It's official. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are headed to take on Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. Kind of a crazy day of football as both games appeared to be headed for blowouts, and then didn't finally get decided until inside the last two minutes. Rodgers and the Packers got out to an early lead scoring touchdowns on the ground in the first (by Aaron Rodgers) and second (by James Starks) quarters. The Bears offense under Jay Cutler was largely ineffective and to make matters worse, Cutler left the game with a knee injury in the 3rd quarter. Backup Todd Collins came in and was even worse missing on all four of his pass attempts and nearly throwing a pair of interceptions. Lovie Smith and company only let Collins play two series, and then they went off book and brought in 3rd-stringer Caleb Hanie, who'd only appeared in 5 games in 3 seasons, and never thrown more than 5 passes in a game. Hanie proceeded to have the game of his life. Hanie drove the Bears 67 yards in his first series, the big play being a 32 yarder to Johnny Knox on 2nd and 13 that drove the Bears all the way down to the 1. Chester Taylor scored on the next play to cut the deficit in half. A little while later the Packers exposed Hanie's lack of experience and 337 pounder defensive tackle B.J. Raji came up with a pick six to put the Packers back up by two scores. Hanie showed what he was made of on the next drive though, taking the Bears 60 yards on 4 pass plays before connecting on his first career touchdown pass, hooking up with Earl Bennett for 35 yards. After the Bears defense forced the Packers to go 3 and out, Hanie drove the Bears all the way down to the 29, but on 4th and 5, rookie corner Sam Shields came away with the interception to clinch the win. Packers 21, Bears 14.
The AFC Championship game was a tale of two halves. The Steelers jumped out to a 24-0 lead in the first half as Pittsburgh had everything working on both sides of the ball. Rashard Mendenhall and Ben Roethlisberger each had rushing touchdowns, and Ike Taylor forced a fumble on a vicious hit of Mark Sanchez that William Gay was able to return for a touchdown. A banged up Sanchez was able to drive the Jets into field goal range and put them on the board with a 39 yard Nick Folk field goal before halftime. Still, it didn't look like it was going to be much of a game. But as much as the first half was all black and gold, the second half was all green and white. Santonio Holmes hauled in a 45 yard touchdown on the opening drive to make it 24-10. Then on the Steelers next drive, Brodney Pool picked off a Roethlisberger pass at the 5. Pittsburgh's offense that had been unstoppable in the first half, now couldn't seem to get anything going. The Jets next drive went 17 plays for 88 yards, but despite 3 tries from the Steeler 1 yard line, the Jets couldn't get into the endzone. One important detail I left out about the first half. Pittsburgh's Pro Bowl Center Maurkice Pouncey left the game with an injury. Backup Doug Legursky had some issues on exchanges with Roethlisberger and on the first play after the turnover on downs, it happened again. Safety. 24-12. The Jets then drove 58 yards in 10 plays and Sanchez hit Jerricho Cotchery on a 4 yard touchdown pass to make it a one possession game. Then Ben Roethlisberger took over. Needing to run out the final 3:06, Big Ben connected on a 14 yarder on 2nd and 9 to Heath Miller and then another one on 3rd and 6 to Antonio Brown and the Steelers were able to run out the clock. Steelers 24, Jets 19. And I win the bet.
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