No Rodgers-Manning Super Bowl, and Seahawks play one half too little

My dream match-up for the Super Bowl would have pitted Aaron Rodgers against Peyton Manning, with an obligatory, but brief, stopover in Lambeau Field to take care of some unfinished business with that Seattle team. Unfortunately none of those teams made it out of this weekend. First, the Broncos demonstrated that playing cupcakes for the past three months does not prepare a team for real combat. Also in evidence was the fact that Manning is not infallible, as some might like to fantasize about. His pick-six against the Saints in the Super Bowl XLIV sealed the Colts defeat in that game, and Saturday against the Ravens it was his mistakes that doomed the AFC’s top seed. A first quarter interception returned for a touchdown, and in overtime Manning threw the same kind of ill-advised across-the-body pass into the middle of the field—and landing in an opponent’s belly—that sent millions of Vikings fans into temporary insanity during the 2009 NFC championship game. Manning—154-70 in the regular season—now has a 9-11 won-loss record in the playoffs. People might not be aware of the fact that in the Colts’ 2006 Super Bowl run, Manning was mostly ordinary, throwing seven interceptions and just three touchdown passes in four games. 

In regard to the evening match-up on Saturday, I actually had this idea that the Packers defense was improved over last season’s 32^nd ranked squad, which only seemed “adequate” because the Packers also led the league in takeaway ratio. But 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick—playing in that newfangled “read-option” offense—made the Packers’ defense look a high school squad. Although Rodgers was able to keep pace into the third quarter, the Packers’ inconsistency on offense was no match for their defense’s incapacity, as Kaepernick threw for 263 yards and ran for nearly 200 more. Many people assume that Rodgers—like Manning or Tom Brady—can single-handedly tip the field with his mere presence; but this is meaningless unless their teammates also cooperate. 

That leaves the Seahawks. Most people will marvel at the fact that Russell Wilson actually propelled the team from a 20-point deficit to a seemingly upset victory, before Falcons’ quarterback Matt Ryan awoke from his trance and threw two complete passes in a row to put Atlanta in position for the actual game-winning score. People will gush about Wilson’s “heroics,” although as usual this would not have been necessary had the Seahawks played two quarters and one more scoring drive. I also couldn’t help but notice how often Wilson would roll out and the untidy Falcons were very cooperative about giving him mile-wide lanes to run into at various opportune moments. But people are less willing to dissect the fact that the Seahawks gained nearly 200 yards in the first half and didn’t score a single point, and a mere field goal might have been the difference in the game. Two second quarter trips into the red zone were inexplicably wasted. Of course, the ebb and flow of a game can change at any moment and can be unpredictable—such as the Falcons’ sudden loss of energy on both sides of the ball after taking a 27-7 lead—but with few exceptions the Seahawks have played their best ball in the second half of games; anyone who has followed this team (or was forced to), knows this team was never out of a game—their 6 losses were decided by a total of 26 points. 

That leaves one more thought after this weekend. I have mentioned before that few “dual threat” quarterbacks have made it as far as the Super Bowl, and none have won it; “traditional” passers have won every Super Bowl. But three teams in the NFC playoffs run “read-option” offenses, and at the moment one is still standing—that being the 49ers, who adopted the “system” relatively late. Had Kaepernick been named the starter at the beginning of the year, he might have turned out to be the best of the three quarterbacks in the system, and there is a better than even chance the 49ers will beat Falcons if the latter’s defense cannot find a way to plug-up more holes than they did against the Seahawks. But is this the “future” of the quarterback position? When the “read-option” offense—which is just as much an acknowledgment of the limitations as it is the strengths of a quarterback—is “figured out” by defenses, will it have the same success? 

We’ve heard talk since the late 1990s of the advent of a “new” kind of quarterback—the “dual threat” kind—but they have shown brightly for a year or two before fading from view. Robert Griffin III this year—like Michael Vick before him—has demonstrated the pitfalls of placing a team’s destiny on his back, or rather, legs. Will Wilson suffer the same fate? Watching him on the field does give one the impression that his small size makes it difficult for defenders to get a hand on him, and so far he has resisted any noticeable injury. But how will he respond when he is injured? The same way as RGIII and Vick? There are locals who are already putting Wilson in the Hall of Fame, but one outstanding season does not a great career make.