The Inner Circle

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —  You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. The Super Bowl cameras miss it. The microphones fail to pick it up. Only gladiators in the heat of the action understand it, those athletes who have lived life on football’s biggest stage.

The game within the game.

Name That Tune.

That was the game in the huddle for at least one Super Bowl team.

“Every time there was a TV timeout we’d start playing it,” said former NFL offensive lineman Mark Schlereth, who won two Super Bowl rings with Denver and one with Washington. “That music would come on. We’d try to guess who was singing the song.... We were always goofing around. Anything to keep you loose, from feeling the pressure and stress of the game.”

The NFL expects more than 140 million people around the world to tune in when the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles square off today in the Super Bowl. Cameras and microphones will capture the game from virtually every angle. Still, when the players on the field huddle close, there will be things that even the most prying eyes and ears will miss. It happens every year.

Take Christian Fauria’s little game, for instance. The New England tight end keeps things loose in the huddle by trying to guess which play quarterback Tom Brady will call next. Sometimes, in the most tense of moments, Fauria will make a prediction out loud when Brady’s getting a play from the coaches on the sideline.

“If he comes back and I got the play right, I’ll be like, ‘Yes! Woo-hoo!” ’ Fauria said.

Ah, the simple pleasures in life. From woo-hoos to yahoos, the huddle has them all.

The Bronco linemen used to play the “circle game” in which a player would form an OK sign with his thumb and index finger and hold it to, say, his leg. If a teammate looked directly at the hand gesture, the circle-maker got to slug the offender in the arm. This kind of icebreaking stuff went on in the tensest of moments, when NFL history was being made.

“We’re children and we act like children,” Schlereth said. “We’d be playing that game in TV timeouts. We had a karate-chop game, where if I could get you to look at something -- if I stand up in the huddle and stare at nothing, and I make you look -- I get to karate chop you in the neck. Those are the little stupid things that go on.”

But not in every Super Bowl huddle. Some are far more serious.

“Our huddles were all about looks,” former Washington quarterback Joe Theismann said. “Guys wouldn’t talk, they’d just look at each other. I didn’t run the huddle like a democracy. I did the talking. I gave the orders.”

In fact, the only person who talked over Theismann in Super Bowl XVII was ... Theismann.

At one point in the game, the Redskin quarterback was angrily walking off the Rose Bowl field after Miami had intercepted an errant pass. He was muttering to himself in frustration. Just then, a public-service announcement he had made earlier came over the loudspeakers.

“Hi,” the voice boomed, “I’m Joe Theismann ... “

A smattering of catcalls followed. Embarrassed, Theismann lowered his head and hustled to the sideline.

“Great timing,” he said, smiling at the memory.

Maybe the most famous Super Bowl huddle story happened Jan. 22, 1989, when San Francisco played Cincinnati at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami. With 3 minutes 10 seconds to play and the 49ers trailing by three, they were pinned at their eight-yard line. The offense huddled, and quarterback Joe Montana noticed that tackle Harris Barton looked especially uptight.

“Hey,” Montana said, gazing into the stands, “isn’t that John Candy?”

Sure enough, the comedian was in the stands. Barton and the other 49ers on the field glanced up and spotted him. It was one of Montana’s quintessential “Joe Cool” moments and it set the stage for San Francisco’s 11-play, 92-yard winning touchdown drive.

Not many quarterbacks are so nonchalant under that enormous pressure. Pittsburgh’s Terry Bradshaw said he was too worried about correctly getting the play from the sideline into the game. He seldom cracked a smile in the huddle, even though he cracks jokes all the time now as a Fox analyst.

As for Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defense?

“There was no joking around in our huddle, Jack Lambert made sure of that,” Steeler Jack Ham said, referring to the wild-eyed Hall of Fame linebacker who had only a gap where his top two front teeth should have been.

No doubt opposing offensive linemen used worried tones when discussing Lambert in their huddle. But at least they recognized him. For many linemen, the biggest fear is the unknown.

“As offensive linemen, you’re fairly paranoid,” Schlereth said. “If you’re hanging around with O-linemen and you’re in the huddle, and all of a sudden they shuttle in a guy that you haven’t seen on film. You’ve broken the last four games down, you’ve seen cut-up reels from the whole season. Then, all of a sudden, No. 99 comes in. You’ve never seen 99. Guys [on the line] are saying, ‘Oh, my God! Have you ever seen 99? Has anyone seen 99?’ ”

Kent Hull can relate. He was the center for Buffalo and played in four consecutive Super Bowls from the 1990 through ’93 seasons. And that was a no-huddle offense, nicknamed the K-Gun after quarterback Jim Kelly. The linemen had to do most of their communicating at the line of scrimmage or during timeouts.

Because they didn’t huddle, the Bills used code words more than most teams. For instance, Kelly used them to let his teammates know the snap count. “Sound” meant snap on the first sound; “Noah” meant snap on two, as in animals two by two; “Mayday” meant get to the line quick so the defense wouldn’t have time to change personnel.

As for Hull, one of his biggest worries about the Super Bowl concerned what would happen before the opening kickoff.

“They told us on Thursday whether it was going to be the offense or defense that was going to be introduced” at the beginning of the game, he said. “I knew I’d have to run out there to the middle of the field on national TV. I thought I’d just stumble and fall.”

His solution?

“I picked my feet up higher at introductions than at any time in the ballgame,” he said. “Guys thought I was a 100-yard sprinter. My knees would be hitting me in the chin. I was going to make sure I didn’t drag a toe.

“The pressure is just so strong. I had to focus on my job, so I didn’t like it when my mind had time to wander. It got to the point where I hated timeouts. I’d be tired and still hating them.”

For the Bills, it was all business. “There was no laughing on the field,” Hull said.

No laughing? No levity? No Name That Tune? No wonder the Bills went 0-4 in those Super Bowls.

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SUPER BOWL HISTORY

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