River called the plays. Pacing restlessly back and forth on the sidelines, Griff watched the O-Line effectively protect the pocket with parallel off-stage battles. River to B2. River to Caesar. River to DeJuan -- a spinning slant pass that DeJuan caught. Adroitly.

It wasn’t only those perfect final moments of Super Bowl XXIII, Griff thought, it was also Jerry Rice’s spectacular first quarter one-handed catch and the way that early in the Fourth Quarter, on his way into the End Zone, Rice so decidedly out matched a pursuer.

DeJuan did not need to go out of bounds in order to stop the clock, as Rice did in the final minutes of Super Bowl XXIII. It was only the beginning of the Third Quarter. Instead -- Griff observed with pleasure -- DeJuan plunged forward to gain five more yards.

B2 caught River’s pass, fell to a gang of Wolves. DeJuan echoed Rice’s core 17 or was it 27 yard catch-and-run. The whole, Griff thought, was working as well as it was because his team had seen those final minutes of Super Bowl XXIII so many times that today on the field River was Joe Montana; DeJuan was Jerry Rice; and B2 was Roger Craig. And also because -- as he had heard Bill Walsh say about that game winning possession -- the Bengals were expecting trick plays; "we played fundamental football".

Bill Walsh's play When from the Wolves 10, in the end zone, River found Wide Receiver Casey Conlon Murphy (Charleston, West Virginia), Griff watched as in large numerals the Wolves Stadium state-of-the-art game field scoreboard flashed the changed score.

arrow Next week in the Huygens film room, he would show legendary pro-football clips, such as Jim Plunkett’s six play drive in Super Bowl XV. That was a good year, Griff thought as he watched Will kick a field goal right down the middle of the posts.

Huygens was ahead by 7 points, but the Second Half was just beginning.