Super Bowl XXXIV — 1999 Season

Result

Super Bowl MVP

Kurt Warner (QB, St. Louis Rams)

Starting lineups

Starting offense

Starting defense

Note: St. Louis's third linebacker is transcribed as "Toby Collins" by the source; some other lineups of this era spell a similar name "Toby Wright" at safety, so treat this specific spelling/position pairing with some caution. A stray "Fred Miller (OT), 1 reception, -1 yard" receiving line surfaced in one source pass and was dropped from this file as almost certainly a scraping artifact rather than a real trick-play statistic.

Box score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving

Game context

Super Bowl XXXIV was one of the great underdog-and-comeback stories in NFL history, capped by one of the most famous final plays the game has ever produced. The St. Louis Rams, picked by many preseason prognosticators, including a widely cited ESPN forecast, to be among the league's worst teams, instead rode an explosive offense nicknamed "The Greatest Show on Turf" to a 13-3 record and the NFC championship, led by a quarterback, Kurt Warner, who had been stocking grocery shelves and playing in the Arena Football League just a few years earlier after going undrafted out of college. St. Louis built a 16-0 lead against the Tennessee Titans, but Tennessee, led by dual-threat quarterback Steve McNair, stormed back with 16 unanswered points to tie the game in the fourth quarter, erasing what was then the largest deficit ever overcome in a Super Bowl. Warner was named MVP after a record-setting performance: 24 of 45 passing for 414 yards, then a Super Bowl record, and two touchdowns, including a 73-yard scoring strike to Isaac Bruce with just under two minutes remaining that put St. Louis back in front for good. Bruce finished with six catches for 162 yards and the decisive score, while rookie Torry Holt added seven catches for 109 yards, setting a rookie receiving record in a Super Bowl. Tennessee's McNair set a Super Bowl record for a quarterback with 64 rushing yards on eight carries, while running back Eddie George rushed for 95 yards and two touchdowns, keeping Tennessee competitive throughout despite trailing early. The game's signature moment came on the final play. Trailing 23-16, Tennessee had the ball at the St. Louis 10-yard line with six seconds remaining, and McNair completed a pass to Kevin Dyson, who appeared to have a clear path to a game-tying touchdown before Rams linebacker Mike Jones wrapped him up and dragged him down at the 1-yard line as time expired, a moment immortalized as "The Tackle," one of the most replayed defensive plays in Super Bowl history. Had Dyson reached the end zone, the game would have gone to overtime; instead, St. Louis secured the win by the narrowest of margins. Warner's ascent from undrafted, grocery-stocking obscurity to Super Bowl MVP and, that same season, NFL Most Valuable Player, made him just the sixth player to win both awards in the same year and turned his story into one of the most compelling narratives in league history. The Rams' win made St. Louis the first franchise to win championships representing three different home cities (having previously played, and won an NFL title, in Cleveland before later moving to Los Angeles and then St. Louis). This remains, as of the mid-2020s, the most recent Super Bowl in which neither participating franchise had ever previously won a championship, a distinction that added extra historical weight to the tightly contested finish.

Sources

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