Super finish!

ATLANTA (AP) - A game of yards came down to inches for the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl.

The result was a 23-16 victory Sunday night for Kurt Warner, Dick Vermeil and the Rams that six months ago seemed no more than a dream after a 4-12 season.

Warner's 73-yard touchdown pass to Isaac Bruce with 1 minute, 54 seconds left accounted for the winning score, 16 seconds after Al Del Greco's field goal brought Tennessee back from a 16-0 deficit.

But it took Mike Jones' tackle of Kevin Dyson at the 1-yard line on the game's final play that finally gave St. Louis its win in one of the most thrilling Super Bowl finishes ever.

Dyson was left sprawled on the ground in Jones' arms, stretching the ball toward the goal line in vain. So, a team known for its high-powered offense won its first Super Bowl with the most memorable of defensive plays.

Warner passed for a Super Bowl record 414 yards and was voted MVP, capping a season that began with him fighting for a backup job and ended with him as the NFL's MVP.

"Kurt Warner is Kurt Warner and it's not a fairy tale," Coach Vermeil said. "He is a book. He is a movie."

Added Warner: "You may think of this as a Hollywood Turn to Champs story, but it's just my life."

But he almost had to rewrite the script after the Titans scored on three straight drives to tie the score at 16.

Tennessee's comeback was engineered by Steve McNair and Eddie George. But it was Dyson who almost pulled off his second miracle finish in four weeks, coming up just short of the tying touchdown after taking a look-in pass from McNair at the 5 and scrambling for the end zone.

"I thought we could do it but we came up about 6 inches from having a chance to do it," Titans coach Jeff Fisher said. "As much as this hurts we have an awful lot of pride in coming so close."

Dyson was the man at the end of the "Music City Miracle," the 22-16 win over Buffalo in a wild-card game, taking a lateral from Frank Wycheck and returning it 75 yards for the winning touchdown with three seconds left.

"I thought he was going to get in," McNair said. "But you've got great athletes on both sides of the ball and they made the play. It was a matter of who won the one-on-one battle and they won it." Jones said: "The name of the game is to get the man on the ground. They won the wild-card game with a big play and we knew they'd come roaring back. We just made the big play at the end. You get tired chasing Steve McNair and making plays."

It was the first NFL title for the Rams since 1951 and the first football title ever for St. Louis, which lost the Cardinals after the 1987 season and gained the Rams from Los Angeles in 1995.

It not only capped an improbable season for the team but also for Warner, who played in the Arena League and NFL Europe and was left unprotected in the expansion draft last spring. He got the starting job when free agent Trent Green was hurt and went on to win the NFL MVP and throw 41 touchdown passes, only the second quarterback in NFL history to surpass 40.

It was also a triumph for the 63-year-old Vermeil, who was out of football for 14 years before joining the Rams in 1997. He had lost the Super Bowl in 1981 in Philadelphia.

"You know I'm an emotional guy, but right now I feel so good and so proud of this football team," Vermeil said.