Super Bowl XL Thoughts
I. It's New England. Quarterbacks going for their third Super Bowl ring are 3-1, with the only loser Roger Staubach in SB XIII, when he was matched up against Terry Bradshaw, who was going for
his third Super Bowl win. Montana and Aikman also won in their attempts at a third ring.
II. Despite what I said above, I picked Philly in a pool because so many of the other entrants are picking New England. I could see the Eagles winning the game. As I have said before, there is a temptation to look at the past as revealing the future. But under those notions, the Detroit Pistons would have lost to the Lakers in the NBA finals last year, and there was no way the Denver Broncos could have beaten the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII. The Yankees would never have lost to Miami in 2003 or Arizona in 2001.
III. Will Tom Brady get his third Super Bowl MVP trophy? Joe Montana is the only guy to ever achieve that in the past. Brady beat out Montana and Namath by a year as the youngest QBs ever to win a Super Bowl (in an amazing coincidence, Montana and Namath were the exact same age, to the day, when they won their first Super Bowls) (see note). Brady beat out Troy Aikman for the youngest QB to win his second Super Bowl by about 9 months, and he'd be about 600 days younger than Aikman if he wins his third Super Bowl.
IV. The Super Bowl matches up the two QBs with the best passer ratings in the playoffs so far. McNabb edges out Brady, with a 111.3 to Tom's 108.9. Neither has thrown an interception in the postseason this year, while every other starting QB in the playoffs had at least one.
V. Key on the Patriots. I caught this while watching them against Pittsburgh. They telegraph every play. If Dillon or the other running back is 7 yards or more behind the line of scrimmage it's a run, otherwise it's a pass. It almost seems like they don't care what you do, they've got their play planned. Philly, on the other hand is unpredictable, although they clearly tend to pass a lot more than most teams when in the lead in the second half.
VI. Can we get rid of the Roman Numerals? Even Led Zeppelin stopped using them after III. They're confusing, hard to remember and require two calculations in order to figure out which game you're talking about. And yes, this is Super Bowl XXXIX, not XL, which proves my point.
(Note on the age of Namath and Montana when they won their first Super Bowls. Namath was 25 years, 7 months and 12 days old when he won Super Bowl III, and Montana 25 years, 7 months and 13 days old, so it might appear that Namath barely edged Montana out for youngest. But if you compare their birthdates and their victory dates with a spreadsheet or calculator, you'll discover that they were both exactly 9,358 days old. Namath had an extra leap year because he had been born the year before one, while Montana was born a couple months after a February 29th).
