History on history as two storied NFL franchises in Super Bowl XLV

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
February 6, 2011

Sabo, News/Daily News/Getty/WireImage/AP
From Vince Lombardi (l.) to Terry Bradshaw (r.), the Packers and Steelers share a rich history.

DALLAS - Here is what the country sees Sunday night when it goes to a football game, here is a matchup as good as there is in this sport or any sport, as good as any Super Bowl has ever seen:

Packers vs. the Steelers.

History on history.

This isn't because of all the games they played in the past, this is a game that feels as if it comes roaring into Jerry Jones' new football palace out of the past. It is about time they played a game like this. It feels like they don't just settle this season Sunday night, it feels like they settle about a century of them.

"It just sounds like football," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said on Friday morning in a crowded ballroom at the media hotel. "Packers-Steelers."

This is Curly Lambeau and it is old Art Rooney. This is Lambeau Field and the old Steel Curtain. This is Bart Starr and Jerry Kramer and Paul Hornung and Ray Nitschke. This is Bradshaw and Stallworth and Lynn Swann and Franco Harris.

This is the Steelers' six Super Bowl wins against all the championships the Packers have won, before and after they won the first Super Bowl. This is the Steelers trying to win another Lombardi Trophy and Mike McCarthy's Packers trying to bring the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay, what the locals will always consider the capital of the National Football League.

"We are trying to bring the Lombardi Trophy home," McCarthy said on Friday morning.

They asked him about what this moment was like for him personally, being this close to the Super Bowl.

"I've always dreamed about championships," he said. "That dream is just heightened by the fact that I work for the Green Bay Packers."

This isn't just the history of the sport, it is also about the beauty of the sport: Both these teams think of themselves as the Yankees of the NFL. Only they are not New York. They are Green Bay and they are Pittsburgh, Pa. As Goodell said on Friday, "Both of them are small markets. It speaks to what is unique about the National Football League."

It does. Oh, it sure does. Lombardi's Packers won the first two Super Bowls. The late Max McGee didn't expect to play in Los Angeles and had stayed out all night, saying goodbye to a lady friend at 8 in the morning. But then Boyd Dowler separated a shoulder on the Pack's second series of the game and McGee, as hungover as he was, had to play.

All he did that day was catch seven balls for 138 yards and two touchdowns and become the first great star of the Super Bowl. He always joked to me, "I thought I should have gotten credit for more catches, because I felt like I was seeing two balls all day."

The Packers came back and won again but then it was the Steelers in the '70s who became the storied franchise of the sport, playing four Super Bowls and winning all of them, with Chuck Noll as the coach and Terry Bradshaw as the quarterback and one of the truly great defenses of all time.

Now all this time later Ben Roethlisberger is the quarterback of the Steelers. And Aaron Rodgers, as much a star of pro football as anybody this season when he was healthy, tries to win the big game for Green Bay the way Starr and Brett Favre did.

The Steelers started out the season without Roethlisberger, suspended because of dirt-bag behavior - what else do you want to call it? - with women. But in the early going the Steelers showed they could win with anybody at quarterback, even old Charlie Batch.

So they were the darlings. The Packers? They were everybody's hot pick before the season even started. Then they lost their running game to injury, saw big players go down all over the place. Lost games in overtime. Played a whole season on the edge, never behind by more than a touchdown, perhaps the most amazing statistic of the year. Rodgers suffered two concussions.

But the Packers kept coming. They went into the New Meadowlands Stadium when they looked to be in huge trouble and shut out the Jets, never seemed worried by the Jets' offense the whole day. They nearly beat the Patriots in Foxborough with Matt Flynn at quarterback. And now the Pack was back.

Even as the No. 6 seed in the NFC, they have been the best team in the playoffs from either conference. They beat Michael Vick and the Eagles in Philly and destroyed the Falcons in Atlanta and then took apart the Bears in Chicago before they got sloppy and had to make some plays in the fourth quarter to get back to the Super Bowl.

Right now, this minute, Roethlisberger, even with his fancy playoff record, isn't the star quarterback of the league, and neither is Tom Brady, even with his Offensive Player of the Year Award. Neither is Peyton Manning. When it was all on the line for the Packers, when even their last few regular-season games were the same as playoff games, Rodgers was the best quarterback and the best player in the league.

They asked McCarthy about being with the 49ers when they had to choose between Alex Smith and Rodgers in the draft and ended up going with Smith. And McCarthy talked about that and tried not to throw anybody from San Francisco under any buses and finally he said: "We are here today because Aaron Rodgers is in Green Bay."

Now McCarthy, Packers coach, tries to win the Lombardi Trophy. Rodgers tries to win the game that Favre won. Roethlisberger and Mike Tomlin and Troy Polamalu and Hines Ward try to make their own history. History on history Sunday night. Packers vs. Steelers. Sounds like football because it is.



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