Forty-eight hours ago (as I write this on Monday Night), Doug
Williams held the distinction of being the ONLY African American quarterback to
win a Super Bowl. After the
Seahawks’s dismantling of the Denver Broncos on Sunday, that statement must be
amended to the FIRST African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl. And let’s be honest Redskins fans. When Robert Griffin III was drafted
everyone of you thought it would be Griffin who would carry on the legacy of
Doug Williams and be the next African American quarterback to win the Super
Bowl. Alas it is Russell Wilson
who has become the Buzz Aldrin of this mission, leaving Griffin to watch from
afar in the orbiter like that other guy.
It is funny how fate can come together sometimes, and a look into the
history of Williams’s Super Bowl, Wilson’s Super Bowl, and the fateful
Griffin/Wilson game almost a year ago makes one wonder if this is all happening
by accident.
A
comparison between the careers and Super Bowls of Doug Williams and Russell
Wilson lead to some eerie similarities that makes one wonder if Wilson’s win
was destiny. We all know that
Wilson was drafted by the Seahawks to back up Matt Flynn, who made his career
off of one good game, and Wilson was quickly elevated to starter after Flynn
was seen to be inadequate. But did
you know Williams replaced a quarterback with an equally dubious resume? Jay Schroeder had one start in college
for UCLA that was famous for an improbable game winning pass that landed him a
third round selection by the Redskins in 1984. Schroeder had success with the Redskins and led them to an
NFC championship in the 1986-1987 season, but he was benched for Williams
towards the end of the ‘87-’88 season because of injury and inconsistent
play. Unlike Wilson, Williams was
far from a second year quarterback, but Williams’s Super Bowl XXII start came
in his second year with the Redskins.
OK, that was a stretch, but do you remember how the Seahawks won their conference championship?
One of
the best corners in the league deflected a pass in the endzone to ice the
game. Do you know how the Redskins
won their conference championship in 1988? A hit by Darrell Green on a 4th down pass from
the 6 yard line forced an incompletion in the endzone and the Redskins iced the game. Starting to get weird, right? What is even weirder is that both Super
Bowls were played in stadiums that had never held a Super Bowl before that
game. And in both games the
Broncos set records for scoring fast.
In Super Bowl XXII the Broncos scored the fastest touchdown in Super
Bowl history (at the time) 1:57 into the game. Sunday they set the fastest score ever in a Super Bowl with
their bad snap. Oh, and did you
know that Peyton Manning was the league MVP this year? I only bring that up because the league
MVP for the ’87-’88 season was in attendance Sunday night to watch his former
team get pasted like they did 26 years ago. That’s right.
John Elway was the league MVP the year Doug Williams and the Redskins
ran him out of Jack Murphy Stadium. I can probably find some other flimsy pieces of evidence for
this notion, but suffice it to say that there are strange parallels between Russell
Wilson and Doug Williams that make it seem like Wilson was destined to finally
carry on Williams’s legacy. He did so by vanquishing the one
Redskins fans thought would carry this legacy not but one year ago, and that
fateful game could be a microcosm of how one career soared while the other
flamed out.
I
was at Fed Ex field on January 6, 2013 when Wilson met Griffin for the first
time. Up to that point both
quarterbacks had been heralded as the future of the quarterback position, and
their shared success through the season pointed towards careers that would be
inextricably intertwined towards success.
That game, however, put Robert Griffin and Russell Wilson on divergent
paths. One came out of that game
with a career altering injury that led to a myriad of questions throughout the
subsequent season that evolved to the point of questioning his ability to lead
a professional football team. One
came out of that game heralded as a game winner. He may not put up monster stats, but he makes the necessary
plays to put his team in a position to win. Now Russell Wilson finds himself at the highest peak of his
profession while Robert Griffin if left to figure out how to rebuild a
dysfunctional 3-13 team. It is
funny how one instance in time can drastically change the fate of two
individuals who seemed to be headed in the same direction. Before that game on January 6, 2013,
most people would have said that either Griffin or Wilson could be the next
Doug Williams and win a Super Bowl.
On February 2, 2014 one fulfilled that destiny. The other is still waiting to fulfill
that destiny in the city where it all started 26 years ago, and left hoping that that game on January 6th was not a harbinger of bad things to come.
