Ten Years After a Music City Miracle

NASHVILLE -- Ten years after one of the most remarkable plays in the history of the NFL, 2000's Music City Miracle, the three Titans who touched the football on that kickoff -- fullback Lorenzo Neal, tight end Frank Wycheck, and wide receiver Kevin Dyson -- are together again in Nashville, Tennessee. Sitting on a stage in front of throngs of Titans fans, they talk about the play that made them famous, that propelled the Titans to the Super Bowl, and that firmly cemented the NFL into Nashville's sports DNA.

Cover your eyes if you're a Buffalo Bills fan, or turn away. It's time for a deconstruction of the most famous play in the NFL's 21st century.

With 16 seconds left in the wild-card playoff game and the Tennessee Titans trailed the Buffalo Bills, 16-15. The Bills kicked off after kicking a field goal that gave them the lead.

Titans tight end Frank Wycheck stood waiting on the field. "I just remember it was Matrix-like, I can't explain it today but while the ball was in the air everything seemed like it was moving so slow."

Moments before the kickoff Titans fullback Lorenzo Neal had leaned into Wycheck, "If I get this bleeping ball, I'm not throwing it," Neal said. "You come get it!" Asked later why he didn't want to throw the football, Neal replied, "Let's just say I knew my limitations. You don't put the Shetland Pony in the Kentucky Derby."

Wycheck was more succinct when it came to why Neal was so insistent he take the football, "Lorenzo could not throw."

Wycheck, now a sports radio show host in Nashville, pauses for impact. ... "At all."

As the ball tumbled through the air, Neal cursed in the winter air.

"I saw it was coming to me," he said, "and all I could think was, 'Suck in your gut, and don't fumble.' See, I didn't want the football to hit me in the gut when I tried to catch it. That's what I was thinking, just don't let it hit my stomach."

Wycheck was nervous. "Lorenzo was always known for having the worst hands on the team, I mean he had spoons for hands."

Neal snagged the ball from out of the air. His gut didn't get in the way. "I took two steps and I just knew he (Wycheck) was going to be there."



Wycheck took the football from Neal and turned.

Only, here's where things got even more miraculous, the player who was always there when the team executed the practice play, Homerun Throwback, wasn't there.

Derrick Mason was injured.

So Kevin Dyson, then a rookie receiver, was on the field.

He didn't know it yet, but he was about to attempt the only kick return of his NFL career.

"They grabbed me on the sideline and they were explaining the play to me as I ran on the field. I was supposed to be the pitch man behind Isaac Byrd. I was the first lateral guy," Dyson said. "Byrd was supposed to get the football first."

But when the Bills blooped the kick, Isaac Byrd ran too far forward.

Dyson stayed behind.


I was in the crowd that day, the north end zone, a 20-year-old college student sitting alongside my dad, a 54-year-old state of Tennessee employee who was still amazed that his hometown, Nashville, had an actual NFL team playing inside an actual NFL stadium.

Ten years after the fact, Nashville is a rabid NFL town. But then, after the team had played in Vanderbilt's mostly empty stadium, there was an uncertainty about whether the team would work in a college football crazy environment.



Share On the opening day of that season, the first in a brand new stadium, just after Steve McNair had lead the Titans back to victory, my dad had called me. "Anyone who says that this football team isn't going to be great for this city is an idiot," he said. "It's the best thing I can ever remember happening to Nashville."

As Steve Christie made his field goal to put the Buffalo Bills up by a point, I remember looking over at my dad and seeing how sad he looked.

My dad was a bigger Titans fan than I was since I was away in college and couldn't see every game.

I remember looking at my dad for the first time and feeling like an adult. For the first time in my life as a sports fan, I wanted the team I was watching to win not for me, but for him.

Just before the Bills kicked off I remember saying a silent prayer that the Titans would win for my dad.


Wycheck said the play, designed by Titans special teams coach Alan Lowry, wasn't new.

"He told us it had been used against him when he was at SMU. Texas ran it in the 1980s. We always practiced it, but no one thought it would work."

