Two minutes left in the first half of Super Bowl XXII. Up in his press box perch, Redskins offensive coordinator Dan Henning calls head coach Joe Gibbs one last time before peeling off his headset and heading down to the locker room. "We're looking good," Henning says. "Just shut 'er down and put it on the ground a few times." But in the time it takes Henning to get downstairs, the Redskins march 71 yards to Denver's 8-yard line as if conducting a walk-through. Then, with 1:04 left on the clock, tight end Clint Didier collects a touchdown pass from eventual MVP Doug Williams to cap the most stunning quarter of play in Super Bowl history.

	Williams executed the game plan all the way to the MVP.

The Redskins scored a record 5 TDs, using just 18 plays and 5:47, on their way to a 42-10 destruction of Denver. "That second quarter was what everyone is looking for in this game," says Henning, now the offensive coordinator in Carolina. "Total control."

The biggest single-day sporting event in the world, boiled to its essence, comes down to exactly that: a battle for total control. That's why Tampa Bay's larger-than-life defensive tackle Warren Sapp refers to it as "world domination." Control the ball. Control the clock. Control your emotions. Control the line of scrimmage. Control the red zone.

Control the Super Bowl.

"It's the coach's job to control things," says Brian Billick, whose Ravens controlled Super Bowl XXXV from the opening kickoff. "You're obsessive about it, especially with the Super Bowl."

The best path to control? If you believe the past is prologue, consider: 69% of the teams that scored first won their Super Bowl; 80% of halftime leaders went on to lift the Lombardi Trophy. Your goal is to set the tone by dictating play early, before unknown elements like injuries, momentum and Lady Luck take over.

Nothing embodies the concept of control more than the practice of scripting plays. Perfected by Bill Walsh, whose 1981 and 1984 Super Bowl-champion 49ers outscored their opponents 48-16 in first halves, scripting is now commonplace. Walsh considers scripts a safety net against a game's emotional cacophony; Henning thinks they're more "like something you give your kids at night to go to bed with and feel safe."

Since the game's dynamics change with each play, teams rarely run through the script in order. Instead, they jump around to their favorite plays on the list depending on down and distance. Used correctly, however, a script can become a fact-finding mission. Can we push that defensive end around? Did that run get them out of their soft zone? Did that corner bite on the play fake? Will motion move the linebacker?

Most important, the script roots out a preliminary answer to a critical question: Are we better than the other guys? If the answer is yes, then you attack at every opportunity. When the 49ers played the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX, they never bothered to set up the pass with the run. On the third play of the game, Steve Young hit Jerry Rice down the middle of the field for a 44-yard touchdown, the first strike in a 49-26 rout.

	Young shook off the memory of Joe Montana to bring home the ring.

But if you know you can't dominate the game, you attack only when you know you can succeed. You keep it close, hoping for one late lightning strike. When the Giants played the Bills in Super Bowl XXV, Buffalo's no-huddle offense was touted as one of the most explosive ever. But New York controlled the ball for a Super Bowl-record 40:33, then watched breathlessly as Scott Norwood missed wide right with 8 seconds left. Bill Belichick, a Giants assistant then, used the same script last year to disrupt the Rams' Greatest Show on Turf offense. "You ask yourself, 'Where can we attack? Where are they vulnerable?' says Billick. "Then you turn that right around on yourself."

That's how Billick controlled Super Bowl XXXV against the Giants. Because the Ravens had played conservatively all season and let their defense dictate the pace of the game, Billick threw deep several times early. The results: a 38-yard TD pass from Trent Dilfer to Brandon Stokley in the first quarter, and a 44-yard Dilfer-to-Qadry Ismail bomb in the second quarter that set up a field goal and a 10-0 halftime lead.

"You have to do two things in the Super Bowl," says Billick. "The first is to manipulate your team so you can get a good start. The second is to make sure, if the other team starts fast, that your guys don't collapse and say, 'Screw it, they scored first, now we're done.'"

That's when you lose all control.

This article appears in the February 3 issue of ESPN The Magazine.