THE LONE CAPTAIN

Heading into Super Bowl XXI, Harry Carson had one fear. And it had nothing to do with the Broncos, the Giants’ opponent in that game. In fact, it had very little to do with football. The danger that weighed most heavily on his mind at the Rose Bowl was embarrassing himself by messing up his entrance.

So he kept saying the same thing to himself, over and over.

When your name is called and you run out on the field, don’t trip! Pick up your legs when you are running out on the field!

“You ask almost any player, especially players back then, what was your biggest fear right before the game, and they’d say that,” Carson insisted. “Because you can’t feel the lower part of your body. When my name was being called, I couldn’t just trot out, I had to run out and make sure I picked my feet up. The one thing you don’t want to do is trip and fall.”

He’d never seen anyone faceplant during that moment, but it was still a phobia.

“I can just imagine running out on the field, you can’t feel your legs, you stumble or you hit something, and you fall down,” he says. “Nobody really thinks about it, but it’s one of those things that if you’re playing, you have to be concerned about it.”

Carson and the rest of his Giants teammates made it out of the tunnel into the California sunshine on January 25, 1987, without incident. The future Hall of Fame linebacker exhaled a sigh of relief. But a few minutes later, that fear of being embarrassed during the pregame ceremonies of a Super Bowl would once again gurgle up from deep inside him. And this time, it wasn’t an irrational one. It was actually happening.

The Giants were on their sideline warming up just a few minutes before kickoff when NFL official Burl Toler gave the call: “Captains up!” That was the cue for Carson, Phil Simms, and George Martin to join Toler and walk to midfield for the coin toss. But only Carson was there, and as he looked around, he saw Simms getting his arm loose with some passes and couldn’t find Martin.

“So I said to Bill [Parcells], ‘I can’t go out yet because Phil and George aren’t here,’” Carson said. “He said: ‘Go.’ And I said: ‘But Bill, they’re not here.’ He said: ‘Go!’”

Parcells tells you to go, you go.

But Carson still felt it was a screwup. He wasn’t flopping coming out during introductions, but surely the entire world watching the broadcast would see him without his teammates and cocaptains and know that he should not have been there alone.

“At that point, I see the Broncos coming toward midfield and I’m walking out toward midfield with Burl Toler and I’m thinking, ‘Why am I going out here by myself? Did I do anything wrong?’”

But about halfway on his journey, it dawned on Carson—and the rest of the viewing audience in the stadium and on television—that he was not making a mistake. That Parcells was making a statement.

It was Carson who had been on the team for The Fumble in 1978. Carson who had been through the difficult times. Carson who had been through the changes in the front office and the coaching staff. Carson who had lived through all the hardships that resulted in the Giants reaching this height. And now it was Carson—and Carson alone—who would be standing at midfield.

“I realized that he wanted me to go out by myself,” Carson said. “As I’m taking these steps, I’m all excited. I’m thinking about all of the stuff that we went through to get to that point. And then I sort of realized when I looked at the Broncos coming out, they must have had seven or eight guys, I don’t remember how many, but for that time, I thought, ‘Wow. I’m the only captain going out representing this franchise and representing all Giant fans.’ Then it becomes a big deal to me personally because I was that one guy.”

The optics of that coin toss remain an indelible part of the Super Bowl XXI experience for many Giants fans. Hardly a week passes without someone coming up to Carson to ask him about that moment. If it looked like something out of a Gary Cooper western, it felt that way, too.

“That is what I thought about, The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” Carson said. “I’m like that lone guy and you’ve got Elway and Tom Jackson and all these guys from the Broncos on the other side and I’m the lone gunman for the Giants. Over the years, I’ve considered it to be a tremendous honor.”

It’s one that Carson still has difficulty accepting, however.

“Quite frankly, George and Phil should have been going out on the field with me, since they were captains, as well,” Carson said. “But that’s one of those things that so many Giants fans have burned into their psyche, Harry Carson going out on the field as the lone captain in Super Bowl XXI. I’m pretty sure it was cool with everybody else. Nobody really cared. But it was what Parcells wanted to do.”

Why? Everyone thinks they know. But that’s something Carson said he never asked his former head coach. They’ve spoken and shared memories of that game hundreds of times since 1987, but Carson said he has never requested an explanation, never poked Parcells for his motivation in making him go out for the coin toss by himself.

The real reason is far less theatrical and motivational than anyone would think, more a statement about Parcells than Carson.

“I never sent out many multiple captains,” Parcells said. Despite having three of them, he would usually have just one or two go out for the coin toss during the regular season.

“I sent out George and Harry several times, but I don’t like that six guys out there thing. That’s just me. I’m old-fashioned. You’re supposed to be a captain. The captain goes. The guy they vote for for captain, that’s who should be going. Now they’ve got special teams captain, this captain, that captain. That’s all right. That’s fine. I don’t have anything against it.”

But when he had a chance to decide in the Super Bowl, he wanted just one player out there. Who it was turned out to be of less significance to him than how many there were. Besides, Parcells had already given up on trying to garner any advantage from a heads-or-tails proposition.

“I used to tell officials, ‘I’ve got the worst captain in the league,’” Parcells said. “This is when Harry could hear me. I said he couldn’t win a coin toss. He’d lost eight coin tosses in a row. He did. He lost eight in a row. He could not win a coin toss.”

Carson did lose that Super Bowl coin toss. Not that it had much effect. The Broncos were the visiting team, and they called tails and won. They received the ball to start the game. Elway ran for 10 yards on the first play. Carson made the tackle.

“It doesn’t matter,” Carson said of the outcome of the ceremony. “We won the game.”

Carson said when he thinks about that moment and that Super Bowl, his mind invariably takes in a wider view.

“I’ve always talked about that game, not necessarily that game but that season, as probably the best team that I’ve ever dressed with,” he said. “That was really the best team that I played with from the standpoint that nobody really cared about who got credit. It was about us winning and everybody sort of checked their egos at the door. As a result of that unselfishness from all of the players, and also the coaches, we were able to put together a team that was truly a team. Parcells, Belichick, all of the assistant coaches, I think we had 11 at the time, all of the players, the younger guys, the older guys, we were all on the same page.”

When it came time for all of that to be represented, there really was just one man for the job.