SUPER BOWL SHUFFLE

The Super Bowl, by nature, is never just another football game. From it's hyperbolic moniker to its grandiose affectations to the nonstop media attention, the game is without doubt the premiere event in American sports. While its position as the most talked about and attention-grabbing game of every sporting year is inarguable, there have certainly been better games than others, more intriguing match-ups than others, and juicier story lines than others. The last time that the Giants and the Patriots played in the Super Bowl in 2007 was one of those years when the hype machine was put into overdrive and the stories surrounding the game were clear-cut. The Patriots were trying to complete a perfect season, something that no one besides the 1972 Miami Dolphins have ever done and the first of the era of the 16-game schedule. They were big-time favorites (12 points) over the Giants, who had snuck into the game as an NFC Wildcard. But the Giants slew the Goliath from Foxboro and took home the title in dramatic fashion. This year's rematch of that legendary Super Bowl game was similar in many ways, and brought its own batch of dramatic and melodramatic subplots, beyond the unavoidable allure of a remake of that classic 2007 game.

Going into this year's Super Bowl, the most fascinating aspect of the game was the “what-if” scenario attached to each of the respective quarterbacks involved. For Tom Brady, if the Patriots were able to find a way to win, he could legitimately claim that he is the greatest quarterback who ever strapped on a helmet. While he has consistently nudged his nose into the room where this conversation was happening, a win in Super Bowl XLVI would cement his résumé and put him next to Joe Montana and John Elway in the three way race that I believe exists for the title of greatest QB of all time (sorry, but I’m just not old enough and don’t have the kind of perspective to go pre-Super Bowl era or really have a grasp of the talent level in the early years of the game). Montana is one of only two quarterbacks with four championship rings and Elway has two rings, but an amazing 5 Super Bowl appearances (which Brady matched this year) to go along with both quarterbacks' sterling reputations as go-to-guys in the closing moments of the game.

For Eli Manning, a Giants win in Super Bowl XLVI would add considerable fuel to a fire that up until this season has only been the size of a match head: who is the better Manning brother at the quarterback position? This didn’t used to be the kind of thing that was debated with any seriousness, because the older Manning was for so long clearly either the best or second best quarterback in all of football. He and Eli both had a ring, but Peyton had an unmatched statistical pedigree. But with Peyton in jeopardy of never playing another down in the NFL after off-season neck surgery, a Giants victory would give Eli his second ring by age 31 and it would become a legitimate argument that Eli’s rings trump Peyton’s numbers. Not to mention the fact that Eli would have knocked off Tom Brady to get both of his rings, who is supposed to be older brother’s arch rival. Not only that, but he already ruined Brady’s perfect season, which would have given him a point on his résumé that no other quarterback outside of Bob Griese can lay claim to. That's almost like winning one-and-a-half Super Bowls if you ask me.

Well, as it turned out, the Giants beat the Patriots 21-17 on Sunday night in a classic football game that had just as much drama, competitiveness and legendary plays that their first meeting in the 2007 Super Bowl had. Once again, Manning and the Giants made a fourth-quarter touchdown drive to go ahead late, and once again Brady was unable to respond in kind, suffering his second Super Bowl loss to the Giants in five years and raising heretofore unthinkable questions about his remaining skill as a quarterback and ability to rise to the occasion in the game’s most important moments. The fact that these two quarterbacks and these two teams have played such spectacular football in the Super Bowl is a delight for fans and a boon for the NFL’s caché in the world of American sports, but the way that Brady and Eli Manning have started to reach into the story of each other’s careers is some truly fascinating stuff.

Lately, the two quarterbacks’ respective fates have been dramatically intertwined and are reaching almost dialectically opposing circumstances. Whereas Manning’s hail mary throw from midfield somehow finds a receiver’s hands in the divisional round against the Green Bay Packers, Brady’s is left falling to the turf before the outstretched arms of the banged-up Rob Gronkowski in this year’s Super Bowl. Where Brady’s perfectly thrown deep ball to Randy Moss near the end of the 2007 Super Bowl is tipped away at the last second, Manning’s is cradled perfectly by Mario Manningham, allowing him to stamp both feet to the ground like a library attendant marking a due date, right in the face of hoody-clad head coach Bill Belichick no less. Where Brady’s desperation chuck with D-Line pressure bearing down upon him is called for intentional grounding and results in a safety on his team’s first play from scrimmage in this year’s Super Bowl, Manning’s twirling, near-sack chuck into the middle of the field in the game winning drive of the 2007 Super Bowl somehow finds the arms of David Tyree, where he is forever left holding it against his helmet in the football field of memory.

