| ATLANTA — Certain things in life simply take too long. If
you must take the highway home from work, it takes too long to creep through rush-hour
traffic. If your computer has gone haywire, it takes too long to get someone on the phone
from technical support as you seemingly get placed on hold into the next presidential
administration. If you are a sleep-deprived parent, it takes too long for a newborn child
to start sleeping through the night.
If you are Titans OG Bruce Matthews, it has taken entirely too long to reach the Super
Bowl. But finally, the excruciating wait is over. In his 17th NFL season,
Matthews has reached the Big Dance. Throughout his career he has gone to the Pro Bowl the
way the rest of us go to the local grocery store. With regularity. Yet he never earned a
trip to the game’s ultimate event until the Titans upset the Jaguars in this
year’s AFC title game.
While no player is promised a berth in the Super Bowl, it feels as though justice is
being served now that Matthews is finally getting his long-overdue chance to play on Super
Sunday.
"We have a lot of reasons to win this game, and Bruce is one of the main
ones," Titans WR Yancey Thigpen said. "We want to win for a guy who has played
as long as he’s played and who has dedicated himself to an organization for as long
as he has. He’s been to the Pro Bowl so many times, and he’s going to get
inducted into the Hall of Fame, and he’ll cherish that. But I think this game means
more to Bruce than the Hall of Fame and all the Pro Bowls."
Matthews represents all that is good about the game of football, and the fact that he
had to wait so long to get to the Super Bowl practically has his teammates hanging their
heads in shame.
"We’re apologetic that it took him that long to get there," Titans OT
Brad Hopkins said. "It was a long road for him to travel. … He’s been a
mainstay on the offensive line for as long as anyone can remember, he’s been to
numerous Pro Bowls, but there’s one thing that’s eluded him, and that is the
Super Bowl. And to at least say that you’ve been to the dance, that makes everything
correct in your career. … He’s worked hard all his career to get where he is
right now, and there’s probably no one more deserving."
There’s certainly no one more relieved.
"It always galled me to see rookies making the Super Bowl from other teams,"
Matthews said.
No longer does he need to cling to the defense mechanism that all longtime players
who’ve never reached Super Sunday embrace. You know, the one where they say that
their careers will not be missing anything if they don’t reach the Super Bowl.
Yeah, right. They all say that, only to come clean when they finally do reach the Super
Bowl.
"The best way to describe it is to say that if I hadn’t made it here,
I’d still be able to say, ‘I had a pretty good career. I had a good run,’
" Matthews said. "I had resigned myself to the notion that if I didn’t make
it, no big deal. Now that I’m here, I realize what a great loss it would have been
not to make it here."
There seems to be a genuine joy racing through the Titans’ organization over the
fact that Matthews’ long wait is over. Most players get asked the same question so
many times by the media that their eyes start to get a blank look when asked, for the 17th
time, if they are a team of destiny. Their voices turn into a monotone as they respond,
for the 14th time, to the inquiry about what the key matchup to the game is.
When the subject is Matthews, however, there is an excitement, a sense of awe, to their
answers.
"This is his team," Titans SS Blaine Bishop said. "That’s for sure,
and he brings a lot of personality to the team. He’s a laid-back, funny guy who likes
a lot of practical jokes in the locker room, and then he knows when to get serious. He
keeps everybody loose. The guy is phenomenal. I mean, what is he — 38 or so? When
I’m 38, I won’t be playing. You ask him all the tricks of the trade, how to work
in the offseason, and that’s what we learn from him. He’ll go down the checklist
in the offseason and tell us how to play in this league and do well."
Titans DE Jevon Kearse said, "The guy is still playing after 17 years, and
he’s still got the speed, got the strength, just playing. It gives us something to
look forward to down the line. … Seventeen years, man he really put in some
work."
Heck, even his opponents tip their hat respectfully toward Matthews’ many years of
service.
