Music City Miracle

1999 AFC Wild Card Game

It was a memorable year for the 1999 Tennessee Titans. It was the first season that the team used "Titans" as their nickname, as they had been called the Oilers for the previous 39 seasons, mainly in Houston. The team played hard to earn a 13-3 regular season record, and their top draft pick, Jevon Kearse, was terrorizing opponents. The record was strong enough to give them a home playoff game in the wild Card round as they hosted the Buffalo Bills.
The season's success was in deep jeopardy, though in the hard-fought game against the Bills on the Wild Card Weekend on January 8, 2000. The Bills behind the play of QB Rob Johnson, a game-time surprise starter over Doug Flutie, drove Buffalo down into field goal territory late in the fourth quarter. The great part of Bill's drive was that they were out of time-outs, and Johnson ran a few plays with only one shoe on as he lost it on one play and could not waste valuable clock time to put it back on. The Bill's Steve Christie came on to boot a 3-pointer so that with a mere 16 ticks of the clock remaining, the home team, Titans, were trailing by one point.
They needed some miracle to save their season, and Head Coach Jeff Fischer and his staff called upon the right plan to make that happen. Please watch how the play progressed by clicking   here Music City Miracle.

The play was aptly called the Home Run Throwback in the Titans playbook and was developed by Special Teams Coordinator Alan Lowry. The controversy still continues on to this day as to whether the toss by Frank Wychek was a forward pass, which is illegal on a kick return, or was it legal by being a straight across lateral or a backwards pass. Camera angles are somewhat inconclusive but Referee Phil Luckett and his crew deemed after reviewing the play that it was legal and the score counted. The Titans went on to win 22-16 and then won their next two playoff games to earn a spot in Super Bowl XXXIV against the Rams. Look back in the future as we show one of the final plays from that Super Bowl match up in this Game Changers Series.

Needless to say, the play on that winter day in Nashville truluy changed the outcome of that game and propelled the Titans in their play off run. Yes, a Game Changer indeed!