Is Super Bowl 43 between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals a Mismatch?
‘ SUPER BOWL 43: A MISMATCH? by Richard Baehr …the Super Bowl will be played Sunday evening in Tampa between the five time champion Pittsburgh Steelers, and the first time Super Bowl-contending Arizona Cardinals. It is not a match that anyone saw coming when the regular season ended. The Cardinals, even after they beat Atlanta in a first round playoff game, were given odds of 50 to 1 to win the Super Bowl before their divisional playoff game with Carolina. Their regular season performance was hardly one to garner any respect. The Cardinals won the NFC West with a 9-7 record, sweeping all 6 games against conference foes. This was not much of an achievement, given those 3 teams had a combined record of 13-35. Against the rest of the NFL, Arizona was 3-7. For the season, the Cardinals scored 427 points, and gave up 426. That placed them 18th of 32 NFL teams in point differential with +1. That was not bad when you consider that the Cardinals’ defense ranked 28th in the league, giving up
