Super Bowl Memory #7: Marcus Allen Run Into the Night

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. In addition to being a Browns fan, my bandwagon team has always been the Oakland/Los Angeles Raider from Ken 'the Snake' Stabler, Jack Tatum, and the Ted "the Mad Stork" Hendricks to Tim Brown and Charles Woodson.



Perhaps my favorite Raider of them all was Marcus Allen.  All the kids in the neighborhood emulated their running style after Walter Payton, Tony Dorsett, Eric Dickerson, or Marcus Allen.  With a gallop that made it appear that he was not that fast, Allen was one of the premiere break-away runners of the era with Dickerson and Dorsett.  Though he was labeled as not having "breakaway speed" coming out of USC, no seemed to catch Allen once he got into the open field.

This was no more evident than on the 74-yard TD run Allen rolled off on the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII.  Running left with a convoy of pulling linemen to lead him, Allen, seeing that the Redskins outflanked his blockers to that side, stopped dead in his track, reversed back to the right side where he saw a crack in Washington's defense, and he was off to the races for one of the best individual rushes in Super Bowl history.

Allen finished the night with a Super Bowl record--to that point--191 yards to help him earn the Super Bowl XVIII MVP.