Kickoff closing in, time for your Super Bowl pick
Super Bowl pick: Pittsburgh’s defense will simply be overwhelming
Finally, it’s time to make your Super Bowl XLIII pick. Those who bet on sports have been waiting this moment for nearly two weeks. It’s ridiculous that the NFL makes us wait, but that’s a story for another day.
We’ve done team breakdowns, we’ve examined the two teams’ path to the Super Bowl and we’ve analyzed the coaching matchups. There’s not much left to do besides make a prediction and watch the games play out.
If you’ve been visiting the sportsbook and Betting Edge regularly, and reading my daily writings, then you should have a good indication as to which side I’m leaning with.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals may have arrived at the same destination, but their paths could not be more opposite. The Steelers played the toughest schedule in the NFL while the Cardinals feasted off a feeble division, earning six of their nine regular season wins against teams like the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams.
The Steelers have the No. 1 scoring defense in the NFL, the No. 2 rush defense and finished with the second-most sacks in the league. That sounds like a recipe for disaster for the Cardinals, who have been functional in the playoffs because they discovered some offensive balance.
The equation looks pretty simple: the Steelers run defense should shut down Edgerrin James and Co.; then the Cardinals will be forced to be one-dimensional and pass, which plays right into the teeth of that dangerous Steelers pass-rush.
I looked back to a few years ago when the Seattle Seahawks rolled to the Super Bowl to face a very similar Steelers squad. Online sports betting sharps know that that offensive line, with Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson, was much stronger than the Cardinals version, yet the Steelers still manhandled the Seahawks.
The Cardinals, though, like the New York Giants of last year, have done a number of things better in the postseason than they have in the regular season. Their offensive line is overachieving, their running game is finally functional and their defense is bringing its “A” game.
But the Cardinals are still on the road in the Eastern time zone, and that has been a recipe for disaster for them. Outside of two good games in Carolina, they’ve been very soft on the road.