So while Manning will continue to live out the winning scenario of that previous paragraph, what is next for Touchdown Tom? Well, the future is probably more murky than he would like to admit. Despite all of the attention being paid to Wes Welker’s drop near the four minute mark that had it resulted in a catch, would likely have also resulted in a win, Tom Brady is going to bear the brunt of the criticism for his team’s loss in this year’s Super Bowl. Just ask his wife, who snapped back at some drunken Giants fans with a retort that Tom isn’t probably very keen on and one that he knows doesn’t justify his late-career playoff and Super Bowl stumbles. I think Brady is starting to realize that while he may always have the historic upper hand on Eli’s brother Peyton, the younger Manning has now cost him two chances at football immortality. That fourth Super Bowl ring is on Brady’s mind like it was forged in the heart of Mount Doom, and Eli prevented him from achieving it in the most dramatic of fashion in 2007, as the culmination of a perfect season, and now again in 2012, where his superior play kept Tom Brady from that precious number four once again. Sure Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, but right now, he is not the greatest, and there is no doubt in this writer’s mind that the man with millions of dollars, a super model wife and an already hall-of-fame-worthy career wants that GOAT title more than anything he has achieved up until this point.

And perhaps all of this leads us to what might be a turn of the tide in the NFL. It is possible that Manning and the Giants’ victory in Super Bowl XLVI is the beginning of the end of an era for two quarterbacks and the clearly manifest start of one for another two. It used to be that the conversation about the best quarterback in the NFL started with P. Manning and ended with Brady, but it now seems that it starts with E. Manning and ends with Aaron Rodgers (you can decide where the NFL’s other clearly elite quarterback, Drew Brees shakes out, though he seems to be straddling both eras as of right now). Peyton is dealing with a neck injury that could all but ruin the rest of his career, and Brady has now lost the last two Super Bowls he’s played in. Meanwhile, Eli Manning is now two for two in Super Bowl appearances, leading two Giants teams that were not only unlikely to go deep into the playoffs, but a laughable Super Bowl pick at the start of the regular season and the playoffs in both of the 21st century seasons that they ended up winning it all. And for all of Peyton's numbers and adulation how many signature moments does he have as a a quarterback? Eli now has two, with his throws to Tyree over the middle and Manningham down the sideline, and not only are they memorable for him personally, but they are sure to become two of the most replayed in the history of the sport's biggest game, the Super Bowl. In addition, Aaron Rodgers set a new standard for what is possible at the quarterback position in this year’s regular season, and already grabbed his first ring in last year’s Super Bowl victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, which ties him with Peyton Manning's lone championship and leaves him still one behind yet another current NFL starter, the Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger.

So while the younger Manning may not look the part quite as much as Brady or even older brother Peyton as Twitter so snarkily illustrates, and Rodgers got bounced by Eli's Giants in this year’s divisional round, the two quarterbacks have officially stepped forward to join Drew Brees and Big Ben in the debate about who's the best at the QB position in the NFL. None of these relatively younger quarterbacks seems in danger of slowing down at any point in the near future, and they have begun to kick up dust in the face of Brady and Peyton Manning, who were not only considered the two best quarterbacks in the NFL for a solid decade, but dominated the conversation on the position so fully that their recent lapse in productivity doesn’t just seem anomalous, it seems sacrilege. Personally, I’m not willing to write Brady off just yet, especially because the ragtag bunch of Patriots he just led to the Super Bowl only affirms his and head coach Bill Belichick's talent once again, but Manning’s neck injury is continually worrisome and it looks like amazingly, his days with the Indianapolis Colts are all but over.

