In His Own Words: ex-Raider Lincoln Kennedy on Super Bowl XXVII

In His Own Words: Raiders tackle Lincoln Kennedy

“We actually thought we were a team that couldn’t be stopped that season. … It’s hard to really pinpoint what happened. We just came together, figured things out, worked together, played together.

“I was one of the guys that had a chance to hoist the Lamar Hunt Trophy, the AFC championship trophy up above my head. Then you realize that you’re going to the Super Bowl. That’s when it hit me. … It was a big weight that was lifted off my shoulders because I’d finally felt that I’d arrived.

“Super Bowl Sunday seems to creep. It takes so long because everything is going on. All the hype. You can’t escape it. You go outside your room, you see constant reminders of what’s going on. You watch TV, you’re constantly reminded of what’s going on. The day goes by so slow. The last thing you want to do is just sit in bed all day. It’s just like a Monday night game, except the pressure is a lot greater. … You can’t think about it. It’ll drive you crazy if you think about it.

“The Bucs prepared for us like they knew us, and the guy who helped them was Jon Gruden. If they didn’t have Gruden on that team, we would have beat them, but he knew our offense better than we knew it ourselves. He could prepare that defense. ‘When you see this formation, this is what they are going to do.’ It’s like they’re in the huddle. It made the biggest difference in the world because the four turnovers for touchdowns were the difference in the game.

“We knew they were ready before the first interception that Rich Gannon threw. We came up to the line of scrimmage and it was a blitz look, and we checked to one of our usual audibles, and at that point, everyone on their defense was calling out the routes. ‘He’s running a slant. He’s running a hitch. He’s running this.’

“We thought it was odd, because the interception happened and they ran it back for a touchdown. I said to myself, ‘Do they know our plays?’ I couldn’t confirm it at the time, but when the second interception happened, yes, they called it out. They knew what we were doing.

“Coach Bill Callahan came over and said ‘Look, we’re going to have to throw the football in order to come back.’ And I said, ‘Here’s the thing. If we throw the football, we can’t let our audibles out because they know our audibles.’ So that’s when it took some extra planning. That’s when I knew it was going to be a tough night.

“I was crying on the sideline because we had just lost the game. One of my best friends, Mo Collins, was like ‘Come on Big House. Don’t let them see you cry. Pull it together.’ It was killing me. It was agony.

“No regrets, you wish you could have done it and pulled it out, but absolutely no regrets.”

As told to the Review-Journal’s Sam Gordon.