Who do you have winning Super Bowl XLV? Steelers or Packers?
Pittsburgh, of course.
Aaron Rodgers may be the top-rated quarterback in the NFL this season, but Ben Roethlisberger excels at winning playoff games.
Can both lose?
Predicting the outcone of a superbowl is a fool’s errand. I’ll pick the pack to be contrary, and also because the party I’m going to is at a hardcore Packer fan’s house.
Gotta go with Them Packers;)
My heart says steelers, but I don’t think our decrepit DB’s can stop rodgers.
The Packers. Possibly in a blowout.
Pittsburgh is better than most people realize. They were the second best team this year behind New England, and there was a really big dropoff after the top two. This year’s Packers are about as “public” a team as there can be, and there’s probably a decent amount of equity to be had in betting on Pittsburgh as the underdog (at the moment +2.5, or +125 on the money line).
All that said, my gut is telling me Green Bay. I’ve watched them over the last month or so, and it makes me think that, at least for this moment, Aaron Rodgers = Steve Young. Should be a great game.
I pick C.
I’ll go with the Packers. Steelers have the “brute force” card while the Packers have the “speed/mobility” card. Playing indoors with perfect field conditions the “speed/mobility” card wins. Packers looked stellar when playing the Falcons indoors and shakey on Chicago’s crap field.
If the Superbowl were being played in Chicago in two weeks I’d give the nod to the Steelers.
Jerry Jones spent hundreds of millions of dollars secretly building in all sorts of subtle defenses into the new stadium. You wouldn’t know it, but each square foot of the playing field has a hydraulic actuator under it and can be raised and lowered up to half an inch on command from a console in his box. Powerful electromagnets can be activated to attract the spikes in a player’s cleats and cause a stumble. The field goal posts have the most insidious modifications though. Based on the technology of the Dyson Air Multiplier the goalposts are capable of generating a ten mile per hour airflow in either direction. This isn’t just aimed at the paying field though. There are subtle interference generators, both visual and auditory, built into the lights and sound systems. Directed blasts of focused sonic energy, like the ones deployed by the military are capable of “caus[ing] severe pain or disorientation” which is “usually sufficient to incapacitate a person.” Since all eyes will be on this game, I expect he’ll use the lower settings which “can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.” Radio Frequency noise generators will disrupt communication between head coach and the offensive and defensive coordinators and tens of thousands of offshore programmers were hired to secretly develop voice recognition programs which can automatically detect the key phrases in the sideline communications and both distort in a believable way, AND PLANT FALSE CALLS! In addition there are sophisticated target acquisition systems for a large number of directed laser weapons based on the Dazzler technology. These are not intended to cause permanent blindness, just to reproduce the “stadium lights were in my eyes” effect on demand and from any angle to the field, sidelines, and coaches boxes.
Expect to see lot of stumbles, kicks and punts end up short or wide, and lots of mayhem in general. The goal is to humiliate both teams. This should shake the confidence of both the players and the coaching staff. Given the advantages the new stadium will confer on all Cowboys home games next year and the devastating morale blow, from playing the ugliest superbowl in history. inflicted on this year’s two best teams, the Cowboys should make it easily to next year’s big show with a godlike aura around them for being sure footed and gazelle-like in comparison to all of their opponents.
Jone’s plans for his next stadium include seating for fifteen million, bathrooms for 1.5 million, and enough columns and random architectural elements to partially obscure the field for 13.8 million. There are rumors the secret version of the plans include anti-gravity and force field technology, in addition to “sexual-orientation distorting” colors in the visiting teams locker room.
Enjoy,
Steven
The biggest matchup discrepancy is the Packers Wide Receivers versus the Steelers secondary.
Packers win.
I see Jerry is going to be selling There’s A Sucker Born Every Minute tickets at $200 a pop.
I don’t know who the bigger douche bag is… Jimmy for actually selling them, or the idiots buying them.
They can come to my house for $150, and I’ll provide the suckers a tv view so they can watch the game, soft toilet paper and some refreshments.
Amazingly, the Packers are 2 1/2 point favorites. Let me check the stats…
Point differential virtually identical, as is the point/opp ratio.
Steelers rank 14th and 2nd in offensive and defensive yards, Packers 9th and 5th.
Steelers have a +23 turnover differential, Packers +12
Yards/pass on offensive and defense about identical (6.9/5.3 Pitt., 7.1/5.4 GB), but yards/run is a huge advantage for the Steelers (4.1/3.0 vs. 3.8/4.7). I consider yards/pass to be more important however.
I thus parse the above as showing that the offenses are pretty even, but Pittsburgh’s D as significantly better. So GB being favored (as a wild card team to boot) is a bit puzzling. Maybe it’s a strength of schedule thing?
The secondary which was 2nd in the league in yards/pass against as well as yards/completion? Which is anchored by a possible future HoFer in Troy Polamalu? And which was helped by a defensive front which led the league in sacks? That secondary?
Football Outsiders has the Steelers slightly favored (in terms of percentage: 50.6/49.4), and Jeff Sagarin has them as .2 point favorites.
Pittsburgh D is not significantly better. The Packers secondary is better than the Steelers, the Steelers have the better line and the linebackers are probably a wash.
A 2.5 line is pretty close to a pick-em in Vegas anyway.
A 1.7 differential in yards/run against isn’t significant? Nor is turnover differential? The Pack’s pass defense is apparently on par with that of the Steelers, but that seems to be the only area of parity. I do think that pass defense is more important than run defense in the NFL, but 1.7 yards is pretty huge.
Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s not significantly better in that, though Pittsburgh’s was the best defense in the league this year, Green Bay may well have had the 2nd best defense. It is significantly better, however, in that (as is typical) the gap between the best defense and the second best is a lot bigger than the gap between the 9th and 10th best.
Of course, Pitt’s advantage comes exclusively in the running game. Per Football Outsiders – and I see no reason to think this isn’t an accurate representation in this case – Green Bay is #1 and Pitt is #2 in pass defense. When it comes to run defense, however, the Packers are merely average (16th) while the Steelers are far and away the best.