Sometimes it can take weeks, months, even years to understand the impact of a single game, especially a Super Bowl, but this year's game has certainly started some debates about the elite players at the quarterback position in the NFL. A reporter asked Eli at the beginning of this season if he thought he was in Brady's class as far as quarterbacking went, and he got criticized and laughed at for saying he thought that yes, he definitely is. Well no one is laughing now and it seems that discussion will now begin as to who is the better Manning, and it will have to continue as to who is the best quarterback of all time. Sometimes the outcome of a game begs more questions than it ends up answering. This year's Super Bowl definitely feels like one of those classic debate-launchers. It might be that the only certain thing to come out of the Giants' victory and the Patriots defeat is a new level of uncertainty. The power struggle at the game's most important position is officially the most competitive it has been in more than 10 years and if it leads to more Super Bowls like the one we just witnessed on Sunday, please let the battle begin.

WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT PRESSURE?

This weekend's conference championship games in the NFL were a wonderful thing to watch. Both games saw back and forth, competitive football that came down to crucial plays at the end of the game. With a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, there isn't much more a football fan can hope for than overtime in one game and a last-second, game-deciding field goal kick in the other. The down-to-the-wire nature of the games in the AFC and NFC set up two dramatic plays that ended up deciding the outcome of both contests, and while that shows you just how fun and enthralling sports can be as a form of entertainment, the end of both games also accentuated what is another perennial part of athletic competition: heartbreaking moments created by huge mistakes on big plays.

For the Ravens, who lost to the New England Patriots on a last-second field goal miss by their kicker Billy Cundiff that would have tied the game and sent it into overtime, the sting is particularly sharp. What you will hear from coaches and players on both sides after a game like this is that one play doesn't decide a game, but what fans and the general sporting public know is that a bromide like that is not an adequate salve to heal the kind of gaping wound that Ravens' players, coaches, and fans now have bleeding across their hearts. Cundiff missed the kind of big field goal he has been making all year on the Ravens run to the AFC Championship Game, a 32 yarder that most of his positional peers would agree is the kind of short-distance kick you want to be faced with (if you must be faced with one that ties/decides the game in its final moments).

But Cundiff pulled the kick left (or right if you're watching from home), and the Ravens didn't get a chance to play an extra period that could have earned them a trip to Indianapolis to play in the Super Bowl. Now there is a long list of kickers who have made similar mistakes, from Scott Norwood's miss in the Super Bowl XXV to Boise State's Kyle Brotzman's multiple big-game misses, to Ray Finkle's fictitious though equally memorable "laces out" moment, there are more kickers ruing the day they decided to quit the soccer team and play football than there are Adam Vinatieries. Now Cundiff joins that club of unfortunate place kickers and has to deal with the fact that his stellar season and consistent poise at the end of many a game will now be footnotes on a resumé with only one real headline: Missed game-tying field goal against Patriots, cost team chance to play in Super Bowl.

Across the country in San Francisco, where the 49ers played the New York Giants in the NFC Championship, a similar late-game miscue cost a team a trip to the Super Bowl. The 49ers fill-in punt returner Kyle Williams (who stepped in for an ailing Ted Ginn Jr.) fumbled the football on a run back in overtime, giving the Giants the ball in field goal range. The Giants pushed the ball a bit farther down the field before Lawrence Tynes split the uprights and gave New York the win and made Kyle Williams a Bay-Area-sized goat. Again, you'll hear from coaches and players that one play doesn't decide a game, but the fumble was Williams' second misstep on a punt return that day, and like Cundiff, he did the one thing he couldn't afford to do in his situation: he cost his team a chance to win the football game.

The two players' similar plights are a fascinating storyline folllowing the conference championships, and they are an example of something I think that everyone above ground can relate to: making a mistake when a mistake could not be afforded. I always like to say that this blog is a place where sports and life intertwine, and with that in mind I can't help but look at the human aspect of the story of Cundiff and Williams. Say what you want about the fact that they're just playing a game and that it isn't the end of the world and blah blah blah, but the simple truth is that this was the biggest moment of both of their professional careers, with millions of people staring at them on televisions across the country, and they shit the bed, plain and simple. If you're a 49ers or Ravens fan I'm sorry for your losses, but if you're a human being, you have to feel for these guys.

