Yep, the Steelers won the Super Bowl, much to the chagrin of many Browns fans (but not this one, not really). It was not a pretty game, and frankly the Seahawks looked like they could have emerged victorious were it not for a few weird calls and a few plays where they didn’t execute. The Steelers, on the other hand, made the big plays whent hey needed them and came out on top.
There’s no reason as a die-hard Browns fans to be too upset about the Steelers winning the big one. The AFC North is better and perhaps the best division in football in 2006 if the Browns hold up their end of the bargain. And that is the best thing for the Browns if they want to win a Super Bowl themselves. Think about the old NFC East -- you think those teams benefited from playing one another during the heyday of that division? Or the NCAA tourney -- there is a reason why even mediocre ACC teams continually make runs in March. Because their level of play is heightened by playing tough teams all the time. Since the Browns already couldn’t beat the Steelers in 2005, I have no problem with the Steelers being the best team in the NFL. Maybe next year (or the year after, etc) the Browns won’t suffer that indignity, but if they can’t be the best team in the AFC North then let the best team in the AFC North be the best in the NFL. Unless it’s the Ravens, who still don’t deserve to win anything for at least another 30 years.
Kudos to Bettis for capping off a great career. He didn’t have a great game, but then again this wasn’t a Super Bowl full of sterling performances. Bettis had a few tough runs but was otherwise swarmed by a surprisingly stout Seahawks defense. I left with the impression that the Seahawks defensive line won the battles in the trenches most of the time.
But Pittsburgh took advantage of three huge plays.
- Roethlisberger completed one long pass all night but it set up the first Steeler TD. On a broken play he hit Hines Ward inside the five just before half-time. Roethlisberger had a bad game, and even this pass was a little ugly as it should have gone for a TD if he hadn’t hung it up. But it was good enough because Ward managed to get wide open. A few plays later Roethlisberger took it into the end zone (yes, he was in).
- Willie Parker had a poor game too -- save for a killer 75-yard td run. Parker had pretty much sucked in recent months and this game didn’t change my mind. But he has speed and he got a chance to show it. And since that was the only big play on the ground all night, it was plenty enough.
- Finally, the gadget play of Randle El to Ward for the TD was a back-breaker. This was the same play the Steelers burned the Browns on, and it worked just as well here. You can’t really blame the Seahawks though -- they needed to play aggressively defensively at this point in the game and just got burnt. I guess it helps to have a couple former-QBs at WR. And it makes me wonder why the Browns can’t seem to occasionally execute this sort of play with Frisman Jackson or Josh Cribbs. Sigh.
All in all I still have to hand it to Hasselbeck. The guy is a good QB. He was basically the entire offense for Seattle and other than one bad pick he had a great game. He basically made 3 TD throws (1 to Stevens, another called back on penalty, another that was dropped) and nearly another one that Stevens took inside the five yard-line before being overturned.
Shaun Alexander, on the other hand, didn’t quite look the part of a game breaking RB but I’m not exactly sure what to make of that. I thought he looked pretty good running the ball in the first half. He wasn’t gaining a ton of yards but was certainly effective and you could tell the Steelers defense respected him. But it seemed like the Seattle gameplan didn’t include him as much as it should have. And frankly that’s pretty shocking for a guy who was the NFL MVP. In this Super Bowl he wasn’t even the best offensive weapon on his own team. It will be interesting to see what will happen with Alexander on the free agent market. If Holmgren wasn’t confident leaning on Alexander in the Super Bowl it’s hard to imagine the Seahawks shelling out mad money for the guy. And if he doesn’t stay in Seattle he could wind up in any of a number of intriguing places.
A word about Roethlisberger’s bad game. I think of all the players in this game he was the most affected by the weird pace of a Super Bowl because Roethlisberger is still the sort of QB who takes advantage of whatever the defense gives him as opposed to being a QB who dictates the way the offense will play. But the difference between Roethlisberger 2004/5 and Roethlisberger 2005/6 was still obvious. At no time did he have that fatigued look he had in last year’s playoffs. And that little flip pass to Randle El was evidence he was playing with the right mix of reckless abandon and conservativness.
Officiating. In a word, bad. There were crappy calls all over, but the two biggest were ticky-tacky holding and offensive interference calls on the Seahawks. Both took points off the board. I can see the offensive interference, but the holding was very bad. Did it cost the game? Maybe. They certainly cost the Seahawks a lot of momentum. And that holding call probably cost them the lead in the second half. But what the Seahawks didn’t do was overcome those penalties. In fact, they did the exact opposite and and melted down after the bad call. In fact, the interception after the holding call is what really killed them as a field goal in that situation would still have tied the game and the Seahawks would have had all the momentum in the world.
More than the officials, however, the Seahawks wide receivers did not take advantage of some golden opportunities. Darrell Jackson could/should have caught two TDs if he had remained in bounds, Stevens flat out dropped another TD pass, and another wide out dropped a tough but definitely catchable ball in the end zone. You have to make some of those plays if you want to win a Super Bowl. I think in the end the Seahawks proved themselves to be quite dangerous but just not quite good enough.
I’m really sick of people saying, "At least this Super Bowl wasn’t a blow out." Cause, you know, it’s been a while since the Super Bowl was a blowout.
Joe Montana can suck it. Missing the Super Bowl MVP thing cause he wan’t getting paid enough is one pathetic thing. But subjecting us to that pathetic FedEx commercial is a felony. How can a winner be such a loser? You know what I think of when I think of Joe Montana? John Candy.
If you now pay actual money for tickets to a Rolling Stones concert, well you just have no excuse now. What a terrible performance! And why the hell do the Stones need an extra guitar player to play "Satisfaction?" You don’t even need five fingers let alone an extra guitarist. Pretty lame. Or was that the replacement bassist? I don’t even care enough to know for sure...
Even lamer was how the broadcast edited out "bad words" in Rolling Stones songs. That fact that those same songs are played thousands of times a day on radio stations all over the country apparently doesn’t matter to the paranoid NFL Halftime Entertainment Committee, or whoever. Personally, I thought a Detroit-themed halftime would have been pretty cool since it would at least make some sense. You could have started with some Motown performers, then have Kiss and Madonna do a duet, then a rap-rock interlude with Kid Rock and Eminem, and finally the White Stripes can come along and show Keith Richards how to play guitar.
The days of big Super Bowl commercials are over. The whole way products and services are marketed has changed too much for the Super Bowl to matter like it used to. I can’t think of even one very good Super Bowl ad this year, let along a great one.