Super Bowl – Steelers get the Trophy Cardinals get the Money
The Pittsburgh Steelers showed why they were the grittiest, toughest, best team in the NFL this past season by winning their second Super Bowl in four years and becoming the first team in NFL history to win six Super Bowls.
How did the Steelers do it? By having faith in their second best wide receiver, Santonio Holmes, and by simply hustling and outplaying Arizona’s defense in what almost assuredly will go down as one of the best Super Bowl winning drives in the sports’ history.
With less than two minutes left, “Big” Ben Roethlisberger took his offense down the field and into a scoring position. The key play? A beautiful run and catch by Santonio Holmes that took the Steel Men down to the five yard line. Then, after failing to make the game winning catch on the left back of the end zone, Holmes made a brilliant catch on the right back of the end zone.
This was after Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner and the best wide receiver in football, Larry Fitzgerald, lit up the Steelers’ for a touchdown. This was after the Steelers’ center, Jeff Hartwig, committed one of the most egregious penalties a lineman can make, holding in the end zone, which gave the Card’s two points on a safety. The Cardinals scored another brilliant touchdown when Larry Fitzgerald found a seam in the Steelers’ D and suddenly it looked like Arizona was on their way to an improbable win.
Even after Holmes’s catch, the Arizona Cardinals had 35 seconds left on the clock. But Kurt Warner fumbled with around 15 seconds left and the Steelers recovered, securing a Super Bowl victory.
Congratulations to them, but some sports betting fans who donned black and yellow yesterday aren’t all that happy about how the game ended up. Even though they won the Super Bowl, the Pittsburgh Steelers failed to cover against the spread. The BetUS online sportsbook betting line was Steelers -7. Pitt ended up beating the Cardinals by a score of 27 to 24.
The Steelers also needed James Harrison, their highly touted linebacker, to run back a Kurt Warner interception for 100 yards in order to secure the victory against the spread in the first half. The online betting odds in the first half were Arizona Cardinals +4. At the time of Harrison’s run back, the Cardinals were about five yards away from taking the lead.
The score in the game was Pittsburgh 10 and Arizona 7.
When it came to the BetUS Total, the Steelers and Cardinals, because of that furious rally in the fourth quarter where three touchdowns were scored, went over by 3 points. The BetUS Total was 47. The Cards and Steelers ended up scoring 50.
In the end it was the Arizona Cardinals who won money for NFL betting fans. That’s not to say that the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t deserve to hoist the Super Bowl Trophy. That’s just to say that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to as football betting fans.
Here’s a quick run down of my personal bets on this game:
Steelers -7, Loss
Steelers -4 1st Half, Win
Steelers/Cardinals Under 47, Loss
Santonio Holmes over 62 ½ receiving yards -115, Win
Santonio Holmes over 6 ½ catches, Win
Santonio Holmes MVP +1500, Win
All in all it was a good day, a profitable day because of the small wager I made on Holmes to win the MVP and on Holmes to get the over in receiving yards and catches, but losing the game bet, the single most important online wager regarding the Super Bowl in my mind, is going to stick in my craw for a while.
Such is life on the NFL betting trail!
No worries. There’s always next year.
