Football: Super Bowl features comparable teams

The two teams are so similar, it’s eerie.

On Wednesday, the Sporting News called them… The two teams are so similar, it’s eerie.

On Wednesday, the Sporting News called them “mirror images.”  Steelers linebacker James Farrior admitted Monday that both teams “run pretty much the same defense.” The AP noted that both teams drafted 16 of their expected starters, signed two more after they went undrafted and added the last four via free agency. They resemble each other even down to the blitz packages they use.

But ask Steelers or Packers fans what they think about the opposition, and their responses will make it sound like the two teams couldn’t be any more different. This Sunday night, they’re rivals, competing against each other for football’s greatest prize in Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

The Pittsburgh Steelers franchise seeks its seventh Super Bowl win on Sunday, with its sixth coming just two years ago against the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. Green Bay, another historic NFL franchise, is going for its fourth.

“You’ve got two storied franchises,” Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said Monday. “It’s going to be crazy because the whole place is going to be yellow because of both teams.”

Roethlisberger, who won championships with Pittsburgh in 2006 and 2009, could become the fifth quarterback in history to win three Super Bowls with one team.

Green Bay has a star quarterback of its own in Aaron Rodgers, who has thrown for six touchdowns in the postseason and rushed for two more. He led the Packers out of the NFC as a No. 6 seed with three road wins over division-winners Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago.

Both quarterbacks have plenty of targets to which they can throw. Each team has a speedster — Pittsburgh’s Mike Wallace and his 21-yard receiving average counter Green Bay’s Greg Jennings and his 12 touchdowns — and each has a veteran complement. Donald Driver has played all 12 of his years in the league with the Packers, and Sunday will conclude Hines Ward’s 13th season with the Steelers.

“[Driver has] really been a mentor to the younger receivers,” Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy said Tuesday. “Donald has been a Packer through and through as far as how he handles his business. He is the one that has the notebook out. He highlights every play just like it’s the first time it’s ever put in.”

Ward’s situation has drawn comparisons to Jerome Bettis’ Super Bowl XL win and subsequent retirement, but the 34-year-old said Monday he hasn’t thought about hanging up his cleats for good.

“I know Jerome went out on top,” Ward said. “I feel good. Whenever that time comes, trust me, I’ll let you guys know. I don’t foresee this being my last game.”

It was Ward’s teammate Rashard Mendenhall who catapulted Pittsburgh to the Super Bowl. In the AFC divisional playoff game against Baltimore, Mendenhall capped the winning drive with a 2-yard touchdown run with 1:33 left to play, and the Steelers won in come-from-behind fashion, 31-24.

Sunday, though, Mendenhall faces the league’s second-best rush defense, one with nose tackle B.J. Raji at the helm. Raji’s 18-yard interception return for a touchdown was instrumental in Green Bay’s win two weeks ago over Chicago, 21-14, to reach the Super Bowl.

The only team better than the Packers against the run is Pittsburgh itself. Green Bay rookie running back James Starks will go up against a defense that has given up just five rushing touchdowns all season.

No player has rushed for 100 yards against the Steelers this year.

Gaining yards through the air could prove difficult for both teams too. Green Bay linebacker Clay Matthews has the speed and strength to rush Roethlisberger on some plays and cover receivers on others.

“Clay is … in an elite group of being one of the best pass rusher/outside linebackers — let alone defensive players — in the National Football League,” McCarthy said. “He brings a tremendous energy, style of play, tenaciousness to our defense that is infectious.”

The Steelers’ version of Matthews is Troy Polamalu, who edged out Matthews by two votes this week for the AP’s Defensive Player of the Year award. Polamalu, James Harrison and Pittsburgh’s strong front seven racked up a league-best 48 sacks during the season.

“We always have competition between [me and Harrison],” linebacker LaMarr Woodley said Monday. ”We just always talk and say, ‘Who’s going to get to the quarterback first?’”

Pittsburgh defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau and Green Bay defensive coordinator Dom Capers both employ the zone blitz against the passing attack. In fact, they invented the scheme together with Bill Cowher in 1994 when all three worked for the Steelers.

The coaching connections don’t stop there. McCarthy grew up and still lives in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Greenfield. Residing 15 minutes away from Downtown, he was a Steelers fan as a child.

“I remember all of the Super Bowls,” he said. “The biggest thing I remember about the first Super Bowl was the city’s reaction to it. It had been 40 years and Mr. [Dan] Rooney — what he meant to the city and for the city to have that success. I was a Steelers fan, and Jack Lambert was my favorite player.”

In a game in which everything else seems to match up perfectly, it’s only fitting.