The Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs have ended and now it is on to the conference championship games.
The New England Patriots will travel to face the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game, while the San Francisco 49ers will go play divisional rivals the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC showcase.
It’s been a season dominated by injuries, bullying within team locker-rooms, hushed up PED results, the ugly spectre of brain damage for players and Peyton Manning, with huge shocks, stunning twists and an incalculable amount of camera shots directed at Peyton’s forehead.
It’s only fitting that the end result of such a wild, unpredictable season is that the four pre-season favourites have ended up in final four, just to restore some form of sanity to such an insane season.
For those who don’t follow the NFL, it pays to know just how much of an aberration it is for these four teams to make it this far.
The last time a pre-season favourite actually won the Super Bowl was in 2007, when the Indianapolis Colts claimed victory, and they’re the only one since 2000 to do so.
Since 2000, more pre-season favourites have missed the playoffs entirely than they’ve won the Super Bowl. In that time period, Eli Manning has won two Super Bowls as MVP in both games.
Eli Manning! A man who gifts interceptions to opposing defences like he’s Santa, has never had a season when him playing hasn’t endangered his coach’s position.
A man who meanders through the regular season giving so a little of a damn it actually boggles the mind only to dominate come playoff time.
A man who has two Super Bowls, one more than his brother Peyton (the far, far, far superior quarterback).
When Eli Manning is winning Super Bowls at a rate 200% greater than his brother, you know that in the NFL, the unexpected is what is expected to occur.
The NFL is narratives league, where every year the action on the field takes a backseat to the stories behind the game.
While the coach, owner or even bullying offensive linemen (cue Dolphins fans nodding sadly) may take centre stage from time to time, the biggest and most sustained narratives are provided by the men who effectively decide whether their team will win or lose – the quarterbacks.
The quarterback position may just be the toughest job in all of team sports. No other sport has a singular position that impacts the game to such a huge extent.
Sure, teams can win when a bad quarterback comes up against a good one, but that requires the rest of the team playing out of their minds, the quarterback to play with everything he’s got, and a bad day from the other team.
Even then, the team’s chances of victory aren’t the greatest, as shown by the Chargers-Bengals playoff game less than two weeks ago ago.
The Bengals had a great defence, terrific wide receivers, an effective running game and a boisterous home crowd.
Unfortunately their quarterback, second-year player Andy Dalton, couldn’t handle the playoffs pressure and began causing turnovers like he was a Chargers double agent.
Experienced Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers managed to handle the pressure and did his job, leading to the Chargers emerged victorious. In the final four of the playoffs, you really want a good quarterback for your team.
The four quarterbacks remaining are among the top 10 in the league, and they can be divided into two separate categories which are squaring off against one another.
The AFC Championship Game sees the 25th meeting of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the two quarterbacks whose play has most affected the last decade of action, and two of the greatest quarterbacks to ever throw a ball.
The NFC Championship Game sees the fourth meeting between Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson, both athletic beasts who represent the quarterback position’s brave new world.
Brady and Manning are pocket passers, who will receive the ball and wait behind their offensive lines until a player is free and they can throw it to them.
Both of them have taken advantage of the safety-conscious new rules instituted by the NFL that have seen the chance of being cheap-shot by the opposition defence rapidly decrease, giving them more time to size up options and throw the perfect pass.
This has led to the two of them amassing passing yards and touchdowns with a ruthless efficiency, with Manning breaking the single season touchdown record this year, taking the previous record set by Brady.
What they lack, however, is the ability to move outside the pocket, and either throw on the move or run and claim a few extra yards, which is mostly down to Peyton having the pace of a crippled tortoise and Brady’s stubborn refusal to leave the pocket for any reason.
Both Kaepernick and Wilson can’t hold a candle to their older counterparts in terms of pure passing ability, but they do have the advantage of being able to move outside the passing zone and rush for all important yards, as well as managing to deliver accurate throws while on the move.
These abilities have proven vital for their teams on numerous occasions this season, both managing time and time again to turn an incomplete pass into a critical first down.
Athletic quarterbacks have been around for a while but they are certainly in vogue at the moment in the NFL.
All of the so-called ‘next generation of quarterbacks’, such as the aforementioned Kaepernick and Wilson, as well as the Washington Redskins’ Robert Griffin III and Carolina’s Cam Newton, are players who are just as damaging by foot as by hand.
Even Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, drafted with the No.1 pick due to his skills as a pocket passer, is not exactly a slouch when it comes to athleticism.
The narrative for this Super Bowl basically writes itself no matter which team, and which quarterback, wins out next week: old-school pocket passer, aiming to add on to their already phenomenal legacy, comes up against the new breed of athletic quarterback, trying to establish themselves as the league’s future.
On this occasion, the eyes of the world will be on the new school and the old, with all eager to see which will come out on top in the biggest game of them all.
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