Super Bowl XLV has so many interesting things going for it.\u00a0 The Pittsburgh Steelers have won the most Super Bowls; the Green Bay Packers were coached by the guy they named the Lombardi Trophy after.\u00a0 These two teams know what it means to be championship quality, for sure.<\/p>\n
Despite the history, this matchup intrigues me for one simple reason.\u00a0 Ben Roethlisberger is an excellent postseason quarterback (10-2 in the playoffs) and Aaron Rodgers has already put up two seasons that match or surpass anything that Brett Favre (remember him?) ever did.<\/p>\n
These are really two pretty good offenses.\u00a0 The Steelers are a team that can open things up in the passing game.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t a \u201cthree-yards and a cloud of dust\u201d team anymore.\u00a0 They can make big plays.<\/p>\n
The Packers can, too.\u00a0 Rodgers can make things happen.\u00a0 He put up an 8.4 yards per attempt (side note: that\u2019s the best stat to use for QBs) and threw 28 touchdowns this year.\u00a0 That YPA ranked 2nd in the NFL; Ben was 3rd, by the way.<\/p>\n
The big difference between the two is, Ben has already proven he can win big games.\u00a0 And, despite their quarterback and his talents, the Steelers have serious issues to contend with, mostly in the form of injuries.\u00a0 Troy Polamalu, Aaron Smith, Maurkice Pouncey and others are hurt.\u00a0 Pouncey, the Steelers rookie center, is a big loss because the Steelers offensive line is bad as it is.\u00a0 The injuries make it much worse.\u00a0 Plus, the Packers can really bring pressure on the quarterback, especially with Cullen Jenkins and Clay Matthews.<\/p>\n
The Packers themselves are dealing with injuries, but most occurred early in the year.\u00a0 Losing Jermichael Finley and Nick Barnett (among others) was a big loss, but the Packers have adapted and still find themselves one victory away from being fitted for rings.<\/p>\n
As always in the NFL, it comes down to who has the better quarterback.\u00a0 Who will play better?\u00a0 Who can handle the moment?\u00a0 Who can lead that big drive, late in the game, with 100 million people watching around the world, to win a Super Bowl?<\/p>\n
Given that specific situation, only one quarterback in the NFL has my trust, and I\u2019d feel safe putting my dollar on him.<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh Steelers will win Super Bowl XLV, and your Most Valuable Player will be Ben Roethlisberger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Super Bowl XLV has so many interesting things going for it.\u00a0 The Pittsburgh Steelers have won the most Super Bowls; the Green Bay Packers were coached by the guy they named the Lombardi Trophy after.\u00a0 These two teams know what it means to be championship quality, for sure. Despite the history, this matchup intrigues me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1y9","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5962,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5961\/revisions\/5962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}