The Tennessee Titans have finished out the past four seasons with a 9-7 overall record, but it’s hard not to feel like this year’s team is just a bit different than those before it.
For the first time in years, the Titans have a team that can contend with some of the best in the postseason, and that showed when they took down a dominant New England Patriots team, 20-13 last week.
One Titans team that compares is the 1999 squad that made its way to the big game after a season that included a 22-16 postseason victory over the Buffalo Bills.
The contest was one of the most thrilling in Titans history, dubbed the ‘Music City Miracle’ after Frank Wycheck threw a pass to Kevin Dyson, who went the distance to secure the game-winning score.
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While the whole play itself seems like a stretch, the fact that Dyson was the pass-catcher on that day was a stretch all by itself.
“The crazy part about it is that I got hurt, and then the guy that was my backup got hurt and it left Kevin (Dyson),” former Titans wideout Derrick Mason told The Tennessean. The way we practiced it, none of that happened in the game. There was a process, there was one pass, really, but during that game you get a short kick, you get a handoff, you run over and you get a throwback. The only thing that went the way it was supposed to was (Wycheck) getting the ball and throwing it to Kevin, which was supposed to have been Anthony Dorsett, which was supposed to have been me.”
Dyson describes the moment as one of “pure elation.”
“So for the Miracle, the feeling now is a little different than then,” Dyson told Titans Wire in 2017. “Then, it was pure elation, of course. You know, you just helped your team take the lead to secure a win to go on in the playoffs. It was short-lived, because you have to go on to the next game.”
Wycheck remembers it well.
“Well, Jeff Fisher, I mean, he was a detail-oriented coach, and we, like any team should, you go over every possible situation that can come up in a game and you do that with your two-minute drill, your four-minute drill, how to run out games and even practice the victory formation. … We hoped we’d never get in that situation, but it proved to be very successful because we were all prepared,” he said in a report from The Tennessean.
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Titans Radio’s Mike Keith also recalls the historical moment.
“And then on national TV, (Paul) Maguire, (Mike) Patrick and (Joe) Theismann argued with one another while the play was going on,” he said. “As it turned out, we were the only ones that did an audible call of the actual play all the way through. And it was the home radio call, so that makes it a little different because we were very obviously enthusiastic about it.
The Titans will look to keep their chances of playing in the Super Bowl alive as they face the Baltimore Ravens in M&T Bank Stadium at 7:15 p.m. CST on Saturday.