Deion Sanders Birthday: VIDEO 3 Finest Cowboys Moments
With a nickname like that, Deion Sanders has no choice but to push "Prime Time" into his 50s.
A man of many hats ... five at the NFL level (including five seasons with the Dallas Cowboys) and five in MLB ... the football world celebrates the 56th birthday of Deion Sanders on Wednesday. Sanders, the multi-sport athlete, fearless trash-talker, omniscient media prescience, and more, is set to embark upon a new journey in just about three weeks as the head coach of Colorado’s football program.
As he battles some heath problems, in recognition of Sanders' latest year around the sun, CowboysSI.com looks back on his three finest moments (of many!) in a starred helmet. Perhaps appropriately, all of them take place in exclusive television windows ... a.k.a. prime time.
1/7/96: Prime Giveth and Taketh Away
Dallas signed Sanders for the Prime purpose of succeeding in the playoffs after heartbreak against his San Francisco 49ers in the prior year's conference championship round. The realized Super Bowl trek began with a 30-11 shellacking of the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Divisional round, one that saw Sanders immediately live up to his postseason potential: his 21-yard rushing tally gave the Cowboys a permanent lead out of a 3-3 second quarter deadlock and he later sealed the deal with an interception of Randall Cunningham that set up a score for his close friend Michael Irvin (coming after a futile attempt to lateral to Robert Bailey).
9/21/98: A Giant Game
All of Hank Williams Jr.'s rowdy friends were here for history on one Monday night, as Sanders' bookending scores were the headliner of a 31-7 victory over the New York Giants: Sanders originally got the Cowboys on the board with a 59-yard punt returned for a touchdown and closed things out by taking a Danny Kannel interception, the last of four Dallas takeaways, to the house from 71 yards away. Sanders' unique box score, with the touchdowns scored via punt and interception, was the first of its kind in an NFL game since 1966. Another Dallas touchdown was set up by a Sanders deep ball, a 55-yard grab from Jason Garrett in double-coverage.
11/25/99: Miami Twice
One would assume that Sanders' other duties would get in the way of attainable greatness such as multi-interception games, but he wound up with seven such postings in his career, the penultimate (and only one in Dallas) coming in Dallas' final Thanksgiving excursion of the century against the Miami Dolphins. Sanders led the way in the five-interception effort against Dan Marino, his first coming in the end zone as South Beach tried to break a scoreless tie. Sanders' other takeaway was likewise a momentum shifter: after Miami recovered a Troy Aikman fumble, Sanders officially stifled the Dolphins' momentum with an interception literally sealed with a kiss, as then-defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer planted one on Sanders' helmet. Dallas would win the game by a 20-0 final.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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