One Win To Go
The Qwest Field scoreboard clock hadn't read all zeroes for even twenty minutes before the Las Vegas oddsmakers had installed the Pittsburgh Steelers as three-point favorites over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. The next day the betting money started to flow - towards Pittsburgh. As it's continued to do ever since. The Steelers enter tomorrow's game as four-point picks to win the franchise's record fifth World championship.
Naturally just about all the talking heads are taking Pittsburgh. But, unlike the runup to the NFC Championship game, where the handicappers, whose business is to be right about such things, went with the 'hawks, this time they've all gone the other way as well.
The question is, "Why?"
Not that it surprises me - far from it. I've spent my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, and anti-Seattle bias from the national sports press is nothing new. The Sonics and Mariners have gotten the same flack when they were on their respective runs. And in a sense you can even understand a little of why, if not agree with it; after all, it's not as if any of Seattle's major league pro sports franchises reside in the "storied" category. They've all had their moments from time to time, but for the most part the Emerald City has spent the past forty years mired in athletic mediocrity. Sports media outside Ecotopia just aren't used to thinking of Seattle...well, at all, really. And since the town's lone World title (the 1979 Sonics - unless you want to count the 1918 NHL Totems or consider the 2003 WNBA Storm to be a major league pro franchise) came twenty-seven years ago, and (until now) neither the Seahawks or Mariners had ever played for a championship, they really haven't had all that much reason to do so.
But...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh?
The Seahawks certainly don't bring much in the way of overall Super Bowl experience to Detroit. Yes, coach Mike Holmgren has been to two and won one, which is huge, and they have a handful of players who've been here before (Grant Wistrom, Robbie Tobeck, Joe Jurevicious...), but that's nowhere close to being the same thing as having gotten there before as a team. In the latter sense, the 'hawks are greenhorns.
But so are the Steelers, really. Coach Bill Cowher's only other appearance was ten years ago, and his team took a beating from the tail end of the most recent Dallas Cowboy dynasty. None of the current Steeler roster was present for that experience.
So...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh?
Can it be the far more storied status of the Steeler franchise? The unprecedented four Super Bowl titles in six years back in the 1970s? Nothing more substantive than national name recognition? That might cover it for the talking heads, but not the handicappers. And the NFL doesn't have a wayback machine or a flux capacitor with which to retrieve the Noll/Bradshaw/Harris/Swann/Steel Curtain version.
So...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh? Or, to express it another way, what are the football reasons for it?
That's not to say that there aren't any, either. Ben Roethlisberger has been tremendous passing the ball in the playoffs. So good that Bill Cowher's traditional smash-mouth style of offense has given way to a pass-first approach, the object being to score first, build a lead, and then sit on it with the power running game and the Dick Lebeau-masterminded "Blitzburgh" defense.
The past two games it's worked like a charm. Neither Indy nor Denver could stop Roethlisberger early, forcing both to play from behind, which meant pretty much abandoning the running game. On the other side of the ball, Lebeau used his exotic blitz packages to demolish Peyton Manning and equally as novel coverage schemes to bamboozle Jake Plummer.
You might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the Steelers' Wild Card win over Cincinnati. There's a reason for that, and that gets us toward the football reasons why Pittsburgh could be headed for an ass-whipping instead.
It can be strongly argued that had Bengal quarterback Carson Palmer not gotten his knee destroyed on Cincy's first possession, the Steelers would have been "one and done." And even after that the Bengals built a ten point first quarter lead and were up a field goal at the half. Backup (and former Seahawk) Jon Kitna just couldn't keep up Palmer's pace in the second half.
Why does this matter? Because Seattle Pro Bowl QB Matt Hasselbeck is a more experienced version of Palmer - maybe not quite as strong an arm, but smart (unlike Plummer) and mobile (unlike Manning).
It took a few years, but Hasselbeck has mastered Mike Holmgren's version of the West Coast offense. Knows it inside and out - so well, in fact, that he's become devastatingly adept at calling audibles to exploit defensive weaknesses at the line of scrimmage. Just ask Dick Lebeau's Washington Redskins counterpart, Greg Williams, another proponent of perpetual blitzing, whose unit got burned by Hasselbeck audibles for big gains on six different occasions in the 'skins' 20-10 divisional playoff defeat three weeks ago. You could argue that all that blitzing cost Washington the game, except that if you don't pressure Hasselbeck - which, going against the best offensive line in football, means you pretty much have to blitz - he'll just sit back in the pocket (or roll out to either side) and dink & dunk - and occasionally "playground" you - to death.
