Super Bowl Recap – One of the Best Ever
The NFL betting season concluded on Sunday with a championship game for the ages, as Pittsburgh and Arizona fought to the final play in Super Bowl XLIII.
For anyone that missed it, what were you thinking! Super Bowl XLIII was a classic that will be added to the list of the greatest NFL championships of all-time.After a fourth quarter that saw two lead changes in the final two and a half minutes Pittsburgh knocked off Arizona 27-23. Santonio Holmes picked up, and definitely deserved, MVP honors after an amazing fourth-quarter performance. Holmes hauled in nine passes for 131 yards, with four receptions for 73 yards and the game-winning touchdown catch in the fourth quarter alone.
Holmes was just one of the amazing stories in the big game. Aside from Holmes’ game-winning touchdown catch the play of the game for the Steelers was a record-setting interception by linebacker James Harrison. With Arizona knocking on the door on the goal line late in the second quarter Harrison picked off a Kurt Warner pass and rumbled 100 yards down the field for a touchdown. At the time it put the Steelers up 17-7 heading into halftime and set a new Super Bowl record for longest interception return.
Despite the loss Warner also delivered a stellar performance for Arizona, and Larry Fitzgerald put together another masterful playoff game. Warner completed 72 percent of his passes while throwing for 377 yards with three touchdowns and an interception. Fitzgerald had a quiet first half, but broke out late with two touchdown receptions in the fourth quarter.
Fitzgerald’s second TD catch, a 64-yarder, gave Arizona their first lead of the game. In all Fitzgerald had seven receptions for 127 yards. Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston also were solid, as Boldin grabbed eight balls for 84 yards and Breaston caught six for 71 yards.
Here’s what the final score meant for bettors. The Steelers may have claimed their sixth Super Bowl win in franchise history, but they didn’t win any cash for bettors who wagered on them to win against the spread on the NFL odds. The Steelers were a 6.5-point favorite, and with only a four-point win they failed to cover. So, if you took the Cardinals to win by the spread you cashed in.
Total bettors made some cash if they bet on the OVER. The total at kickoff time was set at 46.5 and the final tally of 27-23 just eclipsed that with a combined score of 50 points.
The big thing for bettors on Super Bowl Sunday is props. There’s no way to outline the results to every prop bet – that would take hours and pages upon pages of writing. However, here’s a breakdown of a few results. We already noted that Holmes won the MVP, and anyone who bet on him on the MVP prop made some nice cash because he was a big underdog after Warner, Ben Roethlisberger, Willie Parker, and Hines Ward.
The ever-popular coin toss prop was won by the Cardinals, making it 12 straight years now that the NFC has won the toss. Arizona may have won the toss, but Pittsburgh took the first kickoff after the Cards deferred.
One final prop to look at is the first touchdown prop, which only paid out to anyone who took The Field because seldom-used Steelers running back Gary Russell punched it in from one-yard out for the game’s first TD. In other words, a lot of money was likely lost on that prop.
