A banner is seen outside MetLife Stadium Monday Jan. 27, 2014, in East Rutherford, N.J. The stadium will host Sunday’s NFL Super Bowl XLVIII football game between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks.We start the most important week of the NFL year discussing the most meaningless NFL endeavor of them all. Team Rice beat Team Sanders in the Pro Bowl 22-21, and if you watched it, well, that’s on you.
Now it’s Super Bowl week. It will be filled with discussions on weather. It also will be filled with discussions on whether – this is Peyton Manning’s final game; Richard Sherman represents thug or theater; Colorado or Washington will sell the most pizza during the “highs” and lows of the big game, in light of those states’ new law; the top-ranked Seattle defense can slow the top-ranked Denver offense; and potentially so much more.
There’s also the debates over the best way to build a winner and the best ways to pick a winner in Sunday’s big game.
As for building a Super Bowl champion, well, there are two direct and opposite approaches that delivered these teams to the highest pinnacle in American sports.
There is the idea of building around an elite quarterback who makes top-shelf money, adding value pieces here and there and otherwise relying on draft picks. The Denver Broncos are the poster child of this model, which needs a little bit of luck in regard to staying healthy because depth is an expensive proposition in the salary-cap-structured NFL. (For what it’s worth, the New England Patriots also followed this model, and their injuries that mounted throughout the season finally caught up with them in the AFC title game.)