That's what opens things up for the NFL MVP, Shawn Alexander, and the aforementioned offensive line that is even better at run blocking than they are pass protection. And that opens things up for receivers Darrell Jackson downfield and Bobby Engram and Joe Jurevicious across the middle and at the sidelines. And let's not leave out the "soft" Jeremy Stevens, who I predict will catch a TD pass tomorrow. And so on and so on.
It really is a case of pick your poison with the 'hawks. They are literally an offensive machine. They have no weaknesses. They are not so much relentless as they are inevitable. They average almost a field goal per drive. It's not a question of not stopping them but trying to slow them down; your only choice is to try and keep up.
And here the pendulum starts swinging back.
It goes without saying that the Seahawk defense is underrated and virtually unknown. Heck, its most visible member is rookie and Pro Bowl middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu, and he's better known for his collegiate exploits at USC than he is as Seattle's answer to Mike Singletary. He leads a refurbished front seven that was among the league leaders in stuffing the run. And even the much-maligned secondary was better than the raw yardage stats indicated, since a lot of that yielded ground came in the second halves of a lot of blowout victories when teams had to pass and the 'hawks were just trying to keep plays in front of them rather than give up anything long.
Still, that highlights a crucial strength-on-weakness: Roethlisberger's early passing against that potentially vulnerable secondary. Can the Seahawk front four get to him unaided? Probably not. Though Seattle led the league in sacks this year, it was more a product of scheme and game situations (again, opponents being behind and having to pass) than it was overpowering talent.
So, for the 'hawks, that speaks to what are the two most critical factors if they are to win: scoring first (a Seattle trademark this year) and maintaining the same defensive energy level they brought in the Carolina game.
As you can deduce from the above, I'm quite confident of the former. Making the Steelers play from behind will expose the "FORD" underbelly of their offensive premise: Fast Only Rolling Downhill.
The Steeler running game works predominantly off of past reputation. Its success is governed entirely by the scoreboard: when Pittsburgh is ahead, they average a respectable 4.2 yards per rush; when they're tied or behind, a putrid 3.2 yards a carry. Getting a lead is everything for this team.
Case in point - their second regular season meeting with the Bengals at Heinz Field. Cincinnati jumped to an early lead, only in that contest Carson Palmer stayed in the game. And the Bengals kept scoring. The Steelers were compelled to pass just (Is this starting to sound familiar?) to keep up. Roethlisberger put up impressive numbers, but he also threw three picks, and Pittsburgh lost a 38-31 shoot-out.
Since the Seahawks have a considerably better defense than Cincy does, shave a touchdown off that score and you have the most likely template for a Seahawk victory.
Now we come to the aforementioned latter factor: defensive intensity. And here I'm not so cocky.
It isn't a question of x's & o's or talent or scheme, but of venue. While the Seahawk offense ran off twenty-eight points a game anywhere they played against everybody they played, the defense was widely divergent, giving up a paltry thirteen a game at Qwest Field and twenty-one per game on the road. Just netting the scored/allowed in away games for both Super Bowl entrants yields an average score favoring the Steelers by a field goal.
So my template for a Pittsburgh victory is the Redskin game three weeks ago, in which the 'hawks turned the ball over three times (and nearly a fourth on an errant Hasselback pass that should have been picked off and run back for a touchdown), at the cost of only a Washington field goal and a foregone touchdown on Seattle's first drive. After which, notably, the offense went three-and-out on four straight possessions. Since the Steelers won't piss away such golden opportunities, add the missed pick and give a touchdown instead of the field goal. 20-10 Seahawks becomes 21-20 Steelers - or 24-20 if you want to throw in an extra score just to rub it in.
That game was played with a lot of nerves, stemming from the 'hawks not having won a playoff game in twenty-one years. Will they come out at Ford Field tomorrow tight, or footloose & fancy free?
I think the answer will depend on how the game starts out. If Seattle rolls offensively from the opening kickoff, Roethlisberger is thrown on the defensive, and the Seahawks win in a rout. If Pittsburgh draws first blood, the Steeler offensive and defensive templates kick in, and it'll be a nip & tuck game decided by turnovers.
Since the game isn't at Qwest Field, and the 'hawks' D wasn't very prolific at takeaways this season, and all it takes is one successful blitz (and/or one special teams f-up, of which there were two in that Redskin game) to separate Matt Hasselbeck from the football, I'm afraid that my head has to take precedence over my heart.
Pittsburgh 23, Seattle 21.
