Bacon Ninja’s Super Bowl Preview
This Sunday’s sporting event seems pretty momentous, so in my Ali-like return to the ring I’ll break it down for those of you that happened to click back here on the off chance there would be some new content.
New Orleans’ offense vs. Indianapolis’ defense: The Colts defense has been pretty underrated this season, although I imagine enough people have been pointing this out over the last few weeks that they’re become appropriately rated by now. New Orleans’ offense is pretty good in its own right, although it seemed as the season went on that teams were able to figure them out at least a little bit and they didn’t dominate like they did earlier in the season. Still, I’d give the Saints a slight edge here, especially if Dwight Freeney doesn’t play much.
Indy’s offense vs. New Orleans’ defense: One of my theories about football is that the team who owes some or most of its defensive success to creating turnovers is in trouble once they play a really good team. As much as Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams likes to attribute success in the turnover margin to coaching or effort – and it is to some extent – a whole lot of it is luck too. And eventually your luck will run out. See the 2005 Cincinnati Bengals if you want a good example of that. And really, if the Saints can’t pressure the quarterback or force Indy to turn over the ball – which few teams have been able to do all season – The Sheriff will tear them apart. Literally. And I think that’ll probably happen. Big edge to the Colts.
Thanks to ESPN’s Jon Gruden for calling Peyton Manning “The Sheriff” seven hundred times during the Colts’ beatdown of the Dolphins earlier this season. It started out cheesy, got into annoying Favre-esque verbal fellation, and then kept getting used to the point that it became genuinely funny. If only Mellencamp’s Chevy commercials had found a way to do that, I might not have considered putting out a hit on that guy for the last five years.
Special teams: The Saints did well against the Vikings on kickoff returns, and they’ll have to do so in this game too. I haven’t watched enough Colts games to know for sure how good their special teams are, but I do know they’ve got a kicker (Matt Stover) who remembers Pearl Harbor, Armistice Day, and the U.S.S. Maine. New Orleans’ kicker looks like Jeremy Hammond on the BBC’s Top Gear. I’ll call this a push.
Coaching: Sean Payton is alive and he’s pretty good. Caldwell is … well, he’s always there on the sidelines anyway. I’m not sure he really actually does anything. We’ll give the Saints a slight edge here too.
Karma: The Saints have the whole Katrina thing – although it’s getting a bit played out. Seriously, it’s been almost 5 years now. Not that it wasn’t horrible for people who lived through it, but let’s move on. The Colts have the whole “throwing our last two games of the season when we’re undefeated” thing that they seem to pull every year. The Saints have Kim Kardashian, the Colts have the whole “running out on their fans in Baltimore in the 80′s” thing. The Saints have Archie Manning, the Colts have his much more talented son. Let’s not even go into Peyton and Eli doing Double Stuf commercials with the Donald and Darrell Hammond. And the Saints have to live with the fact that their fans didn’t start chanting “Who Dat” for them until a few years after Bengals fans were chanting “Who Dey” which means they’re unoriginal wannabes. Everyone loses.
Other factors: The Colts have been on this stage before and the Saints haven’t. Peyton Manning is better than any quarterback not named Dan Marino. The Colts threw two games at the end of the season and they managed to look pretty good in their playoff games, making me think it might have worked out despite the obvious karmic ramifications. Let’s not forget, the Saints didn’t exactly tear it up at the end of the year either. Big edge to the Colts.
The Call: Although the Saints offense is good, so is Indy’s defense. And the Saints defense gave up a butt-ton of points in the playoffs to two teams whose quarterbacks were born during the Wilson administration. The Sheriff is younger and more talented than Kurt Warner and Brett Favre, and I think he’ll dominate this game.
Colts 38, Saints 17
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