Poor performances, poor officiating, and even worse clock management. As close as this Super Bowl was, it was one of the worst Super Bowl games that I’ve watched in quite some time - and I’ve been following the Buffalo Bills as long as I can remember.

Not that I think these were two pathetic teams - Seattle showed all season that they were the class of the NFC and Pittsburgh smacked down the best of the AFC in the playoffs. There just weren’t that many great things worthwhile enough to point out. There was Willie Parker’s 75-yard TD gallop in the 3rd quarter. There was the impressive pass from Randle El to Ward in the 4th quarter on a double-reverse play which effectively put the game out of reach of the Seahawks. That’s about it. The 37-yard hail mary to Ward in the second quarter (which set up the Steelers’ first touchdown) came thanks to a breakdown in the secondary at the end of the play. That play was big only because the Steelers offense had looked so out of sync the entire game. Pittsburgh getting to halftime with a 7-3 lead was somewhat astonishing.

Sure, Seattle got hosed on several poor calls by the officials - Hasslebeck’s “low block” and the push off in the end zone that negated a Darrell Jackson touchdown to name a few (the latter of which could have gone either way) - but Seattle simply did not come through in some of the most important spots in the game. Jerramy Stevens dropped big pass after big pass. At the end of the half Hasslebeck wasted a good 30 seconds calling audibles before Pittsburgh called a timeout and bailed him out. When Seattle held the ball, I spent a lot of time thinking to myself “what the hell are you doing??”. They appeared frustrated with the game long before it was ever over. Let’s not forget those missed field goals, either. They were long ones, but had they gone through it would’ve been a totally different game coming down the stretch.

So let’s recap. The winning quarterback had a rating of 22.6 with two interceptions. That pretty much says everything that I have to say. This was not a great game to watch because nothing really exciting ever happened. Pittsburgh, playing about as badly as they possibly could, beat the NFC’s top ranked team.

Here’s to football.

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