Miami Super Bowls have a notorious history. So far, players are on their best behavior.
The history of NFL players’ self-destruction during Super Bowl week in Miami looms large. It includes:
▪ A linebacker, known as “Hollywood,” snorting cocaine all week before the game
▪ A running back caught with a crack pipe the night before the game
▪ An NFL “Man of the Year” award winner busted for soliciting a cop posing as a prostitute on Biscayne Boulevard.
So it is little surprise that in advance of Super Bowl 54, teams have enacted curfews to help them avoid the Magic City’s temptations.
“There’s a curfew, just so that we can keep track of everybody,” Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid told reporters last week. “It’s not one to where we don’t trust the guys — it’s late. I trust that they’re going to handle themselves the right way. There’s the normal curfew before the night of the game, but the other one is a little bit later, just so that everyone is accounted for and ready to go for the following day.”
Teams are keeping a lid on players’ whereabouts. A Chiefs representative declined to comment further or say what time the curfew is. A San Francisco 49ers spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The teams have been conducting practices throughout the week: the Chiefs at the Dolphins’ practice facility in Davie, the 49ers at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Both teams have one more practice Friday, before a final walk-through on Saturday.
The teams have also made players and coaches available to credentialed media at their respective hotels; the Chiefs at the J.W. Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa in Aventura, the 49ers at the J.W. Marriott Marquis in downtown Miami.
Still, players, who arrived in Miami Sunday, are hitting the town. On Tuesday, 49ers star wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders and actor Omari Hardwick had dinner at Dave Grutman’s Komodo restaurant in Brickell, according to a Grutman representative. Komodo has also hosted a slew of other current and former NFL players this week, though Sanders remains the only one spotted there who is playing in Sunday’s game.
Earlier this week, the New York Post reported “several” 49ers players were spotted at the Mokai lounge in Miami Beach Monday night.
So far, no incidents of misbehavior have been reported. But there is still plenty of time before the game kicks off — and if history is any indication, it is the hours just prior to the game that can pose the greatest danger.
Back in 1979 — even before the Cocaine Cowboys took over Miami’s streets — flamboyant Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson had a cocaine problem. It got so bad that he ingested cocaine on the Orange Bowl sideline during Super Bowl 13 through a Vick’s nasal sprayer, just to fill a craving.
In the week leading up to the game, Henderson also got into a war of words with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, telling reporters that Bradshaw “couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the a and the c.”
Bradshaw would have the last laugh: The Steelers beat the Cowboys 35-31 ; Bradshaw finished 17-30 for 318 yards and four touchdowns. He was named the game’s Most Valuable Player.
Of note: Steelers players were also using cocaine just days before the game, according to a reputed smuggler interviewed in director Billy Corben’s “Cocaine Cowboys” documentary.
After his playing career ended, Henderson turned his life around, got sober and began helping others through a drug counseling program he created.
Nearly a decade later, another player on a Super Bowl roster succumbed to cocaine use in the Miami area before the game. Cincinnati Bengals running back Stanley Wilson had struggled with sobriety from the moment he strapped on a helmet. The night before Super Bowl 23, Wilson relapsed. Team personnel found him with “evidence” of drug use — namely, a crack pipe — in the bathroom of his room at the Plantation Holiday Inn; Wilson then fled. He was barred from playing, first in the big game itself, which the Bengals lost to the 49ers; and then for the rest of his career.
And a decade after that, the law caught up with yet another player. On the eve of Super Bowl 33, Atlanta Falcons safety Eugene Robinson was named the NFL’s Athletes In Action/Bart Starr Man of the Year for outstanding character on and off the field. Hours later, he was arrested by an undercover cop posing as a prostitute; Robinson had offered $40 for sex. He was allowed to play Sunday, but the Falcons fell to the Denver Broncos 34-19.
According to a contemporary New York Times story, Robinson wasn’t the only Falcon who’d been hanging out on Biscayne Boulevard.
‘’Guys had been going there all week,’‘ a Falcon starter told the Times. ‘‘It’s just that Eugene was the only one who got caught.’‘
On Tuesday, USA Today reported that since 2000, no city has seen more players arrested or cited than the Miami metro area, regular season and Super Bowl included. The newspaper said 60 active players have been arrested during that period, most of them black, raising the question of whether racial profiling was involved.
To be sure, many players have residences, or even grew up in, South Florida. And some of these players concede there are other factors, too.
“Guys come down here and they lose their minds,” Antrel Rolle, a former NFL player and University of Miami All-American, told USA Today. “The women. The free access you have wherever you want to go. They don’t know how to have just one, two, three drinks. They have six, seven, eight and they find themselves belligerent.”
Miami Herald writer Bailey LeFever contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 6:15 AM.
