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It's fair to ask which one you remember more, "The Tackle" or the Rams Super Bowl win?
If you were watching that game, Mike Jones' last-second play, also the last play of the game, a touchdown-saving tackle of Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson that preserved the Rams' first and only Super Bowl win. That's the moment it all became real.
(via www.totalprosports.com)
Goodbye Rich Brooks. Adios Tony Banks. All the awful decisions from an incompetent owner and a bickering front office were brought down in one play. Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy was the just the payoff. You don't remember the prize; you remember winning it.
Fourteen years is a long damn time, enough time to go from the womb to being humiliated at a junior high dance. In the NFL, it's an eternity.
But it you saw The Tackle, no amount of time can take that memory away from you. Neither can another long run of franchise futility.
Jones' heroics now reside amid that special box of memories in the front, easily accessible corner of your brain, a row or two behind your kid's smile. It's there because you need it from time to time, a consolation prize for seasons lost since then or just an appeal to your better self.
We're heading into dangerously lame sports cliche territory, one step away from sentences about fresh cut grass, the smell of pigskin and a thesaurus full of stuff about why we watch/love/eat/drink/worship/follow sports.
Just watch it again. Keep it fresh. Come back to it. Fourteen years isn't really a very long time at all when it comes to moments like The Tackle.
