Super conundrum
MIAMI – We arrive at the final game of the NFL season with two tenets in place:
Defense wins championships; The Super Bowl is a quarterback’s game.
The 1992 Cowboys made it easy for the experts. So did the 1996 Green Bay Packers. Both trotted out the NFL’s No. 1 defense and a franchise quarterback, Troy Aikman for the Cowboys and Brett Favre the Packers.
The 1977 Cowboys won the Lombardi Trophy with Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach and the NFL’s best defense. That’s the same combination that the Pittsburgh Steelers used to win four Super Bowls in the 1970s – Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw and that “Steel Curtain” defense.
The 1997 Denver Broncos, 1988-89 San Francisco 49ers, the 1972-73 Miami Dolphins, the 1969 Kansas City Chiefs, 1968 New York Jets and the 1966-67 Packers also won Super Bowls with Hall of Fame quarterbacks and top-five defenses.
But what happens when the franchise quarterback plays for one Super Bowl team and the elite defense lines up for the other? Does defense still win championships? Or does the franchise quarterback rule?
We’ll find out today.
The AFC champion Indianapolis Colts have the franchise quarterback in Peyton Manning – and the NFC champion Chicago Bears have the elite defense.
Hall of Fame quarterbacks are 24-15 in Super Bowls. If you count the appearances of future Hall of Famers Tom Brady and Brett Favre, the record improves to 28-16. But in 11 of those defeats, one Hall of Fame quarterback lost to another.
Only five times has a Hall of Fame quarterback lost to a non-Hall of Fame quarterback. Jim Kelly fell to Mark Rypien (Washington) and Jeff Hostetler (N.Y. Giants), John Elway lost to Doug Williams (Washington) and Phil Simms (N.Y. Giants), and Fran Tarkenton to Ken Stabler (Oakland).
When there’s a mismatch at the quarterback position in Super Bowls, the better one generally prevails. Peyton Manning vs. Rex Grossman is one of the biggest mismatches in Super Bowl history.
Manning won his third consecutive NFL passing title in 2006 and threw for a league-leading 31 touchdowns. Grossman threw an NFL-runner-up 20 interceptions and finished 24th in passing efficiency. The Super Bowl will be Manning’s 156th career start. It will be Grossman’s 28th.
Like Brady and Favre, the two-time NFL MVP Manning already has a career destined for Canton. If quarterbacks indeed win Super Bowls, the Colts will be holding the Lombardi Trophy tonight.
But the defensive statistics stack up just as favorably for Chicago. The Bears allowed the third fewest points and fifth-fewest yards in the NFL. Chicago also led the league with 44 takeaways.
The Colts ranked last in the NFL against the run with the fourth-worst run defense in history, allowing an average of 173 yards per game and 5.3 yards per rush. The worst run defense to win a Super Bowl was the 2001 New England Patriots, who ranked 19th with an average yield of 115 yards per game.
The Colts also allowed 360 points – 23rd in the league. You have to go all the way back to 1983 to find a Super Bowl champion that finished out of the top 10 in scoring defense. Only three Super Bowl champions allowed more than 300 points: the 1980 Raiders (306), the 1983 Raiders (338) and 1998 Broncos (309).
The Bears have three Pro Bowlers on defense. The Colts don’t have any – the first time that has happened since the 1992 Cowboys. And that Dallas team led the NFL in defense.
The Bears shut out two opponents this season. The Colts haven’t shut out anyone since 1997. The team with the higher-ranked defense has won 13 of the 16 Super Bowls since 1990.
If defense wins championships, it’ll be the Bears hoisting the Lombardi Trophy tonight.