January 31, 1988: The Doug Williams Game (Or, 13 Minutes of Hell)

January 31, 1988: Super Bowl XXII is played at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. The Denver Broncos, AFC Champions, are in their 3rd Super Bowl, their 2nd straight, still looking for their 1st win. The Washington Redskins, NFC Champions, are in their 3rd Super Bowl of the decade, having split the 1st 2. The Broncos are favored by 3 points.

The Broncos' John Elway was then considered one of the top quarterbacks in the game, despite having failed in the previous year's Super Bowl. The Redskins' Doug Williams was not considered to be as good. He had gotten the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the 1979 NFC Championship Game, but had been exiled to the USFL, where he played for the Oklahoma Outlaws. The Redskins signed him, and he wasn't expected to be the starter this season. But when starter Jay Schroeder was injured, Williams stepped in, and was as good as ever.

He was about to become the 1st black man to start at quarterback in the Super Bowl. Very few black quarterbacks had played in the NFL at all at this point.

On the Broncos' 1st play from scrimmage, Elway threw a 56-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Nattiel. At this point, only 8 of the 1st 21 Super Bowls had a final margin of less than 14 points. The last 4 had an average final margin of 26 points. It looked like another blowout was beginning.

Before the 1st quarter was out, Rich Karlis had kicked a field goal to make it 10-0 Denver. At this point, no Super Bowl team had ever erased a deficit of 10 points or more. And Williams got hurt, and had to have Schroeder, who hadn't played in weeks, take over. He was no better.

With 14:17 left in the 2nd quarter, Williams returned. What followed was the most amazing quarter of football anyone had ever seen. As Sports Illustrated said in the headline of their coverage of this Super Bowl, "And the Rout Was On."

On his 1st play back, Williams threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Sanders, a fellow USFL refugee, who had hauled in passes from Jim Kelly for the Houston Gamblers. Broncos 14, Redskins 7.

The Redskins kicked off, and the Broncos took it, but couldn't do anything with it, and had to punt. Williams took the Redskins downfield, and, with 10:15 left in the half, threw a 27-yard touchdown pass to Gary Clark, another former USFL player, for the Jacksonville Bulls. Redskins 14, Broncos 10. Given up for dead, Washington now had the lead.

People had laughed at the Redskins a few minutes earlier, and had laughed at the USFL when it went out of business a year and a half earlier. The Redskins were laughing now.

The Redskins kicked off, and the Broncos took it, but could only get to the Redskins' 26-yard line. Karlis attempted a field goal, and missed. The next play was a pass from Williams to Clark, for 16 yards. The next play was a handoff to Timmy Smith, a rookie making his 1st professional start -- in the Super Bowl. With the Redskins' famous offensive line, "The Hogs," opening a hole for him, he ran 58 yards for a touchdown, on his way to setting a Super Bowl record that still stands with 204 rushing yards. With 6:27 left in the half, it was Redskins 21, Broncos 10.

If that had been the end of the Washington onslaught, it would have been enough. It wasn't. The Redskins kicked off, and the Broncos took it, but again, they could not move the ball much. Williams threw a 50-yard touchdown pass to Sanders, making Sanders the 1st player ever to catch 2 touchdowns in a single quarter in a Super Bowl. With 3:42 left in the half, it was Redskins 28, Broncos 10.

If that had been the end of it... but it wasn't. The Redskins kicked off, and the Broncos took it, but on the 4th play of the drive, Barry Wilburn intercepted Elway. A 43-yard run by Smith, a pair of passes from Williams to Sanders, and finally an 8-yard pass from Williams to tight end Clint Didier. Touchdown. With 1:04 left in the half, it was Redskins 35, Broncos 10.

Doug Williams had led his team to score 5 touchdowns in 13 minutes and 13 seconds. This was insane. This was mind-boggling. This was unprecedented in NFL history.