Think about it. I think there is a moment in everyone's life where you're sitting there, pressure on, telling yourself that no matter what, under no circumstance can you "insert appropriate action". And then you do it. And you can't believe you just did it. And it feels like the world just spun off its axis and you're in the middle of a Dali masterpiece because life just got so surreal. The sounds and faces around you are muffled and blurred, you are completely inside your own head where the phrase that keeps careening from one side of your skull to the next is: "this is not happening, this is not happening." For both of these players, it was happening, it did happen. Now all they can do is wallow in that failure, face it, accept it, and attempt to move on.

We can search for analogous circumstances for this kind of a mistake, and to stay with the world of sports for a moment, maybe you're a young girl or an international superstar who forgets the words to the National Anthem, or an over-excited soccer star who drops the championship trophy under the wheels of a bus. Or for more real-world examples, maybe you're a bride who falls on her face on the way to the altar or a waitress who drops a bottle of $200 wine on the way to a table full of particularly well-to-do customers or a classically trained cellist who misses a note in their Juilliard audition. There are a million high pressure situations where the one thing you cannot do is the one thing you end up doing. It might ruin the moment, crush your pride, or leave you with an unbearable level of embarrassment, but at the end of the day there's that old adage that you can always lean upon: everyone makes mistakes. Sure, they don't always come in an important, life-changing moment, but they are always there to be made and as human beings, it is simply despicable to attack your fellow man for your own homo sapien borne lack of perfection.

It's why I commend both Cundiff and Williams for the amount of composure they have maintained in the face of their errors and for the amount of ownership they have taken for said mistakes. It is also why the reaction on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook and the overreaction of the sports media to their gaffes is absolutely galling to me. Yes, these men failed miserably at the task they are paid a very large some of money to perform, but when fans and the media react the way that they have over the days since Sunday's games it makes me embarrassed to be a human being. Just check out a few of the tweets sent out following the two games:

@NotBillWalton:

I'm pretty sure some despicable Ravens fans would like to see Billy Cundiff kick the bucket. Unfortunately for them, he'd probably miss.

@BradBirdA113:

The Harbaugh bros will do a live reading of their new book "Billy Cundiff, Kyle Williams and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day"

@Shady_McCoy (that's Philadelphia Eagles running back LeSean McCoy, a fellow NFL player mind you...):

I think it's safe to say that Kyle Williams & Billy Cundiff will be taking their talents to the unemployment line. #NOTSC @NOTSportscenter

And those are among the more benign of the tweets sent out. Among the more egregious are death threats to both players and their families from Ravens and 49ers fans and similarly horrible jokes and barbs thrown in their direction. There is an element to gallows humor that as a bit of a prick myself I am willing to allow and the environment on Twitter of snap judgment and the levying of instant admonishment that is expected if not excusable, but threatening a person's life because your team lost a football game is among the most petty and downright deplorable things any sports fan can do. At that point, I believe that your fandom has officially transformed into psychosis and a look in the mirror, not the glossy panel of your smart phone as you thumb out a tweet or Facebook post, is what is truly called for.

While fans or other players may in the end be exonerated by their ignorance, the sporting cognoscenti that type out stories and columns for respected newspapers and websites cannot be given the same amount of leeway. Yes, they are paid to give their opinion and to inspire debate, but there is no reason for Cundiff or Williams to draw comparisons to Bill Buckner or to face the immense barrage of attacks against their skill as players, let alone their worth as human beings (shout out to Stefan Fatsis for the links to those articles). Cundiff and Williams will probably never play the game they love or live their lives in quite the same way following this weekend's games, and instead of vilifying them or piling on, I think that a certain level of compassion and commiseration is in order. These were their "Mr. Destiny" moments, and they both came up short, left to live on wondering what might have been if they had come through in the clutch instead of coming up short.

I guess what I'm trying to say at the end of the day is that while we can all relate to mistakes and failure of one kind or another, no matter how apt a real-world analogy for what happened to these two men may be, it will never quite capture the feeling that must still be permeating their flesh. While we all know our human foibles all too well, there is no comparison for a fan or member of the media or general public to draw on that can possibly allow us to empathize properly. It is why I believe that all we can do in this situation is try. Try to understand what it is like to miss out on a trip to the Super Bowl in front of millions of people and let everyone on your team down when they were counting on you the most. We have to try to give these two men the kind of support we would desire if we were in their shoes, not tear them down and send them death threats and throw any more gasoline on the fire of disappointment they are both now warming their hands by. 

