Super Bowl XXXI — 1996 Season

Result

Super Bowl MVP

Desmond Howard (WR/KR, Green Bay Packers)

Starting lineups

Starting offense

Starting defense

Note: This round's lineups (XXXI-XL) are sourced to profootballarchives.com's official box scores rather than Wikipedia's per-game lineup tables, which do not exist for games this old — Wikipedia's Super Bowl XXXI article was directly checked and confirmed to carry no starting-lineup table. Not independently cross-checked against a second dedicated lineup source given this round's volume.

Box score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving

Game context

Super Bowl XXXI returned the Green Bay Packers to the championship game for the first time since Vince Lombardi's teams won Super Bowls I and II three decades earlier, and Brett Favre's Packers delivered the franchise's first title of the modern era with a 35-21 win over a young New England team led by second-year head coach Bill Parcells and quarterback Drew Bledsoe. The two teams combined for 24 points in the first quarter alone, a Super Bowl record at the time, with New England actually taking an early lead before Green Bay pulled ahead for good and controlled the second and third quarters, building a 27-14 cushion. Desmond Howard, playing as a return specialist and occasional receiver rather than an every-down player, was named MVP, the first special-teams player to win the award, after a game defined by his 244 combined return yards, including a then-record 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the third quarter that broke New England's momentum just as the Patriots were threatening to make the game close. Favre threw for 246 yards and two touchdowns, including an 81-yard strike to Antonio Freeman that was, at the time, the longest touchdown pass in Super Bowl history, and he added a rushing touchdown on a quarterback keeper as well. Bledsoe, for his part, was efficient for stretches, throwing for 253 yards and two touchdowns, but he was intercepted four times by a Green Bay defense that made timely plays throughout, and New England could never fully close the gap. This was the first Super Bowl broadcast by the Fox network, which had recently won NFL broadcast rights, and it became the highest-rated program in Fox's history to that point, part of the network's broader push to establish itself as a major sports and entertainment player. A subplot swirling around the game involved Patriots coach Bill Parcells, whose relationship with owner Robert Kraft had deteriorated over personnel control; Parcells was reported to be in contact with the New York Jets about their vacant head-coaching job even during Super Bowl week, and he left New England for the Jets almost immediately after the game, a distraction that lingered over the Patriots' preparation. Green Bay's win extended what was then a 13-game NFC winning streak in the Super Bowl, part of an era of overwhelming NFC dominance in the game that would not be broken until Denver's AFC title the following year. For the Packers, the championship validated the roster general manager Ron Wolf had built around Favre, Reggie White, and a talented defense, restoring the franchise to glory it had not known since the Lombardi era. New England's defeat, meanwhile, set the stage for one of football's great ironies: the Patriots would return to the very same Louisiana Superdome five years later for Super Bowl XXXVI, this time led by a little-known second-year quarterback named Tom Brady, and pull off a stunning upset that launched one of the greatest dynasties in NFL history.

Sources

• Pro-Football-Reference: Super Bowl Index
• Wikipedia: Super Bowl XXXI