When the Chicago Bears destroyed the Redskins 73-0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game -- Super Bowl -XXVI, if you prefer -- they scored 21 points in the 1st quarter, just 7 in the 2nd, 26 in the 3rd, and 19 in the 4th. When the Redskins beat the New York Giants 72-41 in a regular-season game in 1966, they scored 13 in the 1st, 21 in the 2nd, 14 in the 3rd, and 24 in the 4th. When the Los Angeles Rams beat the Detroit Lions 65-24 in a regular-season game in 1950, they set a still-standing NFL record for points in a quarter: 41 in the 3rd.

But this was in the Super Bowl. Against a team that came in favored by 3 points. Think of it this way: In the 1st 55 Super Bowls, 39 winning teams -- 1 of those in overtime -- didn't score as many points in the entire game as Williams had led his team to score in 13 minutes and change. Counting the pre-Super Bowl NFL Championship Games, not counting this one, from December 18, 1932 to February 7, 2021, there have been 89 postseason games to decide the Championship of the National Football League, 65 of the 89 winning teams scored fewer points in the entire game than the Redskins scored in this one quarter.

And it wasn't even that the Broncos' "Orange Crush" defense had played all that badly. They just got beat, by Williams, by Sanders, by Clark, by Smith, by Didier. There was nothing that Denver coach Dan Reeves could do against Joe Gibbs' Washington offense.

Watching this game, I simply could not believe it. Nine months later, broadcasting the 1988 World Series on CBS radio, Jack Buck would see a badly injured Kirk Gibson hit a home run off Dennis Eckersley to win Game 1 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and yell, "I don't believe what I just saw!" Well, I did not believe what I was watching on WABC-Channel 7 on that Super Sunday.

The 2nd half was a blur. I don't even remember the only scoring play of it. With 13:09 left in the 4th quarter, Smith took the ball in for a touchdown from 4 yards out. It ended Redskins 42, Broncos 10.

Williams was named the game's Most Valuable Player, and no one could ever again doubt that a black quarterback could take a team to win the Super Bowl.

Except... there wouldn't be another black quarterback starting in the Super Bowl until 2000, Steve McNair of the Tennessee Titans, who lost Super Bowl XXXIV to the St. Louis Rams. Five years later, Donovan McNabb got the Philadelphia Eagles into Super Bowl XXXIX, but they lost to the New England Patriots.

In 2013, Colin Kaepernick got the San Francisco 49ers into Super Bowl XLVII, but lost to the Baltimore Ravens. (This was when Kapernick was known for how well he played football, not for why he wasn't playing it.) The very next year, Russell Wilson became the 2nd black quarterback to win a Super Bowl, leading the Seattle Seahawks over the Denver Broncos. but the year after that, Wilson and the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl to the Patriots. The same thing would happen to Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs: Win Super Bowl LIV, then, the next year, lose to a team quarterbacked by Tom Brady, in this case the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV.

Following this 13 minutes of hell, Elway would fall to 0-3 in Super Bowls, and the Broncos to 0-4, losing Super Bowl XXIV to the 49ers. Finally in Super Bowl XXXII, Elway led the Broncos to beat the Green Bay Packers, and he was vindicated. The following year, he led them to win Super Bowl XXXIII over the Atlanta Falcons, and then retired.

Doug Williams played 2 more seasons for the Redskins, then went into coaching, including as head coach for a season at Morehouse College, and for 9 seasons in 2 separate stints at his alma mater, Grambling State University. He has worked in the front office of the team currently known as the Washington Football Team since 2014.

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January 31, 1988 was a Sunday. There were no other football games played that day. Baseball was out of season. Not wanting to lose TV viewers to even the lengthy pregame programming, the NBA scheduled only 1 game for the day, a major rivalry: The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 100-85 at the Boston Garden. Larry Bird scored 29 points.

There were only 2 games played in the NHL. Washington emerged victorious in one of these, as well, and it was even more dramatic, because the result was in doubt beyond the intended end: The Washington Capitals beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 1-0 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. For 63 minutes, the Flyers' Ron Hextall and the Caps' Pete Peeters (a former Flyer) shut each other's teams out. With 1:33 left in overtime, before the game would have ended in a tie, Kelly Miller scored the winning goal for the Caps.

A winner could not be found in the other game: The Buffalo Sabres and the Winnipeg Jets played to a 4-4 tie at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.