Arizona Cardinals’ starting left offensive tackle Mike Gandy and reserve defensive end Bertrand Berry will attempt to become the 38th and 39th Notre Dame players to receive Super Bowl rings since the event was first held in 1967.
Of the 42 Super Bowls that have been completed, 29 featured an Irish alumnus on the winning team’s roster. Furthermore, there have been only six Super Bowl played without a former Notre Dame player represented on either team, most recently in 1999 between Denver and Atlanta.
The last time a Notre Dame player wasn’t on the winning team was 2003, when Tampa Bay with no ex-Irish players defeated Oakland (with Tim Brown). The current winning streak began with New England’s David Givens in 2004-05, Pittsburgh’s Jerome Bettis in 2006, Indianapolis’ Rocky Boiman, Hunter Smith and Jerome Collins in 2007, and last year the New York Giants’ Justin Tuck and Collins again.
Here is some “did you know?” trivia regarding Notre Dame and the Super Bowl.
Montana is among those Irish players who have won both a National Championship and a Super Bowl.
1) Joe Montana is the lone 3-time MVP in Super Bowl history.
Super Joe was 4-0 in the event with an astounding 127.8 passer rating. He completed 83 of his 122 attempts (68 percent) for 1,142 yards, 11 touchdowns and zero interceptions.
Ironically, though, his most defining moment in the Super Bowl came in the one where he wasn’t named the MVP.
Trailing Cincinnati 16-13 with 3:20 left, Montana directed a 92-yard drive that culminated with a perfectly-threaded 10-yard TD pass to John Taylor with 39 seconds left. Jerry Rice (11 catches, 215 yards, 1 TD) won the award over Montana, who finished 23 of 36 for 357 yards and 2 TDs.
2) Notre Dame is one of five schools with more than one quarterback who was a starter on a Super Bowl winner.
Montana and Joe Theismann (1983) both orchestrated victories, but Steve Beuerlein also won a ring as the backup for Troy Aikman at Dallas in 1993.
Alabama had the most starters for Super Bowl winners with three: Bart Starr twice, Joe Namath and Ken Stabler.
The three other schools with two different Super Bowl winning QBs are Purdue (Len Dawson and Bob Griese twice), Stanford (Jim Plunkett and John Elway twice apiece) and Brigham Young (Jim McMahon and Steve Young).
3) Ross Browner still holds the Super Bowl record for most tackles by a defensive lineman.
In Cincinnati’s 26-21 loss to San Francisco in 1982 – Montana’s first title – Browner was credited with 10 solo tackles, highlighted by a sack of his teammate on Notre Dame’s 1977 national title squad.
After the game, a photographer captured a moment of Browner and Montana engaged in a warm embrace, an image that was framed and hung in Notre Dame’s football office for years.
4) The first tackle ever in the Super Bowl was made by Notre Dame graduate…
Bill “Red” Mack, a halfback at Notre Dame from 1958-60. Mack had an impressive sophomore season under Terry Brennan in 1958, but he rushed for only 86 yards as a junior under Joe Kuharich and suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second game of his senior year.
A 10th-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the gutsy Mack hung on in the league for five years as a flanker and was picked up by Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in 1966 after beginning the year in Atlanta. His last NFL game was Super Bowl I, where he made two tackles on special teams – the first coming on the opening kickoff when he stopped 1965 USC Heisman Trophy winner Mike Garrett.
5) Speaking of overachievers…
Notre Dame’s all-time leading rusher in the Super Bowl is Rocky Bleier, a 16th-round pick by Pittsburgh in 1968 who was also drafted into the Vietnam War and suffered a wound in 1969 that doctors predicted would leave him crippled.
Instead, Bleier became a four-time Super Bowl winner (joining Montana and NFL assistant coach Charlie Weis in that category among Irish alumni) while totaling 144 yards rushing on 44 carries.
Bleier has the two highest single-game outputs by a Notre Dame alumnus in the Super Bowl, carrying 17 times for 65 yards in the 16-6 victory over Minnesota in 1975 and following with 15 carries for 51 yards the following year in a 21-17 conquest of Dallas.
In his third Super Bowl, 1979 against Dallas again, Bleier made the cover of Sports Illustrated with his leaping 7-yard touchdown catch in the Steelers’ 35-31 win.
6) Running Watters
While Bleier holds the Irish Super Bowl career mark in rushing, Ricky Watters had the best scoring output with three touchdowns in San Francisco 49-26 victory over San Diego in 1995.
Watters carried 15 times for 47 yards and two TDs, and added three catches for 61 yards, highlighted by a 51-yard scoring pass from Steve Young.
7) On The Receiving End
Only two former Irish wide receivers have made catches in the Super Bowl, with David Givens easily the most productive with eight catches for 88 yards and two TDs in New England Super Bowl conquests in 2004 and 2005.
He snared five passes for 69 yards and a score in the last-second win over Carolina in 2004, and followed with three more grabs for 19 yards in a score the next year when the Patriots vanquished Philadelphia.
The first Irish wideout to catch a pass in the Super Bowl was Tim Brown, who shared only one for nine yards in Oakland’s blowout loss to Tampa Bay in 2003.
The all-time pass receiving leader among Irish represented in the Super Bowl is tight end Mark Bavaro, who totaled nine catches for 101 yards and a TD in 1986 and 1990 New York Giants wins.
8) Timing is everything
Nine Notre Dame players have won multiple Super Bowl rings:
Collins’ story has the most fortunate twist of fortune as he picked up Super Bowl jewelry, and a nice payoff, without appearing in a game. He was on the Indianapolis Colts’ injured reserve list when they won Super Bowl XLI and a game-day inactive when the Giants won Super Bowl XLII.
He was signed as free agent by the Indianapolis Colts in October of 2006 and waived after the Super Bowl. He was signed to the Giants 53-man roster in December of 2007, shortly before another Super Bowl triumph.
9) Double Champions
Winning a national title in college and a Super Bowl in the NFL puts one in rare company. Nine Irish players have done it from four different national title teams:
In 1958, Hank Stram was a 35-year-old backfield coach at Notre Dame caught in the crossfire in the axing of head coach Terry Brennan and lost his job as well.
Two years later he was hired as the head coach of the Dallas Texans in the newly-formed AFL and won the AFL title in 1962. When the Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs, he propelled them to Super Bowl I in 1967, a 35-10 loss to Green Bay, before winning the 1970 Super Bowl versus Minnesota, 23-7.
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