The Mud And The Blood And The Bears And The Steelers

On to the second round, and arguably the marquee matchup: Chicago-Pittsburgh.

Hoo doggie. You can smell the concussions from here. And you don’t even have to close your eyes to picture the scene: 38 degrees, wind off the lake, occasional showers, lights on, grass in the end zones only, no heaters on the benches, Papa Bear storming up one sideline and Chuck Noll cooling it on the other, capes for everyone, Grantland Rice and Red Smith up in the press box banging it out for their respective papers, Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier up in the TV booth for CBS and Lindsey Nelson on the radio side, wearing a sport coat in a natty DNA pattern.

And then the game itself: Two teams almost completely of different eras going at it.

No kidding. The most amazing thing about this matchup is that it’s nearly devoid of overlap. Of the Bears’ top 25 players, only six date from the ‘70s and later, with only one (Walter Payton) on offense. Of the Steelers’ top 25, 20 date from the ‘70s and later, with none playing before 1950. If you’re looking for head-to-heads, you’re pretty much reduced to Sweetness vs. the remnants of the Steel Curtain, with Kevin Butler around to kick field goals.

So how does one go about evaluating such an out-of-phase matchup?

One goes to the eternal places: the lines and the defense.

The Bears have had a disproportionate share of the game’s best linemen of whatever era they happened to be playing in, except now. That is not to say that Bulldog Trafton is better than Jonathan Odgen. Can’t be said, can’t be compared. Any linemen comparison works its way around to the size of one versus the size of the other, and you’re forced to conclude that bigger and great is better than smaller and great.

The Steelers have had good offensive linemen over the last 40 years, including two Hall of Famers. They have had good D-linemen over the last 50 years, including two HOFers.

Defensively the Steelers prefer to emphasize linebackers, and have produced two HOFers at the position. They back it up with three HOF-caliber D-backs – Mel Blount, Rod Woodson, and Troy Polomalu – and an HOF defensive coach.

The problem is that the Bears can trot out two nearly complete sets of HOF O-linemen, D-linemen, and linebackers, and they throw in a couple of HOF D-backs (albeit two-way players) for good measure.

How do you get around that? More specifically, how do the Steelers get around it?

They can’t. They simply cannot.

The Steelers can’t because they don’t have enough offense to negate the Bears’ tangible advantage in the lines. Terry Bradshaw is a wobbly QB. Jerome Bettis and Franco Harris are merely Bettis and Harris, not Jim Brown or Barry Sanders. Throwing on the Bears is never a bad idea regardless of the reality level, but it’s Terry Bradshaw throwing to Stallworth and Swann and, oops, Gary Ballman, and even Red Grange, who had to be on his toes for five passes a game, can shut that down. And, heaven forbid, if the Steelers went completely against type and spread the field, they’d be trotting out Hines Ward and Roy Jefferson, and they don’t exactly overmatch the motely assortment of short Ivy leaguers and slow cover corners that have been favored by the Bears through the generations.

Which is not to say the Bears have it sussed on the offensive end. Sid Luckman is the best QB on the field and ditto Payton for the running backs, and Gale Sayers delivers speed and versatility, but the passing targets are woeful and depth is an issue. Grange and Bronko Nagurski are HOFers more on legend than performance, and the third and fourth wide receivers are the worst you’ll find anywhere. I would honestly take Kevin Walter and Jabar Gaffney over Morris and Kavanaugh, and they’re the K-cars of second-string wide receivers. The all-time Bears would be better off splitting out George McAfee and Devin Hester than trotting out Morris and Kavanaugh on third down, and they’re the bloody second-string kick-returners.

For any other team the Steelers’ secondary strength would put them in a pickle. For the Bears, it just plays to their strength. Does it really matter than Rod Woodson shuts down Harlon Hill? Nope; Luckman wasn’t going to throw to him anyway.

So all signs point to a defensive struggle – a misnomer, since it’s the offenses that struggle. Even Lindsey Nelson, as gifted with the tongue as Gale Sayers was with the hips, is struck dumb by the stupefaction produced by this game. Three yards and a cloud of mud is treating this game too kindly.