And if I'm wrong, you can bet I'll be flaming my traitorous ass tomorrow.
But only after I finish celebrating - which may take weeks....
Naturally just about all the talking heads are taking Pittsburgh. But, unlike the runup to the NFC Championship game, where the handicappers, whose business is to be right about such things, went with the 'hawks, this time they've all gone the other way as well.
The question is, "Why?"
Not that it surprises me - far from it. I've spent my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, and anti-Seattle bias from the national sports press is nothing new. The Sonics and Mariners have gotten the same flack when they were on their respective runs. And in a sense you can even understand a little of why, if not agree with it; after all, it's not as if any of Seattle's major league pro sports franchises reside in the "storied" category. They've all had their moments from time to time, but for the most part the Emerald City has spent the past forty years mired in athletic mediocrity. Sports media outside Ecotopia just aren't used to thinking of Seattle...well, at all, really. And since the town's lone World title (the 1979 Sonics - unless you want to count the 1918 NHL Totems or consider the 2003 WNBA Storm to be a major league pro franchise) came twenty-seven years ago, and (until now) neither the Seahawks or Mariners had ever played for a championship, they really haven't had all that much reason to do so.
But...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh?
The Seahawks certainly don't bring much in the way of overall Super Bowl experience to Detroit. Yes, coach Mike Holmgren has been to two and won one, which is huge, and they have a handful of players who've been here before (Grant Wistrom, Robbie Tobeck, Joe Jurevicious...), but that's nowhere close to being the same thing as having gotten there before as a team. In the latter sense, the 'hawks are greenhorns.
But so are the Steelers, really. Coach Bill Cowher's only other appearance was ten years ago, and his team took a beating from the tail end of the most recent Dallas Cowboy dynasty. None of the current Steeler roster was present for that experience.
So...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh?
Can it be the far more storied status of the Steeler franchise? The unprecedented four Super Bowl titles in six years back in the 1970s? Nothing more substantive than national name recognition? That might cover it for the talking heads, but not the handicappers. And the NFL doesn't have a wayback machine or a flux capacitor with which to retrieve the Noll/Bradshaw/Harris/Swann/Steel Curtain version.
So...why is everybody picking Pittsburgh? Or, to express it another way, what are the football reasons for it?
That's not to say that there aren't any, either. Ben Roethlisberger has been tremendous passing the ball in the playoffs. So good that Bill Cowher's traditional smash-mouth style of offense has given way to a pass-first approach, the object being to score first, build a lead, and then sit on it with the power running game and the Dick Lebeau-masterminded "Blitzburgh" defense.
The past two games it's worked like a charm. Neither Indy nor Denver could stop Roethlisberger early, forcing both to play from behind, which meant pretty much abandoning the running game. On the other side of the ball, Lebeau used his exotic blitz packages to demolish Peyton Manning and equally as novel coverage schemes to bamboozle Jake Plummer.
You might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the Steelers' Wild Card win over Cincinnati. There's a reason for that, and that gets us toward the football reasons why Pittsburgh could be headed for an ass-whipping instead.
It can be strongly argued that had Bengal quarterback Carson Palmer not gotten his knee destroyed on Cincy's first possession, the Steelers would have been "one and done." And even after that the Bengals built a ten point first quarter lead and were up a field goal at the half. Backup (and former Seahawk) Jon Kitna just couldn't keep up Palmer's pace in the second half.
Why does this matter? Because Seattle Pro Bowl QB Matt Hasselbeck is a more experienced version of Palmer - maybe not quite as strong an arm, but smart (unlike Plummer) and mobile (unlike Manning).
It took a few years, but Hasselbeck has mastered Mike Holmgren's version of the West Coast offense. Knows it inside and out - so well, in fact, that he's become devastatingly adept at calling audibles to exploit defensive weaknesses at the line of scrimmage. Just ask Dick Lebeau's Washington Redskins counterpart, Greg Williams, another proponent of perpetual blitzing, whose unit got burned by Hasselbeck audibles for big gains on six different occasions in the 'skins' 20-10 divisional playoff defeat three weeks ago. You could argue that all that blitzing cost Washington the game, except that if you don't pressure Hasselbeck - which, going against the best offensive line in football, means you pretty much have to blitz - he'll just sit back in the pocket (or roll out to either side) and dink & dunk - and occasionally "playground" you - to death.
