Vince Lombardi was a winner.
The former coach of the NFL's Green Bay Packers, he followed up his bluster about winning, winning, winning by leading his Packers' teams to three pre-Super Bowl NFL titles and victories in the first two Super Bowls. Shortly after his sudden death from cancer in 1970, the Super Bowl trophy was renamed in his honor.
Forty-one years after Lombardi's death, Green Bay Packers players hoisted his trophy last night after winning Super Bowl 45, 31-25, with a determined, full-team effort of which the famous coach would surely have been proud.
Said Green Bay quarterback and Super Bowl 45 MVP Aaron Rodgers: "The Lombardi Trophy's coming home."
The Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers last night, February 6, to capture their first championship since 1996.
In what was called one of the most evenly-matched Super Bowls in years, the younger Packers jumped out to a big lead and withstood furious charges from the more experienced Steelers, helped out by three Pittsburgh turnovers that denied that franchise a chance to win a third Super Bowl in six years, and its seventh overall.
The first key turnover was a first quarter pass that fluttered unevenly out of the hand of pressured, falling Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and was snatched out of the air by Green Bay safety Nick Collins, who raced 37 yards for a touchdown, giving the Packers a 14-0 lead just 24 seconds after they had scored their first touchdown.
The second key turnover came midway through the second quarter, with Green Bay up 14-3, when the Steelers drove across midfield but Roethlisberger threw another interception, this once snagged by Jarrett Bush. Three plays later, Aaron Rodgers hit Greg Jennings with a 23-yard touchdown pass that made it 21-3.
The third, and by far most important, turnover came at the beginning of the fourth quarter, when Pittsburgh was trailing by just four (21-17) after seizing momentum coming out of halftime. Sensing the Packers were hurting from having lost several key players (veteran cornerback Charles Woodson, star wide receiver Donald Driver) to injuries, Pittsburgh played aggressively, using 23-year-old running back Rashard Mendenhall as a primary weapon. But on a 2nd & 2 from the Packers' 33-yard-line, Mendenhall was simultaneously hit by two Green Bay defenders, Ryan Pickett and Clay Matthews, and the ball popped loose, skittered across the turf, and ended up in the arms of Green Bay's Desmond Bishop. The Packers seized the opportunity, driving back downfield and scoring on a 9-yard touchdown pass from Rodgers to Jordy Nelson, which made it 28-17.
The Steelers were by no means done, but a graphic that played on the screen at that point showed that teams that lost the turnover ratio of 3-0 or worse were 4-30 all-time in the Super Bowl. Make that 4-31.
On the next possession, the Steelers-who famously matched the Arizona Cardinals blow-for-blow in a fascinating fourth quarter in Super Bowl 43 in 2009, winning in the last minute on a touchdown pass from Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes-drove downfield and scored on a 25-yard touchdown pass to Mike Wallace. They went for the two-point conversion without hesitation, and, on a brilliant play fake, Roethlisberger broke left, then flipped the ball to his left, where it was caught by receiver Antwan Randle El, and Randle El broke across the goal line to cut the Packers' lead to 3 (28-25).
However, the Packers would deliver the final blow, getting an accurate 23-yard field goal from Mason Crosby with 2:07 left to make it 31-25. The Steelers tried to race downfield for the touchdown they needed to win, or at least, tie, but came up short, with an incomplete pass on 4th & 5 with 49 seconds remaining sealing their fate.
Another crucial moment in the game came early, when Green Bay scored first, with 3:44 left in the first quarter, on a perfect over-the-shoulder, 29-yard pass from Rodgers to Nelson. And early in the third quarter, Steelers' kicker Sean Suisham missed to the left on a 52-yard field goal attempt that would have cut the deficit to 21-13.
The Steelers missed the chance to become the first team in Super Bowl history to recover to win the game after trailing by more than 10 (they trailed by 18).
It was the first taste of loss in a Super Bowl for Pittsburgh stars Roethlisberger, Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, and James Harrison.
Rodgers, the game's MVP, was ultimately 24 of 39 for 304 yards and three touchdowns, reaching a quarterback rating of 111.5. His counterpart, two-time Super Bowl-winner Roethlisberger, was 25 of 40 for 263 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, and a rating of 77.4.
For the winning Packers, Jordy Nelson had 9 catches for 140 yards and 1 touchdown, Greg Jennings had 4 catches for 64 yards and 2 touchdowns, and running back James Starks, who aided the Packers' mightily in the late regular season and postseason after returning from an injury, gained 52 yards on 15 carries to open up the Pittsburgh defense.
At the end of the night, confetti fell, fans cheered, cameras flashed, and the guys who can relate more to the Vince Lombardi Trophy than anyone else lifted it into the night sky. The Green Bay Packers now own four Super Bowl championships.
It's safe to say that all the old coach's talk about winning didn't fall on deaf ears.
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