In yet another close and exciting Super Bowl matchup that was not decided until the final minute, the Green Bay Packers (or what was left of them) defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers and will reign as the NFL Champions for at least the next 364 consecutive days. Good for them.
My favorite stat of the night, and one I've been dying to say since the Chargers missed the playoffs, is that Aaron Rodgers has now tied Brett Favre with 1 Super Bowl victory. That's awesome. What's even more awesome is that Rodgers, who has a "Championship Belt" celebration he does after scoring TDs, won the award for the game's Most Valuable Player and brought a WWE-style championship belt to the podium with him.
Rodgers, who is shockingly only 25 years old, finished the game 24-of-39 for 304 yards and 3 passing TDs. He did all of this while throwing to what seemed like a rag-tag Chargers-ish group of WRs after Donald Driver was injured in the first quarter. Charles Woodson was also injured in the first half and, like Driver, never returned. At the end of the game I realized the motivation for the Packers to repeat: Woodson, Driver, Jermichael Finley, Ryan Grant and Nick Barnett would all be returning as starters and none of them got to celebrate on the field as part of this team that overcame a second-half surge by the Steelers.
The story of this one is even simpler than "the Pittsburgh Steelers offense wasn't very good." It was turnovers. Pittsburgh had 3, including one really dumb pass by Ben Roethlisberger, and Green Bay had 0. That was the difference, plain and simple. For the Steelers to even have a chance to win with the ball and 2 minutes left in the game is a testament to their strong defense.