Super Bowl XLV: Steelers, Packers Similar Teams With Similar Styles, Same Roots

If the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers play a game that is anything like the regular-season game they played last season at Heinz Field ...

We're in for the best Super Bowl ever.

That game, on Dec. 20, 2009, was won by Pittsburgh, 37-36, on a 19-yard touchdown pass from Ben Roethlisberger to Mike Wallace on the game's final play, breaking a five-game losing streak in a dismal season that the Steelers have redeemed this year. It had everything, including an onside kick by Pittsburgh after it took a late lead that was recovered by the Packers and led to Green Bay's go-ahead score. (Onside kicks, of course, are not unknown in the Super Bowl.) And if you like numbers, Roethlisberger threw for 503 yards in that game.

But this game between two historic and nationally-followed franchises won't be like that one.

The precedent for this struggle seems to lie in one of those annual AFC North Steelers-Ravens defensive struggles, four of the last five of which were decided by three points. Although the presence of Roethlisberger and the Packers' Aaron Rodgers suggests that the quarterbacks are good enough to put up a few points.

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The opening line from a few oddsmakers in Vegas makes the Packers a two-and-a-half to three-point favorite, a turnaround from a week ago or so when the generic line, without teams, suggested that the AFC team would be favored by three. There is no over-under out yet, but it certainly won't be 73.

Someone spewing conventional wisdom is bound to tell us this week and next how much more experience the Steelers have, having won Super Bowls in 2006 and 2009.

Forget it.

In 2008, the Giants had far fewer players with Super Bowl experience than the Patriots and look what happened. Same for the Saints against the Colts a year ago. And in the 2009 game, in which the Steelers beat the Cardinals, Pittsburgh had the experience but needed to drive down the field to win in the final seconds.

In other words, either Super Bowl "nerves'' don't matter. Or both teams are nervous and nerves cancel each other out.

These are similar teams, both on offense and defense.

They feature two of the NFL's best quarterbacks, perhaps No. 3 and No. 3a behind Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. Or 4 and 4a if you throw Drew Brees in ahead of them. And, as Bill Cowher, the Steelers' former coach, put it on CBS Sunday, Roethlisberger and Rodgers are probably "the game's best improvisational quarterbacks,'' able to evade pass rushers and turn broken plays into a big ones.

Moreover, each has a big "defensive'' play that helped save a playoff game.

Rodgers did it Sunday when he caught Brian Urlacher after Urlacher appeared to be taking an interception for a touchdown. Chicago didn't score on the series.

Roethlisberger did in 2006 after Indianapolis' Nick Harper seemed to be heading for the winning touchdown after picking up a Jerome Bettis fumble. Then Mike Vanderjagt missed what would have been a game-tying field goal and the Steelers beat the Colts.

But "ranking'' quarterbacks is tiresome and ignores the fact that 53-man teams play the game. Although the "who's the best quarterback?'' seems to be the favorite topic of both network talkers -- many of them former players and coaches, talk radio and the "social media,'' in which everyone says what he or she thinks and debates on "who's the best?'' often run amok.

In fact, the similarity between Steelers and Packers is not only in the quarterbacks but in the defenses. And they go back to 1992, when Cowher became coach of the Steelers and hired as assistants both Dom Capers and Dick LeBeau. Capers was the defensive coordinator and LeBeau was one of his defensive assistants, not the opposite, as conventional wisdom would have it.

Out of that meeting came the 3-4 system that two teams use, characterized by the "zone blitz,'' in which skilled linebackers blitz and linemen drop into coverage. It's now in use around the NFL but nobody does it better than Pittsburgh and Green Bay -- the Packers scored on it Sunday when 335-pound nose tackle B.J. Raji picked off a Caleb Hanie pass (this is about the Super Bowl teams so we won't go into why Hanie was playing for the Bears) and returned it 18 yards for a touchdown.

That same conventional wisdom, usually enunciated by network announcers, is that LeBeau "invented'' the system. He might have perfected it although he and Capers used much the same defensive strategy, which also includes blitzes by cornerbacks, like the one by Ike Taylor that produced a touchdown for the Steelers against the Jets on Sunday.

Actually, in 1994, Capers was given credit for the first zone blitzes. In truth, it was a combined effort -- Capers, LeBeau and Cowher.

Capers, as the defensive coordinator, got the first shot at a head coaching job, taking over expansion Carolina in 1995 and getting the Panthers to the NFC title game (at Green Bay) in his second year. LeBeau, who became the coordinator in 1995, didn't get his head coaching shot until three years later and it was with moribund Cincinnati, where he went 12-33 in three seasons and returned to the Steelers as coordinator again in 2003 and gained acclaim for his work with Pittsburgh's Super Bowl champions in 2006 and 2009.

In any case, those defenses, both of which wilted a bit after the Packers and Steelers took leads over the Bears and Jets Sunday, may well be the deciding factor. And injuries in those games may take their toll -- if Pittsburgh's Pro Bowl rookie center, Maurkice Pouncey, can't play, his replacement, Doug Legursky, may have problems with Raji, who during the second-half of the season became one of those nose tackles who's an inside pass-rushing force, not just a big body to keep blockers off the linebackers. That's the role the Steelers' Casey Hampton plays -- he's very good at it but he hasn't made the plays that Raji has.

Maybe that's why the Packers are the favorites.

Maybe it's because the Steelers lost Pouncey and wore down after taking a 24-0 lead against the Jets to win 24-19. Or maybe it's because Pittsburgh won at home and the Packers are the hot team right now, having won road games at Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago, much as the Steelers did in 2006 and the Giants in 2008.

Or maybe it's because the Packers in those three wins finally found a running back in James Starks after being without much of a run game after Ryan Grant was injured in the opener. Starks balances out Rashard Mendenhall, Pittsburgh's first-rate running back, although he's hardly as experienced. In fact, with Starks, Green Bay was third of 12 teams in rushing yards per game in the playoffs after finishing the regular season 24th of 32.

But numbers and systems don't win Super Bowls, big plays do and turnovers do -- Raji's touchdown was the decider for Green Bay Sunday, and the strip sack by Taylor on Mark Sanchez and William Gay's late first-half return for the TD that made it 24-0 were the deciding points in the AFC game.

Yes, we'll spend two weeks talking about Rodgers and Roethlisberger.

But the guy who will win the game may well be someone we barely know.

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