Notre Dame Heisman candidates cannot stop coming up with fantastic stories. Tim Brown is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame again, and is making a splash this week by some comments he made on Sirius XM radio about his Super Bowl appearance, which appeared on Pro Football Talk, accusing Bill Callahan of sabotaging the Raiders. (Callahan, by the way, has just been given play-calling duties in Dallas instead of Jason Garrett).

“We get our game plan for victory on Monday, and the game plan says we’re gonna run the ball,” Brown said Saturday on SiriusXM NFL Radio, which provided us with the audio.  “We averaged 340 [pounds] on the offensive line, they averaged 280 [on the defensive line].  We’re all happy with that, everybody is excited.  [We] tell Charlie Garner, ‘Look, you’re not gonna get too many carries, but at the end of the day we’re gonna get a victory.  Tyrone Wheatley, Zack Crockett, let’s get ready to blow this thing up.’”

According to Brown, coach Bill Callahan then “blew this thing up” on the Friday before the Super Bowl, changing the game plan from a run-heavy attack to an intent to “throw the ball 60 times.”

Does anyone else think this sounds ridiculous? Oh, Bill Romanowski, the cool-headed voice of reason does? Good. I’m in solid company then.

Let’s set aside that a coach would intentionally sabotage a game as big as the Super Bowl (which is different of course, than saying a coach just botched the game plan). What is this, Tecmo Bowl, where the game plan consists of either run or pass, and if you guess wrong, the defense smothers you? I can see focusing on matchups, but is a game plan really “we are going to run the ball” and involve practicing only running plays all week?

I’ll point out that it would be kind of ridiculous for Oakland to become a ground and pound team on the eve of the Super Bowl. That was one of the most pass happy teams of its era. Oakland actually threw 20 passes and ran 10 times in the first half of that Super Bowl. They did so equally poorly against the Buccaneers defense, gaining only 1.8 yards per carry while Gannon threw two interceptions and was sacked three times.

How did that compare to the regular season? In the first half of games, Oakland passed the ball 65.9% of the time, and in half of the regular season games, had fewer than 12 rush attempts in the first half. Might they have switched some things up, I don’t know, but I’m sure they didn’t sabotage, or do things differently than they had done all year.

Sounds like Tim Brown is begging for attention this week.

[photo via Oakland Raiders]