– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW ORLEANS — Twenty years ago, Todd Pinkston was on the doorstep of earning a Super Bowl ring while wearing the midnight green of the Philadelphia Eagles, his cleats sometimes standing alongside fellow wide receiver Terrell Owens, whose expeditious return from a horrific leg injury less than two months prior the dominating storyline of Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville.
That ring never made it to Pinkston’s finger, and coincidentally enough, he suffered his own leg injury suffered during the biggest game of his career.
Good things happen to those who wait, and adjust, and Pinkston, the second-year running backs coach for the Kansas City Chiefs, earned his first Lombardi Trophy last season in a coaching capacity and now has the opportunity to double his haul … and at the expense of the team he came so close to achieving that dream initially.
Pinkston’s past will face-to-face with his present on Sunday afternoon when the Chiefs take on the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX inside the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday evening. Pinkston, who played all five of his NFL seasons under Andy Reid in Philadelphia and played in four NFC Championship game along with that Super Bowl appearance, won’t allow any conflicting thoughts to enter his mind when he jogs out onto the Superdome field opposite the franchise that gave him his first National Football League opportunity.
“I think it’s just a blessing getting the opportunity after you played for that organization and now you get a chance to coach against them in the big stage,” Pinkston said to A Lot of Sports Talk during media availability on Thursday. ”But at the end of the day, [we’re] on different organizations.”
Before the Eagles won their first Super Bowl seven years ago, their most previous appearance before that was the game in which Terrell Owens wowed everyone by hauling in nine catches for 122 yards on a still-yet-fully-healed broken leg. But it was Pinkston who was Donovan McNabb’s main target in the first half, and the former responded with 82 yards on four catches, including receptions of 17 and 40 yards that led to the first touchdown scored in the game.
Pinkston, however, would leave the game due to cramps, leading to Owens being more of the focal point. (76 of Owens’ 122 yards came after Pinkston’s injury.) Not only did the Eagles come up short against the New England Patriots, that game would prove to be the last game of Pinkston’s career; in the following offseason, he ruptured his Achilles tendon in offseason training, and without a guarantee of a spot on the team after completing rehab, sport management major while at the University of Southern Mississippi, immediately went into coaching.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Thursday morning’s media availability, with photos taken by ALOST staff photographer Aaron J. Thornton. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page, Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 12 pictures in total.
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