Wycheck said he always lateraled the ball back across the field in the play. Asked how the team knew he had a good arm, Wycheck replied, "They just knew, we'd always play throwing games during training camp, stuff like that. I was a catcher in baseball."

Lorenzo Neal had a different opinion, "Frank thought he had a golden arm," he said. "If he could find a reason to throw a football, he found it."

And now Wycheck had his chance to throw the football.

The throwback shouldn't have been a surprise to the Buffalo Bills. Wycheck wasn't ordinarily in on special teams, he replaced defensive tackle Bruce Thornton on the play. And Wycheck's presence was noted by Bills special teams coach Bruce DeHaven. The next season the Titans added former Buffalo Bill special teamer Daryl Porter. "He told me," says Wycheck, "that Bruce (DeHaven) told the guys about throwbacks and to watch out for tricks."

Despite their coach's instruction, the Bills weren't watching out for tricks.

"I understood I had to whip it (the football) backwards," Wycheck said. "I threw it across my body, three steps and winged it. I thought I was throwing it to Isaac Byrd. I just trusted that someone was going to be there."



Instead, Kevin Dyson was there waiting for the throwback pass.

"Right before he threw it, I thought I hopped back far enough so there was no question," Dyson said.

Snagging the knee-high ball, Dyson was amazed to see open field in front of him. Now a high school teacher and head football coach at Independence High School in suburban Nashville, parents sometimes walk up to Dyson and the mythology of the play has rendered him larger than life. "Some people don't think I'm me," Dyson said, "They think I'm bigger than I am, that I can't be the guy who scored on the Music City Miracle."

On that day, the 6-foot-1, 208-pound Dyson was big enough to turn upfield and begin his return, the only of his NFL career.

"At first I was thinking about getting out of bounds, but then I saw Christie go down, and I thought, I'm going to score."


As Dyson sprinted in our direction, the north end zone stands, eerily silent moments before, came alive. What had once been a stultifying silence became a roar, the onrushing sound of victory spreading from section to section, a wave of unadulterated glee.

The players heard the growing sound before they could see the result.

"I made my block and I just heard the crowd starting to roar," Neal said.

Behind the play, Wycheck was jogging and watching. When Dyson crossed the goal line, Wycheck said, "It was pure mayhem." Wycheck, who would play over 10 seasons in the NFL, would later say, "I have never heard a stadium louder than at that moment."

Now, a kick in the gut, an instant replay review of the play to see whether it was a lateral or forward pass.

On the field a member of the Bills walked up to Wycheck. "Nice try," he said, "but that thing was so far forward."

For his part, an out of breath Dyson, still celebrating on the sideline, had no doubt the play would stand. "I thought there was no question, that I had hopped back far enough. I knew it was good," he said.

It wasn't until he got home later that night and turned on his television that Dyson finally saw the replay. "Wow," he thought, "that was pretty close."

In the stands, without any replay to review, we all stood in silence as the referee went under the hood to review the play.

Having had time to digest the miraculousness of the play, I couldn't fathom how what I had just seen could possibly be legal.

I turned to my dad, "There's no way that was a lateral," I said, "he was just too open."

After what seemed like an eternity, the official returned to the field with his ruling.

It was a lateral.

Pandemonium reigned.

I climbed onto my seat and high-fived everyone in the vicinity. My dad grabbed me in a large hug. "Twenty years from now," he said, "a million people will claim they were here."

In the celebratory moments after the ruling, Titans coach Jeff Fisher was so overwhelmed that he made the mistake of kicking a meaningless extra point to go up six points, 22-16, instead of going for two to get a full touchdown lead.


Ten years later the trio that made the Music City Miracle happen can reflect on the significance of the play. "The play solidified the Titans in Nashville and bonded the team to the city. After that, there was no question, this was an NFL town," said Wycheck. For his part, Neal feels like the other eight players on the field deserve credit as well. And he looks to history for his strained analogy. "It was kind of like Paul Revere," says Neal, "Those (players) were the horses. The colonists would never have known the British were coming without the horses."

After a long pause. Lorenzo Neal, now living in San Diego ten years after the play that will be shown as long as they play football in America, said of the play.

"Every time I think about it, I still get chills."