"I don’t know too many guys that want to play that long," Rams OT
Orlando Pace said. "You’ve got to respect a guy like that who’s been
playing that long in that position. I don’t think I can do it, but hopefully I can
play that long."
How is it that Matthews has played so long, so well? Let us count the ways.
Reason No. 1: He wants to be good. More importantly, though, he is willing to pay the
price for success. That price is blood and sweat. Some players view the offseason as a
time for hibernation. Matthews sees it as a time for motivation.
"He works very, very hard during the offseason," Titans head coach Jeff
Fisher said. "He comes to camp in great shape. He is passionate about playing the
game, and he understands the kind of work that is required. … It is that passion that
motivates Bruce and keeps him coming back every year."
Reason No. 2: A phenomenal competitive spirit has always driven him. Always.
It was that way as a kid with his brother, Clay.
"Clay and I would make up games to compete with each other," Bruce said.
"The most obscure was a baseball game that we played with a two-by-four, and
we’d throw darts at each other. The object was to catch the dart in the two-by-four.
When we had our first beanball, our parents retired the game."
When I wrote about Bruce half-a-dozen years ago, proclaiming him the best offensive
lineman in the NFL at the time in a poll of pro football coaches, I talked to Clay, and it
was clear that Bruce’s competitiveness had not lessened as an adult.
During that offseason, Bruce and his family were visiting the California home of Clay,
who was still an NFL linebacker at the time. The itinerary said they had another hour
before Bruce and his family had to leave to visit other family members elsewhere.
Then Clay showed off a new video hockey game. Kiss the itinerary goodbye. The one-hour
time frame got blown to bits. The two brothers started playing the game. Clay, having
played the game before, kept winning.
The 60 minutes came and went. Bruce wasn’t going anywhere as he doggedly tried to
beat his brother.
Another hour passed. Chaos was now breaking out all around Bruce, who only noticed that
he still hadn’t beaten his brother.
"His wife is yelling at him to leave," Clay said. "And Bruce goes,
‘Come on, just a couple more.’ His wife’s all upset; the kids are crying.
But he had to get that win in."
Bruce didn’t make it to the next batch of family members. Finally, Bruce and his
family left Clay’s house. You are probably wondering what got him to leave. The
threat of divorce? A court order? A fire?
"I might have let him win just so he could leave," Clay said, laughing at the
thought.
Is it any wonder that Bruce Matthews has driven himself to so much success for so many
years in the NFL?
Reason No. 3: Matthews genuinely loves the camaraderie of being on a team. He’s
not watching the clock, dying to get away from work. He’s not just some mercenary who
is interested in nothing more than collecting a paycheck. The guy is having the time of
his life. He brings a sense of fun to the team.
"We have a Ping-Pong table set up in our hotel, and we played last night and this
morning," Matthews said five days before the Super Bowl was set to kick off. "I
took care of (center) Kevin Long last night. I split with (punter) Craig Hentrich. (PK) Al
Del Greco swept me this morning. So I’m looking forward to going back to the hotel
and refining my game some."
It was Matthews and former teammate Jay Pennison who once invented a game called
Ballmaster, which became a locker-room favorite. The benches in the locker room would be
situated 20 feet apart, tape would be placed on the floor and a racquetball would be used.
Players put spin on the ball, and the idea was to catch it with one hand.
Years ago, Floyd Reese (now the team’s executive vice president/general manager,
but the assistant general manager at the time) described Ballmaster thusly: "It looks
like something two kids would play."
Which is a beautiful thing to have, in the proper doses, in your locker room. In a
sport where too many players often spend too much time moping about endorsements, how much
more money they think they should be making and a long list of other distractions, it is
wonderful to have a locker-room leader who can inject something as positive as fun into
the team.
When that player also leads with his actions, with his work ethic, with his competitive
drive, a team has a rare jewel on its hands. In the Titans’ case, that jewel is Bruce
Matthews. How fitting that he finally gets to play in the crown jewel of football games.
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