Packers territory that came down into the hands of Desmond Howard at the Packers 23-yard line, and after a few quick cuts Howard was racing down the sidelines with only the punter to beat. Needless to say, Edge didn’t catch Howard, and that punt return gave the Packers a 21-14 lead. More importantly the punt return gave Howard a spot on the Packers final roster, and if the Packers didn’t have Howard there is a good chance that the Lombardi Trophy would not have returned home in 1997. I couldn’t find the clip of the kick return anywhere on Youtube, but if you watch the America’s Game: The 1996 Green Bay Packers video on Hulu, you’ll see the preseason punt return.

Howard takes it to the house in Super Bowl XXXI

After being selected by the Redskins with the fourth overall pick in the 1992 NFL draft, Howard struggled to make an impact in Washington like he did as a Heisman Trophy winner at Michigan. Howard couldn’t make his mark in D.C., so the Skins allowed him to be claimed by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the 1995 expansion draft. He again put up lackluster numbers, and looked to be on his way out of the league in 1996 if he couldn’t find a spot on the Packers roster, but that punt return against Pittsburgh gave Howard one last chance to make an impact in the NFL, and he never looked back.

In the 1996-1997 season Desmond Howard put together the greatest kick returning season of any player in the history of the NFL. He led the NFL in punt returns (58), punt return yards (870), punt return average (15.1), and punt return touchdowns (3), while also gaining 460 kickoff return yards. His 870 punt return yards were an NFL record, easily surpassing the old record of 692 yards set by Fulton Walker in 1985. Howard also made his mark in the playoffs, returning a punt for a touchdown against the 49ers, and he singlehandedly swung the momentum in Super Bowl XXXI when he returned a 99-yard kickoff for a touchdown after the Patriots had narrowed the gap to six points in the third quarter. Howard was named MVP of the Super Bowl, as he totaled a Super Bowl record 90 punt return yards and 154 kickoff return yards with one touchdown; his 244 all-purpose yards also tied a Super Bowl record. To this date he is the only Super Bowl MVP who won the award on Special Teams play alone.

So if you think Preseason games mean diddily squat, think again. It takes 53 men working towards a single goal in order to win the Super Bowl, and some of those men earn their roster spots late in the Preseason games. Our Super Bowl MVP came out of one of those Preseason games, and I was lucky enough to watch the Packers find the final piece of the puzzle way back on that cold August night in 1996. Like the Desmond Howard Story? Have a preseason story of your own? Drop me a line at wendt@brentfavre.com