The Title Tightrope

Aaron Rodgers celebrates with the 2 richest prizes in all of sports- the Vince Lombardi Trophy and the World's Heavyweight Championship.

(Pretty sweet that someone's bringing back Rasheed Wallace's Championship Belt gimmick from 2005. Hopefully Rodgers wears it all of next year.)



I laid off posting yesterday, since every single written word the Monday after the Super Bowl has to incorporate the game somehow. You needed one more person talking about the Black Eyed Peas, the fans who were denied seats in Cowboys Stadium, and which commercial was the best like I need another highlight of DeSean Jackson's punt return.

But now it's time to talk, Neumann style.

I thought the game itself was good, but still probably the least exciting game we've had in the past 4 years. Colts-Saints was a 14 point game, but the Colts were down 7 and driving until the Pick-6 that ended the game. Steelers-Cards in 2008 was decided on the last drive. And in case my post from Thursday wasn't illustrative enough, I personally am a big fan of the 2007 Giants-Patriots Super Bowl. It really speaks to how spoiled we've been that this game was the least memorable of the last few.

It was a weird game in that Pittsburgh's undoing was turnovers and sloppy penalties- hardly their hallmark, while Green Bay was able to basically ice the game with a clock-consuming field goal drive at the end. This coming from a team with basically no running game, who's normal modus operandi is the quick strike, big play.

Pittsburgh managed to come back from down 21-3 incredibly quick. Couple of touchdowns sandwiching Halftime, and you've got yourself a 21-17 game. Green Bay, to their credit, didn't get conservative, but kept playing their game, trying to put points on the board via the air. I truly believed the Green Bay, down to their 45th Running Back, was at the greatest disadvantage in a game where they were trying to protect a slim lead. But they proved that wrong by not letting the situation alter their gameplan. They kept the ball in Rodgers' hands, told him to go out and win it. Receivers dropping balls? He played over it. The fact that his own defense was losing guys at an alarming pace, including defensive leader Charles Woodson to a broken collarbone? Nothing more than a speed bump. 

Charles Woodson didn't play in the 2nd half, but his teammates delivered him his 1st Title anyway. Woodson, who won the Heisman in 1998, played in Super Bowl 37 with the Raiders, who were smoked by the Tampa Bay Bucs.







This was a Super Bowl without any kind of super transcendent narrative, which most of the time is better. If you want to say this is about Rodgers pulling the Favre monkey off his back, or 2 storied franchises locking horns for the 1st time in a Championship game, then fire away. I love the history of football, but by game time, I was tired of seeing pictures of Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll and Art Rooney. The real story of this Super Bowl to me was in the journey of the World Champion Packers, and how small the margins of a title really are in the NFL.

Because make no mistake, the Green Bay Packers were the best team in the NFC this season. They were the 6 seed because of 12 players in Injured Reserve, losing Rodgers to a head injury in mid-December, a few insanely tight losses to Chicago and Atlanta, and the NFC West stinking so much that it inflated the records of the NFC South teams they played. Flip the results of 2 games, and Green Bay is the #1 seed in the NFC, where they probably would have been had they stayed healthy.

BUT, they were also lucky to even be in the playoffs. Not only did they need to win their last 2 regular season games to get in, but there were also a ton of games earlier in the year, games that seemingly had nothing to do with them, that could have made them dead on arrival come mid-December, and we'd be talking about how disappointing they were this year. Consider this: 4 teams in the NFC had a 10-6 record this year. 2 of them didn't even make the playoffs. 1 was the World Champion.

Take the Giants epic collapse against the Eagles in Week 15. Had the Giants won that game, they'd have been 10-4, with Philly at 9-5. Even if you grant the Packers hammering New York the next week, odds are Philly would have gone out in their last 2 games against Minnesota and Dallas (both at home). If Philly wins those games, goes 11-5 and is the Wild Card, the Packers, with the same 10-6 record against the same exact teams, would have been going home in January instead of going to Disneyworld in February.

Or take Tampa Bay's overtime loss to Detroit in Week 15 and flip it. Tampa is 11-5, and they're in the playoffs, not Green Bay. Obviously all of this is conjecture because changing one outcome could change the outcome of every other game. But it's a fascinating look at the fragile nature of winning a Championship in the current NFL. A team can go 10-6 one year, get the breaks, make their own luck, and be World Champs. That same team the next year could actually be better, but go 7-9 because they play the wrong teams at the wrong time, lose a Coin Toss or two in overtime, and be considered a huge disappointment.

People would rightfully say Green Bay didn't get all the breaks this year, or even their fair share of them. Any team that loses their best players literally from the first drive of the season all the way through the 3rd Quarter of the Super Bowl is not simply lucky. But the point here is that no one can do it in this day and age by simply dominating. The tiebreakers and scenarios start to take shape the first weekend of the year. Games you never even know affect you end up determining whether you miss the playoffs entirely, or make a run to the Super Bowl. You can never win by being lucky and not good, but every year it becomes more obvious that simply making your own luck isn't enough. You never know which team has the strength of victory tiebreaker over you because Cleveland beat Tennessee on the road.