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A Super Bowl in October
by Michael E Lawrence
10/10/2007
It’s official. There will be no need to play weeks 7 through 17 of the National Football League season. The other thirty also-ran teams can pack up, go home, and think about family vacations.
This Sunday, in a preview of everybody’s predicted Super Bowl XLII, the Patriots and Cowboys, with 10 wins and zero losses between them, will face off.
They are the best two teams in the league or, at least, the best two teams in their respective conferences. The Patriots cannot be beaten, and the Cowboys, as anybody who watched Monday night’s Dallas-Buffalo game will attest, cannot find a way to lose.
There will be Tom Brady, the new Joe Cool, hands already heavy with three Super Bowl rings, and Tony Romo, the new Brett Favre, giving the ball away as if it was London Lite, but still finding a way to pull through.
There will be crisp, tenacious defenses, hellbent on stunting the ground game and conjuring turnovers.
 There will be era-defining wide receivers, in Randy Moss and Terrell Owens, who ask merely for the motivation to blow past defensive backs, to outmuscle the opposition.
This game is all the motivation they’ll need.
But who, actually, will win this mini-XLII? The smart money, the bookies’ favourite, will be New England, who in week three decimated the same Buffalo team that Romo’s Cowboys snuck past 25-24 just days ago.
New England have strolled, sprinted, waltzed past opponents, recording at least 34 points in every game they’ve played, and allowing no more than 17 in any of them. They have dominated in the air, on the ground, and on defense, and actually benefited from an integrity-questioning controversey concerning the recording of opponents’ defensive hand signals. As if it needed one, the organisation now has a chip on its shoulders.
Dallas, themselves cruising to 4-0 in a series of scoring avalanches, needed an onside kick and a whole central nervous system of placekicker nerve to eke out the fifth in their run of unbeaten games. And since that’s the case, it’s only a matter of time before we hear the words team of destiny whispering out of Dallas, Texas.
How do they match up? Brady and the Patriot passing game will salivate at the thought of gimpy Terrence Newman and untested Jacques Reeves on the corners for Dallas. Romo and Owens and reborn tight end Jason Witten will gush at the thought of New England’s lumbering linebacker mid-section, wherein Mike Vrabel, Junior Seau and Teddy Bruschi now rely on savvy above athleticism.
In the trenches, the Cowboys might fancy that New England’s no name offensive line can be beaten, especially if Marion Barber runs as frantically as he’s accustomed to doing. Equally, the Patriots and their Sammy Morris/Laurence Maroney platoon will note how Bills’ rookie Marshawn Lynch was able to forge occasional big gains against the Dallas front seven when cutting back against the grain in Ralph Wilson stadium.
But in a game that promises post-season calibre offense and defense, the deciding factor might be the specialists. For Dallas, rookie placekicker Nick Folk has shown nerves of steel, or, at least, the fearlessness of inexperience. For New England, opposite number Stephen Gostkowski has gradually exorcised memories of Adam Vinatieri with clutch and long distance kicks alike. If the game comes down to field position, Cowboy punter Matt McBriar might yet emerge as the unsung hero.
The guess here is that New England outscheme and outnerve an antsy Romo, still only halfway into his first full season as starter. Still, if he proved anything on Monday, Romo proved he could quickly forget, making all the requisite, desperation throws as the minutes, and then seconds, ticked away.
Thing is, after the Patriots emerge victorious Sunday, if the Cowboys plan to make any serious noise in a February rematch, Romo just might need to develop a serious case of amnesia.
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