SI:AM | What Makes This Super Bowl Different

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can’t believe how close the NFL MVP vote was. Matthew Stafford (366 points, 24 first-place votes) barely edged out Drake Maye (361 points, 23 first-place votes) in the closest race since Peyton Manning and Steve McNair tied in 2003. It’s nice to see Stafford finally win one after such a great career, and I doubt it’s the last time Maye will be in the running.

In today’s SI:AM:
🏆 Deciding Super Bowl factors
🏒 U.S. legend’s final Olympics
🏀 NBA trade deadline recap

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Breath of fresh air

In every sport, there’s always an impulse to look at a given season’s championship game or series and declare what the matchup or result means for the state of the league. Defense wins championships. No, high-powered offense is the key. You need a great starting rotation. A shut-down bullpen is crucial. Shoot lots of three-pointers. Try to get easy shots inside. Whoever wins becomes the blueprint for every other team chasing a championship.

“The only thing I know for sure,” Cubs president Theo Epstein in 2015, “is that whatever team wins the World Series, their particular style of play will be completely en vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason—and in front offices—as the way to win.”

Epstein went on to say that baseball “is too nuanced and too complicated for there to be any one way.”

The same holds true for any sport. There are too many ways to be successful for any one approach to become the formula for a championship. Just look at this year’s Super Bowl matchup. What stands out to you about it?

The Patriots and Seahawks are two worthy participants—tied for the best regular-season record in the NFL, with elite units on both sides of the ball. But it’s also been a while since we’ve seen a Super Bowl matchup like this one.

Quarterbacks drive the narrative in the NFL, and it’s been a while since we’ve had a Super Bowl where both quarterbacks began the season as unheralded as Drake Maye and Sam Darnold. Maye improved so significantly in his second season that he finished barely behind Matthew Stafford in MVP voting, and Darnold demonstrated that his 2024 breakout with the Vikings was no fluke by surpassing 4,000 passing yards again. (Only Darnold and Jared Goff threw for at least 4,000 in each of the past two seasons.)

Plenty of teams have reached a Super Bowl recently with question marks at quarterback: the 2023 49ers (seventh-round pick Brock Purdy’s first season as a full-time starter), the ’19 Niners (Jimmy Garoppolo) and the ’17 Eagles (Nick Foles, filling in for an injured Carson Wentz), to name a few.

But over the past decade, it’s been rare that there hasn’t been at least one superstar (Patrick Mahomes), all-time great (Tom Brady) or respected veteran (Matthew Stafford) in the Super Bowl. The last time we had a championship matchup between quarterbacks as undecorated as Maye and Darnold was Super Bowl XLVII after the 2012 season, when Joe Flacco’s Ravens defeated Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers.

Perhaps it should come as a surprise that these are the teams that reached the Super Bowl without an established star under center. Mad genius offensive coaches have ruled the past decade of the NFL. The success of experienced offensive minds like Andy Reid and Bruce Arians, as well as younger quarterback whisperers like Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, led teams across the league to chase coaches with reputations for putting up points. That isn’t to say that successful teams ignored defense. Last year’s AFC champion Chiefs were somewhat infamously deficient on offense (despite Mahomes’s presence) and relied on a stalwart defense. Shanahan’s Niners teams that reached four NFC championship games in five years also had excellent defenses. But it’s been rare that teams with defensive-minded head coaches—like this year’s Patriots and Seahawks—have reached the Super Bowl.

Each of the past six Super Bowls featured offense-focused coaches on both sidelines. Before this year, the last defense-first coach to make a Super Bowl was Bill Belichick with the Patriots after the 2018 season. The last time the Super Bowl featured two coaches who began their career on the defensive side of the ball was Super Bowl LI after the ’16 season, when Belichick’s Patriots beat Dan Quinn’s Falcons.

After years of familiar faces in the Super Bowl, it’s refreshing to see two teams that took a different approach to success. Is it the beginning of a new era in the NFL? Probably not, but it should make for a fun game on Sunday.

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The top five…

… things I saw last night:
5. The illustration that the English newspaper The Times used to show how Olympic ski jumpers allegedly injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid could convey a competitive advantage.
4. Tim Stützle’s nasty fake to fool the goalie and score the overtime winner for the Senators.
3. The frantic final 45 seconds of the Warriors-Suns game. Golden State—playing without Stephen Curry—finished the game on a 22–5 run.
2. 39-year-old Jeff Green’s poster dunk all over 7'1" Hornets rookie Ryan Kalkbrenner.
1. The three-minute brawl between the Panthers and Lightning that resulted in a staggering 155 total penalty minutes.