History Lesson

Football historians, analysts, and statisticians have had a lot to say about what it takes to win the Super Bowl. If there's anything that they agree on, it's that there isn't any one quality that will get you to the top of the heap. Witness, for example, the 2006 Colts, who not only finished the season on a down-note and with a historically bad defense, but also took the unusual home-away-home path through the AFC playoffs and then won the Super Bowl in the torrential downpour of Hurricane Grossman. None of it made a ton of sense, but it all worked out.

Oddly enough, this unpredictability does create one semi-reliable measure for postseason success: The Team of Destiny Theory. In most seasons, there is a team who combines serious late-season/post-season grit and momentum with a number of major gifts from the Football Gods to roll through its conference to the Super Bowl. Last year, the Colts got Bob Sanders back and found a run defense, and the Football Gods caused Marlon McCree to fumble a game-ending Tom Brady-interception back to the Pats, thus bringing the AFC championship to the dome. (This is not to say the Colts wouldn't have won at SD, but being at home sure helped, and it also brought about the official Single Greatest Sporting Contest That I Have Ever Witnessed.) Often the Team of Destiny is one that despite looking downright mediocre for much of the first half of the season, gets hot in about late October and manages, somehow, to roll through the conference playoffs to the Super Bowl.

Once you get to the Super Bowl, however, the Team of Destiny label requires some serious re-assessment, as there are two ways that this can go:

1. If you're a real for sure Team of Destiny and your opponent is the cream of a somewhat mediocre conference, then you have a great chance at riding that momentum off into the sunset with a win that can range from solid to just-barely, but that is not a blowout. Again, the '06 Colts are a prime example, as the Bears were simply not up to the task last year and Hurricane Grossman prevented the Colts offense from making it a blowout. Other classic Team of Destiny examples of this variety are the '05 Steelers, the '01 Pats (well, any of the Pats three titles, for that matter), the '97 Broncos, or the '88 49ers. These Teams of Destiny are exciting, often unexpected, and provide the avid spectator with an entertaining Super Bowl.

2. Other years, however, the Team of Destiny represents a sub-par conference. They've done some truly amazing work to get to the Super Bowl, but they end up discovering that after all that amazing work, they're mainly just a Happy To Be Here Team of Destiny. The HTBH teams provide us with amazing playoff runs and mind-numbingly bad Super Bowls. The '98 Falcons are the quintessential example here. After going 7-9 the year before, the upstart Falcons streaked to 14-2 in the regular season, beat San Francisco by two in the divisional round, and eked out three-point Conference Championship win vs. the Vikings (who set the NFL record that year for points in a season). They were so thrilled to get to the Super Bowl that their starting CB famously got arrested for soliciting a prostitute. They proceeded to get smoked by the mini-dynasty Broncos, who clearly were a lot more than Happy to Be There. The Falcons sunk to 5-11 the following year, replacing definition #3, "an accidentally successful stroke, as in billiards" under the dictionary entry "fluke." Other classic HTBH Teams of Destiny include the '01 Giants, the '94 Chargers, the '89 Broncos, and, most memorably, the '87 Pats. These teams had a nice run, but arrived at a championship game against an opponent for whom they were completely unprepared. Destiny can hide critical flaws for only so long, and momentum can carry you only so far. There will be a reckoning, and the results will not be pretty.

I am making this analysis by extremely roundabout way of explaining why I have no plans to watch this year's Super Bowl. When Giants kicker Larry Tynes hit a 47-yard field goal in overtime to finally beat the Packers (he had missed the two previous, shorter kicks which would have likely won the game), the metal security gate came slamming down on my interest in this year's NFL season. That interest had already been critically injured by the Colts no-show against the Chargers, but the possibility of a Packers-Pats Super Bowl left a scant chance that the game would be worth watching. The Giants, however, threaten to set the standard for Happy To Be Here Super Bowl teams. To wit:

At the end of last season, there was a great likelihood that coach Tom Coughlin would be fired, as his hardass methods seemed to have become ineffective. Pro-bowl running back Tiki Barber had retired and lobbed all manner of insults at his former team while looking absurdly shiny-headed behind an analyst's desk on NBC. Coughlin was retained, but only on a "last chance" basis. Quarterback Eli Manning looked shaky as ever in the early going, and freakishly large running back Brandon Jacobs kept breaking himself. The defense was mediocre. Then, as the season progressed, the Giants gained momentum. They almost beat the Pats in a final-week stand against Evil, an effort for which they deserve highest karmic marks. They have since proceeded to do the unthinkable, winning on the road three times in the playoffs, defeating teams which had a combined 20-5 home record this season.

All of these unexpected story lines and karmic blessings are about to run smack into the brick wall that is the [expletive deleted] 2007 New England Patriots. The Giants are lucky to be here, the Pats (hitting myself in the knee with a ball-peen hammer) belong here. I'm too ill about this to go into detail. Let's just peek into the future at some excerpts from the box score:

Pats 42, Giants 17

Eli Manning: 23/40, 235 yds, 1 TD, 3 INTs

Plaxico Burress: 5 catches, 105 yds, 1 TD, 1 fumble lost

Brandon Jacobs: 12 carries, 83 yds, 1 TD, left in 3rd quarter with exploded knee/ankle

Wily Wes Welker: 7 catches, 115 yds, 2 TDs

Randy Moss: 2 catches, 85 yds, 2 TDs

Tom Brady: Did not play (fractured body), due to being run over before the game by a Toyota Celica with plates from an undetermined Midwestern state.

Bill Belichick: Cheater.

Ugh.

P.S. GOOD NEWS! A press conference informs us hopeful Indy fans that Coach Dungy will be back with the Colts for another year! The wounds are salved slightly. Slightly.