Ah, but something happens eventually. George Halas falls asleep on the bench. No! Running a two-minute offense consisting of over-the-middle dumps to Mike Ditka and incomplete passes heaved in the direction of Bill Hewitt, Luckman throws a screen pass to Gale Sayers, who gets wide and takes it 34 yards for a score. Butler misses the extra point, and the Bears go into halftime with a 6-0 lead.

And then the defenses really get stingy.

Bradshaw and Luckman are content to run sweeps and dives. The sweeps work better for the Bears, who have the superior speed to the outside. The dives don’t work for anyone.

As time winds down in the fourth the Steelers are forced to throw the ball. Passes to Swann and Stallworth work the ball down to the Bears’ 24, where two incomplete passes and a Dick Butkus sack bring up fourth and 17.

Bradshaw drops and lofts a wobbler in Gary Ballman’s direction. Ballman goes up, Dave Duerson goes up, the crowd rises to its feet, the ball nestles in Ballman’s hands, the two men collide, and Ballman falls to the turf cradling the ball … nine yards short of a first down.

Luckman takes a knee three times and the game ends.

The stats are woeful. Luckman goes nine-of-14 for 113 yards and the only score. Bradshaw is 13-for-27 for 163 and a pick. Bettis carries 12 times for 26 yards; Harris rushes 18 times for 39. The Bears are led by Payton with 81 yards rushing and Sayers with 57. Sayers is also the leading receiver, with five catches, and sets up the lone touchdown with a 54-yard punt return.

There’s nothing that says that the higher up the ziggurat you go the better the football games automatically get. This one is ugly as they come. But as Tom Brookshier would remind you, neither team would have it any other way.

(Incidentally, after I wrote this I ran it past one of my more football-savvy friends, and he was vehement in asserting that not only would the game be more high-scoring, but that Pittsburgh would win. His argument was something along the line of the Pittsburgh teams of Terry Bradshaw’s day were offensive powerhouses, and after that it trailed off into invective.

Interesting assertion, invective notwithstanding, so I checked it out.

First, as a previous column pointed out, Bradshaw ranks with Joe Namath and George Blanda as the worst HOF QBs ever.

“Aha!” you exclaim. “Blanda’s with the Bears!”

Yeah, but Blanda’s not getting anywhere near the field in this game. Jim McMahon and Ed Brown and even Sleepy Jay Cutler are going to hit the turf before Blanda sheds the cape.

Second, Bradshaw’s teams were the league’s top offense exactly once, in 1979. Most of the time they were between fifth and seventh. And even in that magical year of 1979 Bradshaw threw 25 picks against 26 TDs and finished with a decidedly mediocre passer rating of 77.0.

Now, the interesting thing about Bradshaw vs. Luckman is that the two QBs finished their careers with similar passer ratings (79.0 for Bradshaw; 75.0 for Luckman). But Luckman’s bad numbers came after 1947, when players were back from the war, the AAFC teams were integrated into the NFL, the Bears were less talented than Chad Hutchinson, and opponents were hip to their offense. Furthermore, passer rating is not era-corrected. A 75 rating in 1943 is equivalent to a 110 rating today. Sammy Baugh was a 72.0 passer over his career, and he was the Peyton Manning Peyton Manning has yet to become.

Looking at the two QBs’ numbers and studying the way their teams played, eventually you come to understand the key difference between Bradshaw and Luckman. The Bears were an effective offense because of Luckman. The Steelers were an effective offense in spite of Bradshaw.

What I told my friend still holds: Can you conceive of a scenario where Pittsburgh would win? Only if the Bears self-destruct – and the Bears under Halas almost never self-destructed. Given that – given all that – the original judgment stands. The Bears win 6-0.)

The Super Bowl And The Death Of The Balanced Offense

The carcass of the Super Bowl is now a week along in the decomposition process, and most of the pack has moved on to more burning issues, such as whether Plaxico Burress is truly healed or merely incubating, or whether Cam Newton’s deal truly breaks the record for Most Money Paid A Future CFL Quarterback To Schlep Underwear.


I would prefer to linger on the Super Bowl an instant longer, in part because I’m a Packer fan and realize these moments will not come along every day, every year, or every decade (though it will come along more frequently for Packer fans than for, say, Jaguar fans), and in part because it validates what’s been repeatedly stated in these electronic pages.