I say we move on fast and look on toward the Giants and Pats Super Bowl rematch, because it should be a doozy. Check back to the Hip for a Super Bowl recap soon after the game goes into the books.

CONTRASTING STYLES

After a long NFL season and an exciting and somewhat surprising playoff run, the match-up for this year's Super Bowl is finally set. We've got quite a bit of time to go over every storyline, statistic, and shit-talking salvo in the next week and a half, so I thought before I got into a full-on Super Bowl preview and revealed my pick for the game's outcome, I would take a long look at the guys who play quarterback for each team.

The two players we're talking about here, Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers and Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers, are men of contrasting styles and characters for the most part, and are definitely going to dominate many of the headlines as the Super Bowl draws closer. Rodgers and Roethlisberger are both talented and capable quarterbacks who have steered their teams through the long, arduous journey of the NFL season and planted their flags firmly in Dallas, where the Super Bowl will be played in the tricked-out house that Jerry Jones built.
 

Aside from Michael Vick, there is perhaps no other quarterback in recent memory that has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons more than Ben Roethlisberger. Big Ben seems to have some uh...you might say...trouble getting along with the ladies, as he followed a dust-up with a female paramour in Lake Tahoe in 2008 with an eerily similar encounter during the 2010 off season in Georgia. I should be clear here and state that Roethlisberger has never been convicted or even charged with any criminal wrong-doing in either case, though there were civil accusations in 2009, which followed around a year after the 2008 incident and are still pending.

Of course, the NFL has their own justice system. Roethlisberger was suspended for the first six games of  this season for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy, but ended up serving a reduced penalty of only four games because of a vague belief by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that he had displayed good behavior during his time of woe. So, Ben sat out four games and the Steelers went 3-1 in his absence. Just as he had  deftly avoided so many defenders in the past, Ben similarly stiff-armed a couple of twenty-something female accusers and faced few on-field consequences in the process--he is playing in the damn Super Bowl for chrissakes.

With all that out of the way, I think the guy's pretty much a creep. Roethlisberger has always been a standoffish, brooding lout toward the media and general public, (not to mention his hometown in Ohio) but that coupled with now repeated suspicious incidents with college-age women makes for a guy that is certainly not on my list of favorite athletes. If there's one thing that can't be excused, it's being a bully towards women, and that should be an especially important rule if you're nearly six and a half feet tall and right around 250 pounds. I don't have time to go over the ins and outs of those cases, but if you'd like to learn more, you can click here and here and read for yourself (although some of the info you might wish to know about the incident in Georgia did go missing rather mysteriously...).

I never want to be one to judge at a distance, but when you're talking about sports it becomes hard to avoid that particular vantage point. I don't know the guy personally, but I think that his track record with women, even from a removed perspective, doesn't exactly jibe with the prevailing social sentiments towards the matter. He just has that aura about him now, and no matter how much you believe that people can change, and I surely do, there hasn't been enough time passed or difference in Roethlisberger's demeanor right now for me to be on his side. And this is coming from a guy who has respect for Mike Vick's turnaround.

The point here is that Ben has incurred a rather large amount of personal baggage over the last couple of years, while in the meantime risen to the top of the heap at his position and collected two Super Bowl championships in the process. A guy with a surly attitude and a predilection for intimidating the opposite sex is hard to root for, but there is no way to argue that Roethlisberger hasn't excelled at the quarterback position. He's got two rings and he's only twenty-eight. That's one less than and one more than the two guys that always get brought up as being the pinnacle of the QB position, they being Tom Brady and Peyton Manning respectively.

Ben doesn't put up their kind of numbers statistically, but he definitely wins football games and has proven his mettle as a clutch performer that makes the big plays down the stretch, when the outcome of a game is on the line. The drive he engineered at the end of the 2009 Super Bowl to beat the Arizona Cardinals was breathtaking and the one that killed the rest of the clock in this year's AFC Championship Game against the New York Jets was another example of his ability to face down the big moment and will his team to a win.

