Massarotti: Super Bowl History Hasn't Been Kind To Top-Ranked Offenses
BOSTON (CBS) -- On their record seventh trip to the Super Bowl, in search of their record fifth Lombardi Trophy, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady now encounter their Ghost of Christmas Past: an Atlanta Falcons team that bears at least some resemblance to the eternally unfulfilled Patriots of 2007.
And so here we go again, Patriots followers and, for that matter, football fans everywhere. America's biggest game this football season features the No. 1 offense in the NFL against the No. 1 defense, at least based on scoring. So let's eliminate all personal sentiment and just go by the numbers. The last time this happened, three years ago in Super Bowl XLVIII, the iron-tough Seattle Seahawks blistered the high-flying Denver Broncos by the lopsided score of 43-8, fueling a longstanding belief that may or may not be true.
Defense wins championships.
But does it?
There is evidence to suggest it does, particularly when it comes to the biggest game on the grandest stage. And the Patriots, in particular, are as qualified as anyone to testify on that behalf.
Read this story from the days leading up to that Super Bowl between Denver and Seattle that concluded the 2013 NFL season. Make of it what you will. But the short answer is that when the No. 1 offense has faced the No. 1 defense in the Super Bowl, the defense has won six of the seven games. The only exception was a 1989 San Francisco 49ers team that, in addition to having the top-ranked offense, also had a defense that ranked third. They vaporized the Denver Broncos (yes, them again) by a score of 55-10.
Taking it a step further, on those occasions that featured that largest statistical gaps, on average, between opposing offenses and defenses, the defense has won 9-of-11 affairs, including Seattle's most recent beatdown of the Broncos three years ago. The only exceptions on the list are the 1968 New York Jets (in Super Bowl III) and the 1971 Dallas Cowboys (in Super Bowl VI), which might as well have been from 1868 and 1871. The defense has won the last six.
Oh, and if you want additional sprinklings, consider that the Carolina Panthers actually scored more points than any team in the NFL last season. The Broncos finished fourth in scoring defense. Denver subsequently did to the Panthers what the Seahawks did to them two years earlier, beat Carolina into submission and win the championship.
For what it's worth, the Falcons this season averaged 33.8 points per game, best in the league. The Patriots also allowed a league-best average of 15.6 points against. That difference – precisely 18.2 points – makes it the fourth-biggest clash of cultures in Super Bowl history and the second-biggest biggest since the 1968 season, trailing only the mismatch (in more ways than one) of the 2013 Broncos-Seahawks affair.
Of course, the Patriots and their fans know the reality of this truth as well as anyone because they have lived it from both sides. In 2001, the difference between the Rams' average scoring offense (31.4 points per game) and the Patriots' scoring defense (17.0) was one of the greatest of all-time – and New England won the game. Six years later, the Patriots had a record-setting offense (36.8 points) that was unceremoniously smacked in the face by a New York Giants squad that, again, walked away with the trophy.
Could anyone really blame them if Belichick and Brady looked at film this week, then at one another, seeing at least a part of themselves in the high-powered Falcons?
This team reminds me of ... us. Nine years ago.
For Belichick and Brady, in particular, there is obviously a great deal to this game, and not purely in the Xs and Os. This is New England's record ninth Super Bowl as a franchise, the truly remarkable seventh under the joined hands of what are almost certainly the greatest coach and quarterback of all-time. A New England victory in this game would give both Belichick and Brady each a fifth Super Bowl championship, ground on which no head coach or quarterback have ever walked.
How many more chances will they get? That is obviously impossible to know. Maybe there will be another. Maybe this will be the last. But if the esteemed coach and quarterback of the Patriots are to tread where no one ever has, they will have to do so by facing their past, at least in some form, and find a way to neutralize an opposing offense that looks downright unstoppable.
Belichick and Brady understand the challenge better than anyone.
After all, that is precisely what we were saying about them in 2007.