NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It was a tough season for the Tennessee Titans. They went just 3-14, leading to the firing of general manager Ran Carthon on Tuesday. A far cry from where the team was 25 years ago.
Yes, believe it or not, the most famous play in franchise history — The Music City Miracle — took place a quarter century ago. It was January 8, 2000, when the Titans played host to the Buffalo Bills in an AFC Wild Card game. The first playoff game in Nashville history inside the brand-new Adelphia Coliseum.
“To host it in your first year, (after) going undefeated at home, there’s a pressure that comes with that,” said Kevin Dyson, who would become the star of the famous play.
The Titans jumped ahead 12-0, but had to re-take the lead on an Al Del Greco field goal with under 2:00 to go. Rob Johnson drove the Bills to an answer. Steve Christie’s 41-yard field goal seemingly gave Buffalo a 16-14 victory.
“I was devastated,” said Titans star running back Eddie George of his feeling at the time. “I felt the pain of losing a playoff game. We hadn’t lost a game in the stadium all year long and you end like this.”
Voice of the Titans Mike Keith was calling the game on the Titans Radio Network with Pat Ryan and was doing his best to temper the disappointment of a promising season snuffed out in the first round of the playoffs.
“It’s over, it’s over,” Keith later recalled of his thoughts following the Christie field goal. “What I’m trying to do at that moment on the radio is not sound too disappointed because it had been a fabulous season.”
“Do the Titans have a miracle left in them in what has been a magical season to this point?”
There was still time left on the clock, although not much, for the Titans to have a glimmer of hope. The :16 remaining the stage was set for what became one of the most famous plays in NFL history.
“Coach Alan Lowry came up to me and we simultaneously said, ‘yeah, it’s home run throwback time’,” Titans head coach Jeff Fisher said of his discussion with his special teams coordinator. “It was a play that we had installed in training camp and we had worked it every single Saturday up to that point.”
The problem was the Titans options for the play were limited. Star returner Derrick Mason was out with a concussion and Anthony Dorsett Jr. had just limped off the field with a cramping issue. So Fisher and Lowry turned to Dyson, a rookie wide receiver.
Dyson remembers the frantic instructions that were being relayed to him as he walked onto the field for the play.
“They’re going to squib it to Frank (Wycheck),” Dyson said. “He’s going to run to the opposite side of the field. He’s going to throw it back to Isaac, you get into a relationship with him and if he gets in trouble, he’s going to pitch it back to you and you get out of bounds.”
But the play didn’t start as planned when the Bills kicked off high and short into the arms of upback Lorenzo Neal. It was a strategy that Neal had a premonition of before the kick.
“I go over to Frank and say, ‘Frank, listen to me. They’re going to kick me the ball,’ Neal remembers. “’You come get it (from me).”
The play was further complicated when the number one lateral option on the play, Isaac Byrd, was blocked out of the play.
“He throws it across the field to Dyson.”
Neal fielded the kick, handed it to Wycheck just as he told him he would and the veteran tight end threw a pass from one hashmark to the far sideline and a squatting Dyson. The rookie caught it and turned upfield with a convoy of blockers in front of him.
“He’s got something!”
“There was a brief moment where I thought, 'OK, I can get out bounds now,'” Dyson said about the original plan of the play. “How much time’s left?”
His coach, watching from the sideline, was hoping desperately he would stay in bounds and keep running. Fisher saw that the Titans had the advantage with a wall of blockers shielding Dyson from the Bills’ kickoff coverage unit.
“(I looked up) and thought I’m going to score,” Dyson said.
High above the field in the press box, Keith was looking for something else.”
“I’m looking for a flag,” the play-by-play man explained later. “I’m thinking to myself I don’t want to get all fired up on the radio only to have it get called back.”
Dyson picked up steam down the sideline, the coliseum began to roar and Keith’s voice began to rise in unison. Dyson sprinted past the 30, the 20, the 10 and into the endzone for one of the most improbable touchdowns in NFL history.
“There are no flags on the field. It’s a miracle. Tennessee has pulled a miracle.”
The play had worked, but the Titans couldn’t celebrate a victory just yet. The replay booth had buzzed down to referee Phil Luckett to review the lateral.
The veteran official had to go to the sideline monitor to take a long look at Wycheck’s cross-field toss to Dyson to make sure it was, indeed, a lateral.
“I think people (who think it was a lateral) are looking at the body position and not the flight of the football,” Dyson said. “The actual flight of the football, per the rule, is a lateral.”
That was the conclusion that Luckett came to after reviewing the play for several minutes. The call on the field stood as a touchdown and the Titans had the lead.
“Oh my gosh, the relief” George said, remembering the jubilation. “Going from one extreme of feeling the loss to now the exhilaration of a win and moving on.”
The play sparked a run to Super Bowl XXXIV that culminated with a loss to the St. Louis Rams. It also made Dyson a household name.
“I get all the credit because I scored,” Dyson said. “(The blockers) did all the work, essentially. I don’t know if it could ever work out like that again.”
More importantly, the Music City Miracle entrenched the Titans in Tennessee and NFL history.
“It was so much more than a football play,” Keith said of the play that has been watched and heard millions of times. “It was a moment in time and in history, not just for the franchise, not just for the NFL, but also for this entire community.”
