McQuarters’ 2007 NFL playoffs run remains special to this day
R.W. McQuarters goes into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame on Monday night, and we remember much about the dual-sport star at both Tulsa Washington and OSU.
McQuarters was a football and basketball star at Booker T., then was a Cowboy football star who came out for Eddie Sutton’s basketball team after the 1995 football season and contributed in a not-small way.
But we sometimes forget how good McQuarters was when he concentrated on only one sport. And that was at the pro level.
Our series on Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame inductees continues today with McQuarters, who spent 11 seasons as a National Football League defensive back. He played for the 49ers, Bears, Lions and Giants, a tour of some of the NFL’s most venerable franchises.
McQuarters was a heck of a player. He scored seven NFL touchdowns and never played offense.
How? McQuarters returned punts for touchdowns playing for the 1998 49ers, the 2003 Bears and the 2004 Bears. He returned interceptions for touchdowns playing for the 2000 Bears, the 2004 Bears and the 2006 Giants. And McQuarters returned a fumble for a touchdown playing for the 2001 Bears.
But McQuarters’ claim to fame was his performance in the 2007 playoffs, when he intercepted a pass in three straight games, leading to the Super Bowl.
In the Giants’ 24-14 victory over Tampa Bay, McQuarters intercepted a Jeff Garcia deep ball with two minutes left, sealing the game.
In the Giants’ 21-17 upset of Dallas, McQuarters’ end-zone interception of Tony Romo’s fourth-down pass in the final seconds sealed the game, on a play that started at the Cowboy 23-yard line.
In the Giants’ 23-20 upset of Green Bay, McQuarters intercepted a fourthquarter pass from Brett Favre, though McQuarters fumbled the ball back to the Packers.
It was a remarkable streak of big plays for those upstart Giants, who had entered the playoffs with a 10-6 record and not considered a National Conference threat.
In the Super Bowl, the Giants played the unbeaten Patriots, billed as perhaps the greatest team of all time.
No interception for McQuarters, but the Giant defense held Tom Brady’s mighty offense to two touchdowns. Eli Manning directed an 83-yard touchdown drive in the last 21⁄ minutes, and
2 his 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 39 seconds left put New York ahead.
“We talked about it on the sideline,” McQuarters said of the Giant defense. “We don’t want to go back out there.
“That year, you had Tom Brady, Kevin Faulk, Randy Moss. They had a bunch of athletes. Put those guys back on the field, try to stop ‘em, was going to be tough.”
But back out went the Giant defense with 29 seconds left, and Jay Alford’s second-down sack of Brady put New England in a serious hole. Two long Brady passes fell incomplete, and the Giants had a Super Bowl upset for the ages.
In NFL history, only nine players in a single post-season have had more interceptions than McQuarters’ three. The record is five, held by the Oakland Raiders’ Lester Hayes in 1980 and the Houston Oilers’ Vernon Perry in 1979.