Super Bowl XL - Winning Ugly

The theme of Super Bowl XL can be summed up in one word: UGLY. The game was ugly, the officiating was ugly, the Rolling Stones were ugly and even some of the celebrated commercials were ugly. However, the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t mind being ugly and in fact, they are damn comfortable with that.

We’ve all heard the phrase “Winning Ugly”, but what does it mean? For the Steelers, it means grinding out victories on the ground and not letting the opponents play to their potential. That’s essentially how they got to the Super Bowl with their wins over the Bengals, Colts and Broncos. None of those teams was able to get their “A” game going against Pittsburgh’s physical style of play.

Winning ugly also means winning even when you play poorly. Whether Patriots fans believe it or not, that’s the hallmark of a good team. Haven’t we seen the Patriots pull out some victories when they have played badly? That’s exactly what the Steelers did in Detroit on Sunday and they deserve credit for winning it that way. An ugly, low scoring affair clearly favored Pittsburgh.

One bit of ugliness that the Steelers hadn’t anticipated was the play of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Coming into the game, we thought Roethlisberger was the better of the two quarterbacks and would be more likely to handle the pressure of the moment better. Boy, were we wrong. The Steelers won despite Big Ben’s efforts through the air, overcoming his extremely nervous play. His passes fluttered and he appeared skittish in the pocket. Was this the same Roethlisberger that appeared so clinically efficient versus Indy and Denver, or was Ben doing his best Peyton Manning in the clutch impersonation? Roethlisberger’s most important contributions on the day turned out to be his legs and his blocking. No one would have predicted that before the game.

We’re four paragraphs into this and we haven’t even mentioned the other team, a.k.a., the Seattle Seahawks. One could make the argument that the Seahawks were undone by some marginal calls, but Seattle fans need to face the reality that their team played poorly and they couldn’t afford to do that against this Steeler team. While Matt Hasselbeck was the better quarterback on the day, he wasn’t great and he threw a back-breaking interception with just under 11 minutes remaining in the game. Four plays later, the Steelers were celebrating their third touchdown.

Looking at this match-up for the last two weeks, we weren’t sold on the Seahawks. Prior to the playoffs, we had only seen them play once and that was the farcical “win” versus the Giants in Seattle. How many kicks did the Giants miss in that game? Three? Needless to say, it wasn’t an impressive performance by the Seahawks at home as they were gifted the win. They still might be the best team in the NFC, but being the best of a mediocre bunch of teams isn’t much to brag about.

In the end, the team that was comfortable playing ugly hoisted the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the game.

Random

· Kudos to our buddy Sanj for hooking up his Super Bowl Party with HDTV. We still haven’t splurged for the big TV here behind the lines due to various negotiations, but attending this party made an extremely persuasive argument in favor of the big purchase. Sixty inches sounds good.

· The half-time show should have had the following warning for viewers of HDTV: “It is not recommended to view Keith Richards in High Definition. Parental guidance is strongly recommended.”

· Which set of foreign, old, white guys will be next year’s half-time act? Kraftwerk anyone?

· Best play of the game: Antwaan Randle El’s TD pass to Hines Ward. Neither starting quarterback threw a ball in the game that looked that good. Ben Roethlisberger also threw a key block on the play to protect Randle El on the pass.