|
First response: Super Bowl XLIII
Cold, Hard Football Facts for February 1, 2009
Football's first-responders arrive on the scene with some statistical sedatives to help you, the average overweight football fan, bring the pigskin pulse back to a healthy level following Pittsburgh's 27-23 win over Arizona in an instant-classic Super Bowl XLIII.
After all, we saw what you ate tonight, and believe you us: too much excitement is not good for your ol' ticker. Trust us. We're doctors.
Can Big Ben get an Amen?
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger continues to be haunted by doubters who simply don't get his game. We assume those doubts will end after his performance in Super Bowl XLIII.
Big Ben's game is this: he pulls plays out of his ass time and again and wins far more often than not. He's 51-20 in regular-season play and now boasts an 8-2 mark in the playoffs, second only to Tom Brady among active quarterbacks (Arizona's Kurt Warner fell to 8-3 with the loss).
If a player pulls plays out of his ass every now and then as a rookie and wins a lot of games, then maybe it's a little luck. If a player pulls plays out of his ass pretty much every week for five seasons and wins a pair of Super Bowls in the process then he's pretty good.
Big Ben's resume now includes a game-winning touchdown drive in the final two minutes of a Super Bowl ... and he pulled it off following an ordinary average game to that point, and at a time when it appeared that everything was falling apart around him.
On Pittsburgh's next to last drive, he seemed to have pulled another proverbial play from deep within the recesses of his rectum when he connected with Santonio Holmes for a first down while standing under his own goal posts. But center Justin Hartwig was whistled for holding in the end zone. Result: safety for Arizona and a narrow 20-16 lead for Pittsburgh late in the game.
The Cardinals quickly struck for a touchdown on their next possession to take a 23-20 lead with just under 3 minutes on the clock.
The Steelers took over on their own 22, but a holding penalty pushed them back to their own 12 with 2:24 to play. Big Ben hoisted the team on his shoulders, completing 5 of 7 passes for 84 yards, while picking up the other four yards on the drive with his own feet.
The game-winning TD to Holmes was a feathery thing of beauty, over the heads of three defenders and into the outstretched hands of the receiver, who was barely able to tip-tap both feet in bounds with nano-centimeters to spare.
Big Ben also did it behind what might have been the worst offensive line ever to win a Super Bowl. The Steelers ranked a dreadful 28th on our Offensive Hog Index this year, and the weakness showed up like a gushing old wound in the Super Bowl.
In fact, Arizona defensive tackle Darnell Dockett (two sacks) was in Big Ben's face half the day, like a French Chef of football splitting the middle of Pittsburgh's offensive line like Julia Child and her trusty cleaver splitting chicken breasts.
But Big Ben bounced around the pocket all night, repeatedly freeing himself from the clutches of defenders and finding ways to unload the ball either harmlessly into the ground or into the hands of his receivers.
We said it long ago and it was obvious tonight: Big Ben is an elite NFL quarterback. Start measuring his goofy 26-year-old face and oversized cranium for a bronze bust.
What's a defender gotta do to win an MVP?
Pittsburgh's Santonio Holmes won Super Bowl MVP honors after a day in which he caught 9 passes for 131 yard and a game-winning TD with 35 seconds to play.
But there's no doubt that the single biggest play of Super Bowl XLIII was made by Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison on the final play of the first half. He duped Kurt Warner into an errant passes and then rumbled and stumbled up the right sideline and huffed and puffed and blew his way into the end zone for a 100-yard TD that stands as the longest play in Super Bow history.
Without Harrison's play, the Cardinals probably would have taken a 14-10 lead into the half. Instead, they waddled into the locker room on the short end of a devastating 17-7 score and with all the momentum in Pittsburgh's favor.
Harrison was credited with just 4 total tackles and 0 sacks, but he forced Arizona LT Mike Gandy into three holding penalties each of which put the Cardinals offense into situations it found virtually unable to overcome.
The 2008 Defensive Player of the Year showed Sunday why he earned that regular-season honor and was the greatest force in black & gold. He earned Super Bowl MVP honors in our book.
The impact of INTs returned for TDs
Fans of the Cold, Hard Football Facts are perfectly familiar with the CHFF "Interception Ladder" which tells that us that each INT a team tosses reduces its chances of winning by about 20 percent.
Interceptions returned for touchdowns, as you might imagine, are particularly devestating. Coach T.J. Troup has all the data. Teams that return an INT for a TD:
- Win 78.5 percent of the time in the regular season.
- Win 80 percent of the time in the postseason.
- Win 100 percent of the time in the Super Bowl.
Super Bowls are fun again
For those of us weaned on the spoiled mother's milk of Super Bowls in the 1980s – when each game was a bigger blowout and a bigger disappointment than the next – it's nice to see that the game can be reliably counted on to deliver some thrills.
The 10 Super Bowls played in the first decade of the 21st century consistently featured more last-second thrillers than any period in Super Bowl history. In fact, there seemed to be two variables you needed for a great Super Bowl: it needed to include either the Patriots or Kurt Warner:
- Super Bowl XXXIV (St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16) was in doubt until Tennessee's last play fell inches short of a touchdown.
- Super Bowl XXXVI (New England 20, St. Louis 17) was decided on a walk-off field goal.
- Super Bowl XXXVIII (New England 32, Carolina 29) featured a fourth-quarter shoot-out for the ages and another last-second field goal.
- Super Bowl XXXIX (New England 24, Philly 21) was in doubt until the last drive.
- Super Bowl XLII (N.Y. Giants 17, New England 14) featured the most miraculous last-minute drive in Super Bowl history.
Super Bowl XLIII had as many thrills as any of them, with three touchdowns and a safety in the fourth quarter alone and – for the second year in a row – a game-winning TD toss in the final minute of play.
That's some good hooch. We hope the Super Bowls of the next decade are just as exciting.
The natural order of the universe has been restored
The Cardinals threatened to do so much damage to the historical integrity of the game – 9-7 teams that surrender 426 points aren't even supposed to make the playoffs, let alone win Super Bowls. In fact, none have.
But at the end of the day, it was the team with the tried-and-true formula of Super Bowl success that won the game: the team with the opportunistic offense and the top-ranked defense.
The Gridiron Gods can rest a little easy knowing that defense still wins championships – but also concerned that the disastrous NFL playoff system is one of these days going to crown a 9-7 team champ.
Kurt Warner: Big numbers, big mistakes
If we had emotions, we'd give Kurt Warner a hug for his performance.
Staring into the barrel of one of the best defenses in recent history, he lit it up for 377 passing yards and a 112.3 passer rating. Warner has now appeared in three Super Bowls and owns the top three passing yardage days in Super Bowl history:
- He passed for 414 yards with the Rams in their win over the Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV
- He passed for 377 yards with the Cardinals Sunday night against the Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII
- He passed for 365 yards with the Rams in their loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI
It's an incredible streak of passing productivity.
Critical mistakes proved his undoing, however, in the two Super Bowl losses. In fact, he threw INTs that were returned for touchdowns in both games – a pick-and-score by New England's Ty Law in Super Bowl XXXVI and Sunday night's epic pick-and-rumble-100-yards-for-a-score by James Harrison in one of the single most injurious plays in Super Bowl history.
Both TD returns proved the difference in games that Warner's teams lost by three points and four points, respectively.
The Defensive Hog Index update
CHFF's measure of the prowess of each front seven ends its first two years in existence with a 20-2 mark picking playoff winners.
The No. 1 team in the indicator each of the past two years – the Giants and Steelers – have gone on to win each of the past two Super Bowls.
|
