Super Bowl Memory #3: Santonio Holmes' Tip-Toe Catch

Though Super Bowl week is an annually painful reminder of how terrible my beloved Browns was, is and probably will continue to be into the untold future, I fashion myself an aficionado of football excellence--30-plus years of rooting for the Browns give you an appreciation of good football.  With that said, this list are the moments that have left an indelible mark on my psyche that bring back the who, what, when where and why of the Super Bowl party that I was in attendance when they happened.

Not all the moments are individual plays, but, instead, the lasting the impressions had on the historical perspective, my overall football sensibilities, and some were simply Super Bowl moments that stuck out to me. 

 I have grown to the point that I'd rather see the Pitts-Pitts burgh Steelers (I have trouble tuning my lips to even say it without stuttering) win a Super Bowl championship before the team formerly-known-as-the-Cleveland Browns win one--that's why the 2000 Super Bowl is especially painful.

As I digress, Ben Roethlisberger found Santonio Holmes in the back of the end zone for the game-winning score from 6-yards out with under 30-seconds to go in the game, thus giving the Steelers their league-leading sixth Super Bowl ring in XLIII.




Roethlisberger, rolling to his right to elude Arizona Cardinal pressure (that's depressing--the Cardinals have been the Super Bowl and the Browns have yet to appear in the big game),  was somehow able to throw a dart over the out-stretched arms of two Cardinal defenders and threaded the needle to a spot where only Holmes could catch it and have a chance of staying in bounds.  Tapping his toes on the sidelines, making every WR Coach in the US and Canada say "that's why we do those drills," Holmes managed to hold on to the pass and keep his feet in-bounds.  The catch, along with his nine-catch 131-yard performance according to Pro Football Reference, earned Holmes Super Bolw XLIII MVP honors.

But what made this game special was the valiant effort of sure-to-be Hall-of-Famer Kurt Warner,  hitting Larry Fitzgerald on a 15-yard square-in route that he turned into a 64-yard TD reception and a 23-20 lead  with 2:37 to go (2009).

But just like the Bengals in 1988, you just can't say certain organizations and Super Bowl champions in the same sentence--the Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, San Diego Chargers, Philadelphia Eagles, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, the Atlanta Falcons, and the Arizona Cardinals are all organizations that are inexstricably doomed to come up short in the winning-it-all department for a myriad of reasons.  I'm still holding an expansion team exemption on the Jacksonville Jaguars,  Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans.

You instinctively know, when it come down to it, they all will do something to shoot themselves in the foot, the other show will drop, or what have you--simply put they all can't handle prosperity for long before they will self-implode.  And you knew when they scored, Pittsburgh would find a way to pull it out.

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