You know that feeling that comes after too much caffeine, when you try to focus on one specific thing—a reading assignment or a newspaper column—but eight trillion thoughts come to mind right and none of it's coherent? That's the feeling I got when I sat down to think about what I could write about the Super Bowl. Surprisingly, I don't think caffeine had anything to do with it.
I tried to come up with an angle that hasn't been beaten into a bloody pulp yet, but it just didn't work. Instead, I got a mish-mash of thoughts that ranged from zone blitzing schemes to beer commercials featuring frogs to Desmond Howard's kick return in Super Bowl XXXI.
In the end, I wrote down four things at least loosely Super Bowl related and went with that. Don't try to connect the dots. You'll end up sounding like Jerome Harrison.
The 3-4 defense prevails
When the Packers hired Dom Capers before the 2009 season, I was skeptical of the 3-4 defense and whether or not it would work in Green Bay. Needless to say, Capers has pressed the right buttons, communicated to Ted Thompson what he wanted in terms of personnel and put together a dynamic unit.
The same is true in Pittsburgh. Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, who coached under Capers from 1992-'94 in Pittsburgh, has designed a system that is perennially elite in a league where ups and downs are almost wholly unavoidable.
The bottom line is that both of these defenses are fun to watch because both coordinators put their best players in position to make plays. Neither appears to be bound by norms on alignment, positional responsibilities or anything else schematic. It's too bad we can't get microphones on each because the level of analysis would be unbelievable.
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman
Is there a chance that getting to do the play-by-play for a Super Bowl that pits two historically rich NFL franchises against each other will elicit some emotion from Joe Buck? Probably not, but we can all hope. Is there a chance Troy Aikman won't get nauseatingly sentimental about a Super Bowl in Dallas where he—if he hasn't mentioned this before—played quarterback for the Cowboys? Nope.
I get the feeling that if Joe Buck would have been on the call for the Hindenburg explosion, people may have thought a balloon popped at a local birthday party.
The strange thing about Buck's monotone delivery is that legendary guys like Pat Summerall and Keith Jackson had similar, simple deliveries. For some reason, though, it just doesn't seem to work.
The James Harrison Saga
You can't make up the shit this guy says and does. Every professional sport has its share of guys from the loony bin—recent examples include Ron Artest and Dennis Rodman in the NBA, Sean Avery in the NHL and Ozzie Guillen and John Rocker in MLB—but Harrison is about as eclectic as they come.
The outside linebacker made one of the biggest and most memorable plays in Super Bowl history with his 100-yard interception return for a touchdown with no time left in the first half in 2009—a play that helped propel the Steelers to a 27-23 victory and is deservedly still on every Super Bowl highlight reel.
However, he followed up the heroics with some Grade A stupidity when he skipped the Steelers team trip to the White House—an annual rite of passage for the NFL champions.
According to yahoo.com, Harrison's exact quote went like this: ""This is how I feel—if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won.""
Yes Jerome, that is in fact what would have happened. Then this year, after he could have easily ended the career or Cleveland Browns' receiver Mohamed Massaquoi and was rightfully fined for it, Harrison threatened to retire because he felt he couldn't play his brand of football.
It'll be interesting to see what sort of destruction—either on the field or off it— No. 92 creates this weekend.
Photo-gate and other media buzz
Why the Twitter musings of Nick Barnett and Jermichael Finley became a big deal is beyond me. The general consensus is that there isn't anything else for the media to cover for two entire weeks. Here's a thought: how about the game itself?
I would love it if, for every minute ESPN spent talking about team photos or other fluff, they instead put Herm Edwards in a room and talked X's and O's.
He certainly could put together a more useful batch of insight than I can.
You know what Parker is talking about in this article? E-mail him at pjgabriel@dailycardinal.com