I've always been one to defend Peyton Manning despite his lack of big game "moments", the kind that can make or break a QB's legacy, but if you look at Brady, Roethlisberger, and Manning, I think you have to put them in that order as far as the best in the game. Big Ben's rings and his clear-cut mastery of the game's most important moments put him ahead of Manning's jaw-dropping statistical dominance and MVP trophies (Brady meanwhile, trumps them both by possessing a stunning combination of clutch performances, championship rings, and stats for days).

 

So I don't like him, but Roethlisberger has proven to me that he's one of the game's elite QB's, and as a football fan, I can't say I'm disappointed that he's in the Super Bowl.  He can only make the game more exciting and competitive for one, and his troubled past makes for some added juice if you happen to write a blog about sports.

On the other side of the ball two Sundays from now will be a player that has both a boat-load of athletic talent and nothing but my utmost respect and admiration. The former will help him more than the latter as far as the Super Bowl goes, but Aaron Rodgers is both the kind of QB that general managers swoon over and the kind you want to knock a  few beers back with, as cliche as that might sound.  Rodgers is now in his third year as an NFL starter and has already proven that he's a playoff performer and leader of men, the kind of QB that can get his team to the biggest game of the season, this year and beyond.

The Packers played their way into the playoffs over the last few games of the season, with each being a do-or-die contest as far as their post-season hopes were concerned. After that, they only beat the Philadelphia Eagles, dismantled the Atlanta Falcons with a historic performance by Rodgers, and outlasted a gutty Chicago Bears team--all on the road--on their way to the Super Bowl against the Steelers. Rodgers beat the resurgent Michael Vick in Philly, went 31 for 36 with 366 yards and 3 touchdowns against the Falcons, and while he wasn't overwhelming against the Bears, made every big play he had to, gutting out a vicious hit by Julius Peppers and making a touchdown-saving tackle on Brian Urlacher after throwing an interception.

Rodgers's playoff run not withstanding, he also put the injury riddled Packers on his shoulders all season long, emerging as the top quarterback in the NFC down the stretch (all apologies to Mr. Vick). He did so without his starting tight-end and running back for practically the entire year, all the while throwing masterful passes and making play-saving runs in the shadow of Brett Favre. The Packers were Favre's team, but right now there isn't a man, woman, or child in Green Bay that would take Favre back for all the whiskey in Ireland (ahem, hate to say I told you so but...). These are the new Packers, and they don't need a salt-and-pepper drama queen to steer the ship anymore. They've got a throttling defense and number 12 behind center and as-such aren't messing around these days.

On top of his ability, Rodgers is easy to root for because of how well he has handled everything during his NFL tenure. Coming out of college at California, Rodgers was initially projected as the number one overall pick by most prognosticators. As draft day neared, things started to shift and the whole country watched as the guy who should've had the shortest stay on the draft board slipped all the way to number 24, where the Packers took Rodgers to back-up the at that time still vibrant Brett Favre. Rodgers took it all in stride and did his duty as Favre's back-up. When he was finally named starter and Favre un-retired to try and take his old job back, he was equally calm and collected, allowing the drama to pass by and assuming his new role with class and restraint.

After that, the dood just went off. He has played increasingly well in all three years as the Packers' starter and has proven to be as tough and upstanding a guy as his past behavior had intimated. Not only that, but he's just as passionate and exuberant as Favre was in his heyday. Rodgers is hard on teammates but well-liked by all, displaying a love of the game with a consistent on-field smile and a pro-wrestling championship belt celebration for his TD's (which culminated with a fantastic, nuanced rendition during the NFC Championship game against the Bears where Rodgers merely pointed to his waist). He's playing and acting like a world champ, and is now in the position to make it happen.

Like I said before, you don't want to try and feel like you know a professional athlete too well from a spectator's view, but unlike Roethlisberger, Rodgers has a respectful, professional way of doing things that leads to him being one of this writer's favorite players to watch. Don't give me that cancer patient, autograph-dodging stuff either (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and check out the video. It looks bad, I know, but the woman involved doesn't have any hard feelings and Rodgers has obliged her with many an autograph in the past). Rodgers is a man of character on and off the field and unlike the man he replaced in Green Bay and the one he'll face in the Super Bowl, doesn't crave or disgracefully attract the limelight whatsoever.

