FOR USE AS DESIRED
NFL-PRE-5       8/22/00

It may not count. But this week does matter.

Thursday through Saturday this week, the NFL plays its final preseason games before Kickoff 2000 arrives on Labor Day weekend.

The week matters to players "on the bubble." Final roster cutdowns come today (to 65 players) and next Sunday (to 53). "We want to make sure we don’t miss on a player," says Philadelphia Eagles head coach ANDY REID.

The week also matters because teams want to enter the season off a victory.

"We need to walk away with a win," says head coach JIM FASSEL of the 0-3 New York Giants. "No more of this ‘We played well but lost’ stuff. I want to play well, but I want to win, too."

No one values a victory in the final preseason game more than Jacksonville Jaguars head coach TOM COUGHLIN. In the team’s five years of existence, Coughlin has taken it to a win in each of its final preseason games. Those wins have translated into victories in three of the Jaguars’ five season openers, and four playoff berths.

"What I’m after is the attitude, the focus, the concentration on winning across the entire roster," says Coughlin.

Preseason focus? You don’t have to look further than VINCE LOMBARDI. In his nine years at the helm of the Green Bay Packers, the Pro Football Hall of Fame coach won 42 of 50 preseason games for an .840 winning percentage. Included was a streak of 19 consecutive wins between September 12, 1959 and September 8, 1962. The breakdown:

Some interesting "tuneup" games in the final week of the 2000 preseason:

• ST. LOUIS at DALLAS (Thursday, ESPN, 8:35 PM ET): Matchup of two quarterbacks with four Super Bowl rings between them – Rams’ KURT WARNER (XXXIV) and Cowboys’ TROY AIKMAN (XXVII, XXVIII, XXX).

• MINNESOTA at INDIANAPOLIS (Thursday): Meeting of one top young quarterback, PEYTON MANNING of Colts, and one who begins career as a starter this year, DAUNTE CULPEPPER of Vikings -- team’s No. 1 draft choice of ’99.

• MIAMI at NEW ORLEANS (Friday): Encounter of new head coaches who both were born in Pittsburgh and went to college in Pennsylvania -- DAVE WANNSTEDT of Dolphins (Univ. of Pittsburgh) and JIM HASLETT of Saints (Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania).

• DETROIT at CINCINNATI (Friday): Renewal of clubs’ longest-running active preseason series. Teams have met for 30 consecutive years – every year since 1970. Bengals lead series, 16-14.

History was made on August 28, 1955 in an NFL preseason game between the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants in Portland, Oregon.

The promoter of the game asked for and was granted permission by the NFL to play sudden-death overtime should the contest end in a tie. As luck would have it, the two teams played to a 17-17 tie at the end of regulation. And so, three years before the first official sudden-death overtime game in NFL history – the 1958 NFL Championship Game, known as the "Greatest Game Ever Played" – the league played its first sudden-death overtime. The Rams’ TANK YOUNGER scored on a two-yard plunge 3:28 into overtime to give Los Angeles the victory.

Overtime wasn’t the only experiment of the day. The yard lines were marked from "zero" to "100" instead of the traditional goal line to 50, then back to the goal line. The idea never caught on.