Winning the Super Bowl among this extremely weak playoff crop is like winning a game of Yahtzee. You're pumped because you've won, but then you remember that you're playing Yahtzee. This mishmash of flawed and incomplete football teams is full of token "one-and-done" squads that wouldn't even be worthy of a title shot in an average year. The Tampa-bound Cardinals and Steelers just aren't "Super Bowl champions."
In clinching their Super Bowl berths, both teams simply have proven that they are the strongest of the mediocre.
The MVPs in a seniors-only wheelchair basketball league.
The biggest ladies' men at the Star Trek convention.
The skinniest kids at fat camp.
Tom Brady must be sitting at home having a "Finkle is Einhorn"-sort of breakdown. A Belichick-coached, Brady-led team would have rolled through the playoffs. That team would have picked apart the Cardinals, a 9-7 team in a division that might as well have been considered minor league football. They would have scored at will against the Arizona defense and, for the love of God, double-teamed Larry Fitzgerald on every play. They would have completely shut down the Steelers' anemic offense and given Ben Roethlisberger flashbacks to his motorcycle accident. The Pats would have exposed all 12 playoff teams for what they truly are: average football teams.
I'm not saying this hasn't been an amazing year of football and an incredibly fun month of playoff games. It's this year's mediocrity that has bred close games and great stories: the turnaround Dolphins and their "wildcat" offense, Kurt Warner's revitalization, the emergence of rookie quarterbacks Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco. The parity in football is at an all-time high. It's just the level of play that's low.
See, a lot of the powerhouses are in their "awkward years." The Packers just played their first season without Favre. The Pats were adjusting to Brady's injury. The Colts were unhealthy all year. The situation in Dallas was such a joke that it's not even worth making one about it. And the Giants had to scramble to figure out life without Plaxico Burress.
Do you realize how many teams are taking things in a "new direction" right now? Jon Gruden, Mike Shanahan and Tony Dungy won't be pacing the sidelines next year. Those are three names you just associate with football. Steve Spagnuolo, Rex Ryan, Josh McDaniels and other top coordinators are leaving their elite systems behind and taking head coaching vacancies.
The league is in flux! I just know that come Week 1 of next season, my dad is going to call me with at least five "whatever happened to that 'Mangenius' guy"-type questions. He's going to think he napped straight through a couple of seasons and woke up to a new NFL.
And it is a new NFL. The Powers That Be are regrouping. The status quo has shifted slightly. For proof, I present to you your 2008-09 playoff quarterbacks: Tarvaris Jackson, Chad Pennington, Kerry Collins, Jake Delhomme, Joe Flacco, Donovan McNabb, Matt Ryan, Philip Rivers, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Kurt Warner and Peyton Manning. That's four should-be backups, three models of inconsistency, two rookies, a 37-year-old minister and a stud and a half. That is not exactly a group of elites.
So, while a Super Bowl victory is always meaningful, this year's champion just won't mean much to me. I'll remember them like the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals: a team that got lucky during a strange year of baseball and undeservingly is now on the same sacred list as the 1998 Yankees, 1976 Reds and other legendary teams. I'll be watching come Feb. 1, but once the game's over, I'm pretty sure I'll never think about it again.
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