Super Bowl 1988

Following an owner’s meeting that was held between May 23-25, 1984 in Washington, D.C., Super Bowl XXII was awarded to San Diego, making it the first Super Bowl to be played at the Jack Murphy Stadium.

The bidding process had been scheduled to award four Super Bowls, XXI-XXIV. A total of 14 different cities participated: Anaheim, Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pasadena, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, and Tempe. Following the two-hour bidding process, San Diego was awarded XXII, meaning that the Super Bowl would be played in California for two consecutive years.

Super Bowl XXII was played between the AFC’s Denver Broncos and NFC’s Washington Redskins on January 31, 1988, at the Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego to decide which team would be crowned champions of the 1987 football season.

The Redskins emerged victorious, having defeated the Broncos by a massive 42-10, overcoming a 10-point deficit in the process.

Notable for:

• The Redskin’s Doug Williams was the first ever African American to play on a winning Super Bowl team.

The Broncos started the game extremely promisingly, notching up a 10-0 lead following John Elway’s 56-yard touchdown and Rich Karlis’ 24-yard field goal. However, that was the last time the Broncos were to score any points at all in the game and the remaining time was dominated by the Washington Redskins.

Early in the second quarter, the Redskins started to make some inroads on the Broncos’ lead when Ricky Sanders caught a pass from Williams to score an 80-yard touchdown. Shortly after, Gary Clark produced an impressive diving catch in the end zone to score Washington’s second touchdown and take the Redskins into a 14-10 lead. The next player to score was Timmy Smith, a rookie, who produced a 58-yard touchdown run to take the score to 21-10.

Denver never received and the Redskins continued their onslaught, scoring a further time in the second half to end the game 31 points ahead at 42-10.

Doug Williams, who completed 18 of 29 passes for 340 yards, was nominated the MVP and his pass yardage also set a new Super Bowl record, breaking Joe Montana’s previous record of 331 yards.