Super Bowl Preview/Response

This was originally intended to be a response to Ryan's comments on my earlier post, but I thought it would serve it's purpose better as a Super Bowl preview article.

Many Bears fans are disgruntled right now because of a perceived lack of respect from the prognosticators. Here is what I say to that:

I don't think I'd neccessarily count myself as a Bears hater, but more or less a Bears doubter. They have the record to prove that they're a successful team. I can't deny that...but consider:

Teams the Bears lost to: Miami (6-10), New England (17-13), Green Bay (8-8).

Teams the Bears narrowly deafeated (by less than a TD): Minnesota (6-10) 19-16, Arizona (5-11) 24-23, Tampa Bay (4-12) 34-31 OT, Detroit (3-13) 26-21.

I know that more than just a score tells the story of a game, but I see two bad losses, and four more ugly wins. Couple that with the fact that they needed OT too beat an exceedingly average team (Seattle) in the playoffs, at home, and that they did crush New Orleans, a team from the south who practiced indoors all week, and I feel I have good reason to doubt the Bears in a game against Indy where weather will not be a factor.

Just for reference, the same set of statistics for Indy:

Teams the Colts lost to: Dallas (9-7), Tennessee (8-8), Jacksonville (8-8), Houston (6-10).

Teams the Colts narrowly defeated: Giants (8-8) 26-21, Jets (10-6) 31-28, Tennessee (8-8) 14-13, Denver (9-7) 34-31, Buffalo (7-9) 17-16, Miami (6-10) 27-22.

I count one bad loss and two ugly wins there.

Finally, another way you can compare teams is through common opponets. The Bears and Colts had these opponents in common during the regular season: Giants, Jets, Patriots, Buffalo, and Miami. The Bears went 3-2 against those teams, and scored 114 pts while allowing 75. The Colts went 5-0 against those teams, and scored 128 while allowing 107.

All of this was basically a long way of showing that the Bears are a more volatile team than the Colts. Volatility is not a good thing in the Super Bowl.

Football is also a team sport, but perhaps the one position that can affect games more than any other is QB. The Bears have Rex Grossman, a QB who when he's been up, he's been way up, but when he's been down, he's been way down. The argument can, and has been made that because of his injuries, this is essentially his rookie season. Playing time wise, this may be the case, but Grossman has been involved, to some extent, in an NFL offense for four seasons now. He's had time to get used to the speed the game, and to review defenses.

During Manning's rookie season, he threw 28 interceptions, and has thrown more than 20 only one more time in his career. He was also the first pick in the draft on a TERRIBLE Colts team and thrown into the fire immediately. Grossman was drafted 22nd overall by a Bears team that had one the division the year before, and he's been gradually grafted into the offense due to his injuries. Manning's exploits since have been greatly chronicled throughout the media. The one comparison I have here is that beating the Patriots, in the playoffs was Manning's version of the Red Sox beating the Yankees in the ALCS in 2004. It wasn't the World Series, but it was THEIR World Series. The Sox went on to blow Houston out of the water after that. I see Manning having one of the best games of his career on Sunday, because basically, the monkey is off his back.