To celebrate 50, NFL Media's Elliot Harrison is looking back at each of the 19 rematches on the regular-season schedule in 2015, revisiting the clashes of the past as former Super Sunday opponents square off once again.This Sunday's rematch:* *Reunites the combatants from:* ( 20, 19).*In 49 years of the , only one man has obtained the MVP trophy in a losing cause. There should be two.If ever there was a player who deserved the honor, even though his team was on the wrong side of right, it was Thurman Thomas in .Winning the Most Valuable Player award doesn't replace the grandeur of winning the biggest game in American sports. Just ask Chuck Howley, the "one man" I referred to above. Howley , despite the fact that his fell just short of the , 16-13. earlier this year and asked how he reacted to winning the award ... after losing the game."I was quite, I gue s, dumbfounded that I had Kenny Wooten Jersey won," "It was just something that was hard to accept, winning and losing the ballgame. I would much rather have won the game and played as well."Twenty years after the linebacker took home the hardware, Thomas darn near pulled a Howley himself. No, scratch that: Thomas was robbed of pulling a Howley.The won , on the strength of ball-control offense and But the most valuable player on the field that day was a member of the .Thomas was the queen on the che sboard -- the piece no one wants to face, one can ill-afford to lose, and in this case, the piece that cleaned out pawns Jared Harper Jersey the entire doggone game. See: 15 rushes for 135 yards and a touchdown; five catches for 55 yards. Domination.In fairne s, Bill Parcells and his Big Blue staff were more than willing to let Thomas beat them, employing a second-half strategy aimed at beating up on Buffalo's receivers and making the ground attack win the game. It's obvious now, though, that they underestimated the third-year running back out of Oklahoma State.So did the rest of the league, at least initially.Who could forget the , when ESPN fixated on Thomas as he waited for his name to be called? Teams were apprehensive to pull the trigger on the All-American, thanks in part to a knee injury he sustained during his senior year. Pick by pick went by, with running backs like Gaston Green, Brad Muster and Tony Jeffery coming off the board. All the while, Thomas stared into the camera like a man dividing 35,337 by 634. No le s than seven backs were selected before Thomas got the call from GM Bill Polian and the , who took him in the second round at No. 40 overall.Not a bad pick.By Year 2, Thomas was a Pro Bowler. And in Year 3, the 1990 campaign, Thomas racked up 1,297 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns in the regular season, earning First-Team All-Pro honors. Then came the playoffs.With 354 total yards and three touchdowns in Buffalo's first two postseason games that January, Thomas helped the blow by the and -- and into XXV. Then, Bernard King Jersey on the game's biggest stage, Thomas put on quite a show.The 24-year old simply ran wild on the ' defense. The 1990 defense. We're talkin' Lawrence Taylor, Leonard Marshall, Carl Banks -- coordinated by some guy with Grant Goodeve hair named Bill Belichick. A unit that . That defense.Trailing 12-10 in the second half, Big Blue's brain trust decided to go to a 2-5 defense -- as in five linebackers -- to punish Andre Reed and the rest of the receiver corps. It provided Belichick with flexibility to adequately defend against Buffalo's no-huddle offense. The were, in laymen's terms, picking their poison. Thomas made that pay -- when he got the ball, that is.New York played clock ball, desperately trying to keep the ball away from Jim Kelly and the "K-Gun" offense. The K-Gun system was to beat the in the 1988 AFC Championship Game. Although he was not a disciple of the latest offensive fad himself, Parcells was fully aware of the capabilities of Kelly's hurry-up approach, its ability to both tire and confuse a defense. The solution: play his own version of hurry-up, as in hurry up the game clock and run the heck out of the football.Thus, the held the ball for over nine minutes on the opening stanza of the second half, eventually scoring on an Ottis Anderson touchdown plunge to go up 17-12. After both teams exchanged punts, Thomas responded -- accounting for 40 yards on two plays, including a 31-yard touchdown run on a draw. It was a masterful scamper by No. 34 in white. Taking the handoff from Kelly out of the gun, Thomas broke right, then immediately cut left to his inside, causing Carl Banks to get pinned outside, while opening a hole that a '90 Honda Prelude could power through. Thomas knifed through Gary Reasons' arm tackle, then went head first into Myron Guyton, bouncing off the safety's failed Steve Atwater impersonation and into the clear. Maurice Harkless Jersey The final 20 yards were smooth sailing. And Buffalo was back on top, 19-17.Then New York brought the game to a screeching halt. Again. The mounted a seven-minute drive, succe sfully holding serve and eventually taking a 20-19 lead with a Matt Bahr field goal.Ultimately, the got the ball back with 2:16 left, facing that same one-point deficit. Enough time for one final drive in what was, at that point, arguably the greatest to date. And enough time to put the ball in Thomas' hands.With Belichick flooding Kelly's throwing lanes, playing coverage, Thomas ripped off a 22-yard run after seeing the left side of the field open up. Then, after plowing into territory, Thomas scampered around the right side on another handoff out of the shotgun, looking like he was shot out of a shotgun -- 11 more yards, and suddenly, the were in field-goal range.The man who would lead the NFL in total yards from scrimmage four years in a row had done everything he could do give his team a shot to win, racking up 190 yards from scrimmage on just 20 touches. (That's 9.5 yards of real estate every time his number was called.) In the second half, "The Thurmanator" piled up 81 yards on just seven touches. Giving that man the MVP award just would have been right. Unfortunately, the game-winning field-goal attempt he set up was also right ...... .Did you know?The guy who actually was named MVP of XXV: running back Ottis Anderson, who ran for 102 yards and a touchdown ... at 34 years young. Damyean Dotson Jersey Just a few seasons prior, many people thought his career was done. Anderson rushed for a grand total of 451 yards from 1986 to '88, before Parcells resuscitated his career.Follow Elliot Harrison on Twitter .