Breaking Down the Super Bowl Matchups

Despite my best efforts, New England has advanced to the AFC Championship game. Apparently, defeating the Patriots in Madden 2008 with the Jacksonville Jaguar had no impact on the outcome of the actual game. Maybe I should have subbed in David Garrard, as the original rosters still had Leftwich as the team’s quarterback. Well, I can always try again this week with the Chargers.

With four remaining teams, the league has a limited amount of potential Super Bowl matchups. Luckily, most will have an interesting slant that should provide for plenty of SportsCenter fodder over the two week dead period before Super Bowl Kickoff. At the very least, we will have matchups featuring exciting teams, as opposed to recent thrillers such as Pittsburgh-Seattle (OK, any Super Bowl featuring Seattle would be a snooze-fest), Tampa-Oakland, and the all-time favorite, Baltimore-New York Giants, which featured the dymanic quarterback battle between Kerry Collins and Trent Dilfer.

Scenario 1: New England – Green Bay (55% probability)
Network execs are foaming at the mouth for this one. Not only would it feature two of the NFL’s most popular players (Brady and Favre) but it would be a re-match of Super Bowl XXXI. Of course, fans galore would tune in to A.) see if The Pats can achieve perfection, or B.) root like hell for the Packers to knock New England and their grating fans off of their collective perch. I personally would be in Camp B. Potential downside: All the talk about Favre’s retirement over the last two years? Quadruple it.

Scenario 2: New England – New York (30% probability)
The story is not quite as riveting for this game, but again, you would have New England striving for perfection against one of the teams that gave it the most trouble during the regular season. Appeal outside of the Northeast might be limited, but who cares about the rest of the country, anyway? Everything always seems to revolve around New York and Boston, so this would be a fitting addition. Ratings for the Pats-Giants season finale set all kinds of ratings records, so the game would not disappoint from a revenue perspective. The game would be close, although Belichick likely “obtained” some information from the previous game that could prove useful in a re-match.

Scenario 3: San Diego – Green Bay (10% probability)
Of all the scenarios, this is probably the least exciting. Sure, it would be great for Brett Favre to get another Super Bowl ring, but what else is there to talk about? The Chargers are a solid team, but are battling through injuries at key positions and simply haven’t been a very fun team to watch lately. We would have the opportunity to see what crazy, idiotic thing Rivers does next, and the wailing lamentations coming from the general direction of New England would be an added bonus.

Scenario 4: San Diego – New York (5% probability)
At face value, not an overly intriguing matchup, but you can bet that reporters will be asking Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers all week long about Draft Day 2004. Eli Manning looked like the whiny, immature crybaby back then, but he has since blossomed into a savvy quarterback. Rivers, on the other hand, seems to be going out of his way to look a giant douche. It certainly would be interesting to imagine how both teams' fortunes would have been had the Manning-Rivers swap not occurred. Both of these teams underachieved somewhat during the 2007 campaign: San Diego at 11-5 and NY at 10-6, with a combined three wins over teams with winning records. Of course, they certainly picked the right time to get hot, and have since combined for three tough playoff road wins, plus San Diego’s home win over Tennessee.