The best revenge is to live well, and to that end the future Hall of Fame quarterback who everyone said was finished came through in a big game and now looks to win his second Super Bowl ring.
The story line works fine, but it would play a lot nicer around here if the names were tweaked a bit.
It will be Denver’s Peyton Manning, and not Aaron Rodgers, trying to guide his team to a win in Super Bowl 50. Last weekend’s NFC championship game was a grim reminder of what might have been.
Although after watching a few minutes of that controlled demolition, you started to wonder if maybe it was better that the Packers’ season ended when it did.
In the space of about three and a half hours last Sunday, the Carolina Panthers distanced itself from the rest of the conference field, applying a woodshed-grade whipping to the No. 2-seed, Arizona, and leaving no doubt about who is alpha dog in this year’s NFC.
After another Carolina blowout win, it is obvious that all the talk about which one of the league’s elite would be the one to ground the overrated 15-1 Panthers was misdirected. Carolina has quietly emerged as one of the most dominant teams of the 16-game era.
Since the league went to a 16-game schedule in 1978, only two teams have finished 15-1 and gone on to win the Super Bowl – the 1984 San Francisco 49ers and the 1985 Chicago Bears.
The 49ers that year won their playoff games by 11 and 23 points, and then won the Super Bowl by 32. The ’85 Bears won their playoff games by margins of 21 and 24 and won the Super Bowl by 36.
Should Carolina beat Denver to complete the 18-1 run, the comparisons to other dominant seasons will start rolling in.
That could be tricky, because the Panthers’ approach has often been of the cat-and-mouse variety, where they put away the game before halftime, become distracted and throw it into cruise control. Their 7-point divisional round win over Seattle is misleading in that they led 31-0 at half. They led New York by 28 points before the Giants came back to tie it. Against the Packers, Carolina went up by 20 at half and hung on.
As for the Packers, and where they stacked up this season with the Super Bowl contestants, they played both and neither result was pretty. Prior to the Panthers’ 37-29 win in Charlotte, Denver’s defense had shut down the Packers in their 29-10 Nov. 1 victory, holding Rodgers to a typographical non-error 50 yards of passing.
Panthers quarterback Cam Newton has proved that, regardless of how the Super Bowl shakes out, this was his year. Not Rodgers’, not Tom Brady’s, Russell Wilson’s or Carson Palmer’s, but Newton’s. He will rightfully win the league MVP award.
For Manning, in the twilight of a great career, another Super Bowl shot is the perfect sendoff. He won one and lost one playing in Indianapolis, and he already lost one Super Bowl playing for Denver two years ago. That defeat, a 43-8 job that was decided about 10 minutes in, got the Broncos coach exiled to Chicago.
Peripheral story lines for this year’s Super Bowl abound: New sheriff meets the aging gunslinger, who wants another ring to match the two on his little brother’s mantle. Before settling on fallback career as NFL quarterback, new sheriff wanted to be a ref; still can’t stop signaling first down when he makes one. New sheriff also has a Santa Claus/Robin Hood thing going, handing out league-owned footballs to fans who didn’t pay for them.
But enough of the gripping side drama. As for the actual game, whether Manning can make his storybook ending happen remains to be seen. Keeping it interesting for more than a quarter would be a good start.
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