That is: The balanced offense is a myth. And more than that, it’s irrelevant.

Think about the Packers and the Steelers. The Steelers ran a reasonably balanced offense and lost. The Packers ran an unbalanced offense and won.

Okay, that’s as misleading as the GOP budget. Beyond offensive strategy, the Steelers did a billion things and lost. The Packers did a billion things and won.

For instance: The Steelers turned the ball over three times and lost. The Packers didn’t turn the ball over and won. The Steelers sacked Aaron Rodgers three times and lost. The Packers sacked Ben Roethlisberger once and won. The Steelers lost a wide receiver and a defensive back and lost. The Packers lost a wide receiver and two defensive backs and won.

You can play these games ‘til the cows come home, which in Wisconsin these days is around 6:20 CST.

But here’s why I think the balanced-offense thing is so important. The Steelers did everything conventional wisdom says you should do to be effective offensively. They ran for 126 and passed for 263, with a TD each way. Perfection. If Katherine Hepburn was a series of offensive stats, she’d look like the Steelers’ line in Super Bowl XLV.

The Steelers ran to set up the pass, and to set up more runs. Their second-half-opening drive was as impressive a series of smash-mouth running plays as I saw the entire 2010 season.

They passed to set up the run, and to set up more passes. Their second TD drive of the second half was a paean to the multiple offense, right down to the faux option of the two-point conversion.

But the Steelers lost, and they deserved to lose. Play the game another 10 times and the Steelers lose most of them.

And here’s why: In modern football, it is far more effective to do one thing very well than to do two things well, especially when that one thing is passing the football.

There are several huge reasons for this. The first is that when things get tight and you need a big play it’s far easier to put your finger on the play to call. When the game was absolutely on the line, the Packers were deep in their territory and needed to hold the ball and bust out, what’d they do? Pass. Seam route to Greg Jennings. Thirty-one yards.

There was never any question the Packers would pass their way down the field, even with a set of fresh legs in James Starks in the backfield (though Starks did contribute a huge 14-yard run in that clinching drive).

When the Steelers got the ball with a little more than a minute left, the choices were not so obvious. There was time to run, and Rashard Mendenhall had run the ball well. There was time for short passes against a depleted secondary. There was time for the bomb.

There was time for the Steelers to balance their way down the field, in other words, but their indecision was palpable. It was a Brett Favre press conference of a drive, and it ended the way it should have, with an incomplete pass.

The Packers are a comically bad running team. Their rushing offense often appears to have been choreographed by Mr. Bean. On stretch plays it always appears like the running back is three yards further away from Aaron Rodgers than Rodgers expects him to be. In other instances the Packers load the backfield with fullbacks with the same heavy hand of Ted Nugent optioning a Hummer and scream, “We’re running the ball now!” For all the shout-outs to Lombardi executed by Packers during SB XLV, Vince would find the Packers’ running game as appealing as Hawg Hanner in a dirndl.

The Packers pass. Their best offensive players are in the passing game. There are only so many plays an offense can run in a game. Biggest game of the year, you use most of those plays to put your best players in position to make the biggest plays.

The Steelers … well, the Steelers do a little of everything, and their best offensive players are a quarterback, a running back, and a wide receiver (Mike Wallace). When a play absolutely has to be made, how’s it going to be made?

Hmmmm. You look at this and say, “Ben Roethlisberger is either going to galumph for a first down or he’s going to do laps in the pocket, shed tacklers like Lady Gaga sheds costumes and make an impossible heave downfield.”

He did it earlier in the game but couldn’t do it late, which should surprise no one. As a basis for an offense it’s sketchier than Twitter’s value proposition.

There’s a reason why six of the last seven Super Bowl teams (counting the Steelers once) have run unbalanced offenses unbalanced in the direction of the pass. It makes sense. It’s the most efficient way to make the most of the plays an offense is allotted, and gain a few more plays in the process.

Rave all you want about the Steelers offense, but like one of the robots in the eponymous (and largely lousy) movie, it’s an outmode. That doesn’t mean it’s destined for the scrap heap, but it’s going to take more than an animated movie and the voice of Robin Williams to save it.