Manliest Super Bowl Performances

Yeah, it's Trent Dilfer.  So what?
Holding up the Lombardi Trophy with a busted hand is what this list is all about.

The Super Bowl will be played later today, so we should probably honor it somehow.  And we can't think of a better way to do so than by educating you on some bad ass displays of manhood in the Super Bowl.

5. Dan Reeves - Super Bowl XXXIII

It also takes a certain mental toughness to lose 4 Super Bowls with 2 different teams.

A coach?  Yeah.  Dan Reeves had his Atlanta Falcons in the midst of their best season ever: after 14 games they were 12-2, thanks to a tough veteran defense, Chris "Chandelier" Chandler staying relatively healthy and by rolling over the odometer on Jamal Anderson's career in one season by giving him an absurd and at the time record 410 rushing attempts.  Anderson was out of football in three years due to the toll that season took on him and this is no joke, was last seen snorting coke off of a toilet in a nightclub.  Thanks Dan!  The Dirty Birds were flying high.  Then, disaster struck.  Reeves underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery.  That'll put you on the shelf for a long time.  But not Dan Reeves.  He returned only three weeks later to lead his team through the playoffs and to the Super Bowl.

4. Terrell Owens - Super Bowl XXXIX

Fuck you Dallas.

T.O. is a world class douche, but credit where credit is due: he manned up big time in the Super Bowl.  In Week 15 Roy Williams' horse collar tackle of T.O. put Owens out for the rest of the year with a broken fibula.  The tackle was so severe it prompted the league to outlaw it in the off-season.  Everyone figured Owens' season was done, but Owens declared he would play even though team doctors said he was weeks away from being able to.  And all he did is catch 9 passes for 122 yards.  Had the Eagles won the Super Bowl he would have been a worthy MVP pick.

3. Terrell Davis - XXXII

Davis was told that playing in the Super Bowl would blow his mind.
Unfortunately, that actually happened.

If you've never had a migraine, it's tough to explain just how it is, although it's a little different for everyone.  I've never had one but I know people who have them and it ain't pretty.  It messes with, well, everything.  Migraines wreak havoc with your sensitivity to light and sound, can give you nausea or vertigo, you may even puke.  They can last for just a little while or for hours and hours, and then after it passes you feel like shit for even longer.  So when Terrell Davis had a migraine in the Super Bowl, it was a big fucking deal.  Infamously he came to coach Mike Shanahan after a play near the goal line and said "I can't see."  Shanahan's response was basically "I don't care."  (Note to Albert Haynesworth: this is the guy you wanted to go to war with in training camp?  He puts temporary blind people into football games, what did you think he was going to do to your lazy ass?)  Shanahan told TD that he was going in on the next play, because it was going to be play action and the Packers would not bite on the run fake if Davis wasn't in.  Davis obliged, John Elway carried out the fake and scored on a bootleg because the Packers did in fact bite on the play.  Davis' migraine would pass and he would wind up with 157 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns and claim the Super Bowl MVP trophy.

2. Max McGee - Super Bowl I

If he had any foresight he could have told some drunk sluts he picked up the night before that they'd be sleeping with the guy on the next cover of SI!

When you think of Vince Lombardi's Packers, you think of a well oiled and disciplined machine that was even better than the sum of its great parts.  Off the field they were big time party animals and pussy chasers.  Paul Hornung was a Hall of Famer on and off the field, and Max McGee was one of his drinking pals.  The night before Super Bowl I McGee, who was 34 and had caught all of 4 passes that season, figured he wouldn't play in the game and so stayed out past curfew and got really drunk.  He told starting WR Boyd Dowler "I hope you don't get hurt, I'm not in very good shape."  Early in the game Dowler got hurt.  The hungover McGee came in and recorded 7 catches for 138 yards and 2 TDs.  He undoubtedly got shitfaced that night.
 
1. Jack Youngblood - Super Bowl XIV

Tim Krumrie, who had to leave Super Bowl XXIII after breaking his leg in three places once said "you can break my other leg right now if it gets me back in that game." Jack Youngblood said "been there, done that."

If you don't know this story, gather around the fire as I tell you about a real man.  Jack Youngblood was a man's man.  In 1979, Youngblood's Los Angeles Rams were in the midst of a disappointing season.  The team rallied to make the playoffs, and in the first game Youngblood, perhaps the team's best player, fractured his fibula.  Normally this would end his season and put the Rams chances on thin ice.  But not Jack Youngblood.  He played through it.  The Rams, probably because they feared that Youngblood would literally kill them, upset the Cowboys and Buccaneers (yes, the Bucs) in the playoffs to reach the Super Bowl.  Meanwhile his starting QB Pay Hayden missed a third of the season and the playoffs with a broken finger.  Wimp.  But Youngblood's test of manhood was not over after the Super Bowl.  Rather than understandably not go because he needed surgery, Youngblood played in the Pro Bowl.  Jack Youngblood has a bronze bust in the Hall of Fame, a steel leg and the biggest brass balls to ever walk on to the field in a Super Bowl.