MIAMI – The Jets will be well-represented in the Falcons’ offense in Super Bowl XXXIII Sunday.
Two of their former receivers, now the Falcons’ high-powered tandem of Terance Mathis and Tony Martin, figure to be a major factor in the outcome of the game.
Combined, they caught 130 passes for 2,317 yards and produced 17 TDs this season, averaging 17.9 yards per catch.
“We talk about it all the time,” Mathis said yesterday of he and Martin and their common bond as former Jets. “Tony came in the year before me and, like me, he wore No. 81. We both come from different walks of life, but we have a lot of similarities, too.”
Asked what the Jets didn’t see in him, the 5-10 Mathis quickly said, “Size. If you looked at their roster, all of the receivers were 6-3 or 6-4. At that time, they believed in big, physical receivers.”
Mathis, who played with the Jets as a backup receiver from 1990-93 and fled to Atlanta as a free agent, said former Jets’ WR Al Toon encouraged him never to give up.
“Al told me, ‘Don’t get discouraged. Your time will come,'” Mathis recalled. “My time did come and I was prepared for it.”
Martin, whom the Jets drafted in the fifth round in 1989 and tried (against his will) to place on their developmental squad, was with the Jets for such a short period of time he isn’t even listed in their media guide’s all-time roster, because he never played a game.
Home for Martin is Miami, where he is again this week, trying to realize a goal he failed to attain here four years ago when he was a member of the Super Bowl-loser Chargers. “When I was here with San Diego in 1995, we acted like a high school team or even worse,” Martin said. “Some guys were so intoxicated the nights before that they couldn’t get it together in practice the following day.
“I remember NFL security telling us we were the worst team they ever had to police during a Super Bowl week,” Martin went on. “That’s pretty bad when they were talking about 58 teams in Super Bowl history to that point.
“I knew when 20 guys showed up late for that first practice in Miami and that we were playing the San Francisco 49ers that we would be in for a long night.”
Indeed, the Chargers were blown out 49-26 by the 49ers.