That's what opens things up for the NFL MVP, Shawn Alexander, and the aforementioned offensive line that is even better at run blocking than they are pass protection. And that opens things up for receivers Darrell Jackson downfield and Bobby Engram and Joe Jurevicious across the middle and at the sidelines. And let's not leave out the "soft" Jeremy Stevens, who I predict will catch a TD pass tomorrow. And so on and so on.
It really is a case of pick your poison with the 'hawks. They are literally an offensive machine. They have no weaknesses. They are not so much relentless as they are inevitable. They average almost a field goal per drive. It's not a question of not stopping them but trying to slow them down; your only choice is to try and keep up.
And here the pendulum starts swinging back.
It goes without saying that the Seahawk defense is underrated and virtually unknown. Heck, its most visible member is rookie and Pro Bowl middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu, and he's better known for his collegiate exploits at USC than he is as Seattle's answer to Mike Singletary. He leads a refurbished front seven that was among the league leaders in stuffing the run. And even the much-maligned secondary was better than the raw yardage stats indicated, since a lot of that yielded ground came in the second halves of a lot of blowout victories when teams had to pass and the 'hawks were just trying to keep plays in front of them rather than give up anything long.
Still, that highlights a crucial strength-on-weakness: Roethlisberger's early passing against that potentially vulnerable secondary. Can the Seahawk front four get to him unaided? Probably not. Though Seattle led the league in sacks this year, it was more a product of scheme and game situations (again, opponents being behind and having to pass) than it was overpowering talent.
So, for the 'hawks, that speaks to what are the two most critical factors if they are to win: scoring first (a Seattle trademark this year) and maintaining the same defensive energy level they brought in the Carolina game.
As you can deduce from the above, I'm quite confident of the former. Making the Steelers play from behind will expose the "FORD" underbelly of their offensive premise: Fast Only Rolling Downhill.
The Steeler running game works predominantly off of past reputation. Its success is governed entirely by the scoreboard: when Pittsburgh is ahead, they average a respectable 4.2 yards per rush; when they're tied or behind, a putrid 3.2 yards a carry. Getting a lead is everything for this team.
Case in point - their second regular season meeting with the Bengals at Heinz Field. Cincinnati jumped to an early lead, only in that contest Carson Palmer stayed in the game. And the Bengals kept scoring. The Steelers were compelled to pass just (Is this starting to sound familiar?) to keep up. Roethlisberger put up impressive numbers, but he also threw three picks, and Pittsburgh lost a 38-31 shoot-out.
Since the Seahawks have a considerably better defense than Cincy does, shave a touchdown off that score and you have the most likely template for a Seahawk victory.
Now we come to the aforementioned latter factor: defensive intensity. And here I'm not so cocky.
It isn't a question of x's & o's or talent or scheme, but of venue. While the Seahawk offense ran off twenty-eight points a game anywhere they played against everybody they played, the defense was widely divergent, giving up a paltry thirteen a game at Qwest Field and twenty-one per game on the road. Just netting the scored/allowed in away games for both Super Bowl entrants yields an average score favoring the Steelers by a field goal.
So my template for a Pittsburgh victory is the Redskin game three weeks ago, in which the 'hawks turned the ball over three times (and nearly a fourth on an errant Hasselback pass that should have been picked off and run back for a touchdown), at the cost of only a Washington field goal and a foregone touchdown on Seattle's first drive. After which, notably, the offense went three-and-out on four straight possessions. Since the Steelers won't piss away such golden opportunities, add the missed pick and give a touchdown instead of the field goal. 20-10 Seahawks becomes 21-20 Steelers - or 24-20 if you want to throw in an extra score just to rub it in.
That game was played with a lot of nerves, stemming from the 'hawks not having won a playoff game in twenty-one years. Will they come out at Ford Field tomorrow tight, or footloose & fancy free?
I think the answer will depend on how the game starts out. If Seattle rolls offensively from the opening kickoff, Roethlisberger is thrown on the defensive, and the Seahawks win in a rout. If Pittsburgh draws first blood, the Steeler offensive and defensive templates kick in, and it'll be a nip & tuck game decided by turnovers.
Since the game isn't at Qwest Field, and the 'hawks' D wasn't very prolific at takeaways this season, and all it takes is one successful blitz (and/or one special teams f-up, of which there were two in that Redskin game) to separate Matt Hasselbeck from the football, I'm afraid that my head has to take precedence over my heart.
Pittsburgh 23, Seattle 21.
And if I'm wrong, you can bet I'll be flaming my traitorous ass tomorrow.
But only after I finish celebrating - which may take weeks....
posted by JASmius at 11:39 PM
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