What: Super Bowl XLIIIWho: The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals
Where: Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Florida
When: Kickoff is at 6:28
What Channel: NBC
Announcers: Al Michaels, John Madden, Andrea Kremer, Alex Flanagan
Announcers Talkng Point of the Game: The Arizona Flippin' Cardinals are in the Super Bowl???
Weather Forecast: 62 Degrees, Partly Cloudy
Analysis: Well then, if you said at the beginning of the season that the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers would play each other in the Super Bowl you would have been labeled stockraving mad. Hell, if on New Years day you said that the Cardinals and the Steelers would be in the Super Bowl, you would have been called certifiably insane. But alas, that's what we got. It's the Cardinals and the Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII!
Larry Fitzgerald has been on fire this post-season. He has set the record for most receiving yards in a post-season. He has made sensational play after sensational play just ripping through anything the opposing team's defense has thrown at them. So the question becomes, can the Pittsburgh defense contain Fitzgerald? If the answer is yes, the Steelers should have no problem winning this game, but containing Warner-to-Fitzgerald is so much easier said than done. Then again, if there's one defense in the NFL that is capable of such a feat, it's the #1 ranked defense in the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The success of the Steelers' offense comes with the running game. Ben Roethlisberger is an efficient quarterback, if he is not passing it all the time. Which is why the Steelers cannot fall behind early in this one. The Cardinal defense has been picking balls off left and right this post-season, and if it becomes obvious passing situations, the Steelers will be in trouble.
Prediction: It should be a very entertaining game, to say the least. And one in which, quite frankly, I'm not quite sure what to expect. It's not like last year's Super Bowl where it had all the appeal the network would want to the causal fan. But to someone like me who is a diehard NFL fan, it presents an interesting matchup with a guaranteed historic outcome. Either Kurt Warner will be the first quarterback in NFL history to win a Super Bowl with 2 different teams or the Pittsburgh Steelers will be the first team in NFL history to win 6 Super Bowls. As much respect as I have for the Cardinals and the fact that I've picked against them 3 times and have been wrong all 3 times, I have to go with the latter of the historic events occuring. Pittsburgh 20, Arizona 16
Not one Super Bowl in this decade has been entertaining from start to finish, this one won't be different.
ReplyDeleteSteelers will win in a boring low-scoring affair.
This is probably the first Super Bowl I could care less about.
This is the perfect Super Bowl for this economy.
ReplyDeleteTwo teams with small fan bases, playing the game in a small town.
Hopefully Kurt Warner and Tim Tebow are praying for a better Super Bowl next year.
@ SSR: In a way that's true, I guess. Each game this decade has had a dull quarter or so, but there have been some wild finishes thus far this decade. Not quite sure I'm feeling it in this game (as opposed to the conference championship games where I had a feeling we were going to see at least one crazy finish).
ReplyDelete@ 49er16: I never thought about it like that before...