We love winners. It’s who we are.
Winning cures everything, they say, and the funny thing about cliches is they are based on truth.
So it goes in sports, where the winners smile and speak of going to Disney World and how they shocked the world. We smile and nod, of course, because winners get the final word. That’s the ultimate reward — right? — that history is written by the winning teams.
The NFL playoffs and March Madness more than any tournaments reward winners. It’s the nature of a one-and-done format. Sunday, when Green Bay goes to Chicago and the New York Jets visit Pittsburgh in the NFL playoffs, the Super Bowl awaits the victors.
The lofty stakes for each team are matched by the towering opportunities for some of the involved individuals, especially the quarterbacks, who always get too much credit after a win and too much blame following a loss.
For Jay Cutler, this is the chance to prove his dazzling playoff debut last week was not a fluke. Cutler has been maligned as indifferent and difficult, but the former Vanderbilt star was downright special in dismantling Seattle.
For Mark Sanchez, a win in Pittsburgh would mean the second-year Jets quarterback would be 5-1 in playoffs. He would all but vanquish any uncertainty about his stats or his decision-making or his relative youth. A Super Bowl trip in Year No. 2 goes a long way to securing your place at the table, especially for a young quarterback such as Sanchez, who yearns for the confidence that only success can bring.
For Aaron Rodgers, it’s one closer step to a key to the executive washroom. Rodgers has been the NFL’s best player for the last six weeks and his numbers the last two years have been superb, but a Super Bowl title means something more to a quarterback. All Rodgers needs is the title to enter the game’s circle of elite quarterbacks with Manning, Brady, Brees and Roethlisberger — a group that sounds more like an accounting firm than a Pro Bowl roster.
But no one has more to gain in the next three weeks than Ben Roethlisberger. If he wins out, he would have three rings — as many as Tom Brady and two more than Peyton Manning — and with the Steelers’ foundation, the 28-year-old Roethlisberger could challenge the record for most Super Bowls for a quarterback. Think about that.
Plus, if he leads the Steelers to their seventh title, who had a bigger turnaround in 10 months considering the sordid memories and allegations of the offseason charges of sexual assault? Seriously, a Super Bowl title for Big Ben means he went from being in legal hot water to potentially being on the trading block to possibly being cut by the tradition-proud Steelers to serving a four-game NFL timeout to start the season to jumping on the short list of starting QBs with three Super Bowl titles.
It comes down to Sunday, and there’s only way to get there — winning.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6273.