As I discussed in my recent post on the quarterback position, teams with stellar QB's have a nose for the Super Bowl, and much of a team's success rides on who is taking the snaps. Rodgers and Roethlisberger were the deciding factors in their teams' victories on Championship Sunday, where both the Packers and Steelers were evenly matched defensively against the Bears and Jets.  The four QB's lined-up with four equally impressive defensive units, and the two quarterbacks left standing are the two that were better than their opponent at the position when it mattered most (although Jay Cutler did miss the entire second half of the Packers/Bears contest with a knee injury--and by the way Jay, everyone's watching now so don't take the stairs man!).

It's my opinion that we're in for a Super Bowl with a similar set-up. With the Matthews/Woodson led Packers and the Polamalu/Harrison led Steelers battling each other on defense, it will be up to Rodgers and Roethlisberger as to which team's offense will win the day, and most likely the game. While I think you know who I'm going to be rooting for, there's no doubt that the quarterbacks in this year's Super Bowl will be a joy to watch as they compete for the ring and a study in contrasting styles that will hopefully make for an exciting and dramatic Sunday in February.

VICK, VICK, VICK-ADELPHIA

When the Washington Redskins played the Eagles in Philadelphia on Sunday, the storyline was supposed to be all about Donovan McNabb returning to the city to play against the team that traded him away in the off season. McNabb was dealt to the Redskins because the Eagles were confident in his back up, Kevin Kolb, and because they obviously thought his skills were diminishing in the latter part of his career. While it's a long season and we won't know for a while how good McNabb still is (especially on a team that isn't exactly setting the league on fire), a lot of the headlines that would have been focused on his return were shared with the fact that Michael Vick, and not the aforementioned Kolb, is actually the starting QB for the Eagles now. Not only that, but he's been really, really good at his job the last three weeks.

Kolb was concussed in the opening game of the season, and Vick stepped into the role of starter. The two large ironies about this new role are that Philadelphia gave Vick his second chance in the NFL because of the urging of McNabb while he was still in Philly and that Vick himself was subsequently injured early in Sunday's game and replaced by Kolb. All the featured players in the Vick comeback saga were on the field Sunday, and it made for a truly interesting storyline by the end of the day. The Skins beat the Eagles and McNabb found some revenge, but the shuffling at the QB position for Philadelphia is just getting to be too much to follow.

To (try and) sum it up:

A year ago McNabb urges Philly to sign Vick as a third string QB, Philly then trades McNabb to allow Kevin Kolb, the second stringer, to become the starting QB in the off season. Next, Kolb gets hurt allowing Vick to be the starting QB, and then Vick gets hurt to give the job back to Kolb three games later--that last step in a game played between McNabb's old team and his new one. If you're a little lost, you're not the only one, Vick's return to the field has been anything but typical.

Up until week two this season, Vick hadn't started at QB since returning to the NFL after his prison sentence (you may remember something involving an illegal dog-fighting operation?) and the way he's played in the first three games has blown just about everybody away. He looks like himself again, only better. He's more comfortable in the pocket and knows how to use his game-changing quickness and running ability only when he has to. Up until his injury on Sunday, he was once again a starting quarterback for an NFL franchise and off to what can only be called an impressive start through the first three weeks of play.

Vick is a lightning rod, there's no two ways about it. Everybody's got an opinion on the former Hokie now that he's done his time in the pokey and is back playing like (if not better than) he used to when he was under center for the Atlanta Falcons. I've brought the topic of Vick up when surrounded by sports fans and non-sports fans alike, and it only lends more credence to my thought that the guy is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the sporting world since Mike Tyson.

Like Tyson, who served a jail sentence for raping a beauty queen, Vick's crime is heinous and without justification. He bank rolled a dog-fighting ring and did the time for his truly gut-wrenching crime. The reason Vick is so debated and hated and stuck up for all at the same time is due to a lot of intersecting factors, which I'd like to explore even though the story has lost some luster now that Vick's ribs appear to be in pieces after a literally bone-crunching hit early in Sunday's game.

