Sunday, February 01, 2009

Why I'm confident today's game will be good...

In all the talk about tonight's game, I'm confident that it'll be a good one for a reason I haven't heard mentioned yet-- both of the quarterbacks have played in the Super Bowl before. I wonder if history supports the theory?

By my estimation, here are the Super Bowls in which both QBs had some Super Bowl experience:

- 1998 (1997 season), Broncos def. Packers. Great game.

- 1994, Cowboys def. Bills. Better than the previous year; nothing too memorable about this one.

- 1990, 49ers def. Broncos. Blowout.

- 1979, Steelers def. Cowboys. Great game.

- 1976, Steelers def. Cowboys. Good game.

- 1974, Dolphins def. Vikings. Nothing memorable; 24-7 was the final.

So the 1990 game was a blowout, if I remember correctly the 1994 game was not indicative of the final score, and the 1974 game wasn't great one way or the other. The 1976 game was a very good game, and 1979 and 1998 were two of the best Super Bowls of all time. Not a landslide one way or the other, but I think there's reason to believe that the game could be a pretty good one ex ante.

I was surprised at how many Super Bowls have had one QB playing with experience; just eyeballing the list, I believe it's around half.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

1979 wasn't as close as the score indicated. Pittsburgh was up and outplaying Dallas most of the game. Then, they went up by 17 points midway through the 4th quarter. Dallas scored a TD then got an onside kick and scored another, but at that point there was very little time left in the game. It was kind of like the Pittsburgh vs. San Diego playoff game.

Dallas killed Denver. Both QBs (Staubach and Morton) had Super Bowl experience.

LA Raiders killed the Skins. Both had Super Bowl experience (Plunkett vs. Theismann).

Anonymous said...

Maybe you are onto something . . .