I get in trouble with a lot of my pals for sticking up for Vick, something I don't do with unequivocal pride, but with the belief that second chances are as American as apple pie. I wrote in a previous post about the demise of Roger Clemens' public image, and about how the Rocket was going through a familiar cycle that many celebrities have taken a trip around. He was built up to hero status, only to be torn down as a cheater and a liar. The third step in this celebrity scandal process for a lot of transgressors is to be built back up again by the public that has both loved and scorned them. It's that last step that I want nothing to do with when it comes to Clemens, but something I am willing to do for Michael Vick.

Vick's crimes are absolutely beyond the pale. Torturing animals for personal entertainment is one of the worst things I can possibly imagine a person can do, and it's why so many people will never, ever give Vick the time of day again. In a lot of people's eyes, the man is evil incarnate and shouldn't be on the street today, let alone on a football field throwing touchdown passes in front of sold out crowds and millions of viewers at home. It sickens a lot of people that the guy is making around $4 million this year when he did what he did (though with all of the folks that he owes money, and the ins and outs of contract negotiation, he ain't gonna see nearly that much, but that's beside the point).

I get all that. I do. But I just think that Vick deserves that second chance that I won't give Roger Clemens. For one, he did his time. He went to a federal penitentiary for almost two years, where not only the glory of the football field was taken from him, but his freedom. I've never seen the inside of a jail cell, but I can imagine that going from NFL superstar to federal inmate for a year or so has an affect on the way you look at the world. I think that Vick came out of prison apologetic, repentant, and focused.

I think he looks at life through a lens that few of us who criticize him can understand, and I don't think that being convicted and then punished for his crimes means that he doesn't get to do his job anymore now that his freedom has been restored. I have absolutely no beef with the guy being allowed to play quarterback in the NFL again, because while that profession is indeed a privilege and not a right, he happens to play the sport that is one of the world's only true meritocracies. If you're good, you play. If you're the best at your position on the team, you start. If you're head and shoulders above the rest of the guys that play your position, you're a superstar. It's that simple.

It's the reason that Vick would never have been black-listed by the NFL, and I think it will end up helping him become a much better person at the end of the day. The guy is a creep, okay, I get that, but I certainly don't wish a wasted life upon anyone, considering how lucky everybody on this planet is to be able to live one out. Moments are precious, and I bet if you ask Vick if he now knows that, he wouldn't be able to get the "yes sir" out of his mouth fast enough.

Let's be honest, no matter how much or little jail time he did, it wasn't going to erase the fact that he murdered animals and funded a dog-fighting ring. Nothing is ever going to get that stain off of Vick and there is absolutely no way around that. So what are we to do, as a society? We've jailed him, scorned him in the public eye and belittled him in every way. Guess what? He's still here. He's still a person and one that happens to be blessed with freakish athletic talents that have never been seen at the position he plays on the field.

The real reason I like Vick as a redemption story so much is that he seems to be genuinely appreciative of his second chance at life and more importantly, because he has learned so much from his mistakes (something this writer struggles with doing on a daily basis). It's hard to recognize your faults and have the will to make changes that will correct them. If you watched the interview Vick sat down for on Fox NFL Sunday or this one, where he talks to his former coach Jim Mora, you cannot deny his authenticity or his commitment to change. His outlook has completely shifted and he is using his second act in the NFL to redirect the public gaze away from his talents as a quarterback and towards positive avenues off the field.

With the support of the Humane Society, Vick now uses his celebrity status and his tenure as dog-fighting ringmaster and federal inmate to try and show kids what not to do and the public in general why dog-fighting must be eradicated. Sure, the second part seems like common sense, but it is obviously a fight that must be had, because Michael Vick isn't the only guy in the country that has pit animal against animal for their own entertainment. The problem continues in many parts of the country, especially the southern United States, and he is now doing everything he can to help animal rights groups make it a thing of the past.

So if you want to hate Vick, go ahead and hate him, I'm just not coming along for the ride. I for one admire a man that can sink so low and pull himself back up a changed person and a positive influence. I've always enjoyed watching him on the football field, but now I can also enjoy his story as a tale of a man redeemed by his own failures. I'm not going to forgive him for what he did, but I'm not going to make him suffer for trying to make it right either.