Super Bowl Rematches

Super Bowl XLVI marked the 5^th Super Bowl rematch and the third rematch of Super Bowl Quarterbacks.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys have matched up three times - with Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach meeting two of those times. The Cowboys have met the Bills twice - with Troy Aikman meeting Jim Kelly twice. There have also been two each of Dolphins/Redskins and Bengals/49ers tilts.

The news for Tom Brady is not good. In the first two rematches of Super Bowl quarterbacks, the same man won both games: Bradshaw and Aikman won. For the man with 3 Super Bowl rings, the thought of losing another Super Bowl to Eli Manning - the man who has a ring already against Brady's 18-1 Patriots - must be as much a driver as the pursuit of his favorite ring, "the next one."

On the other hand, the news for the Patriots was not quite as grim, albeit not good. Of the rematches, the Cowboys have won 1 of the 3 games, and the Dolphins and Redskins each split. The Cowboys victory in Super Bowl XXX was the most recent split of rematches. So there was some hope.

Overall it shakes down like this:

Pittsburgh 2 (Bradshaw - 2) - Dallas 1 (Staubach - 0)

Miami 1 - Washington 1

Dallas 2 (Aikman - 2) - Buffalo 0 (Kelly - 0)

San Francisco 2 - Cincinnati 0

We forget how dominant the Bills of the early 1990's were because they just couldn't seal the deal - their first visit a 1-point loss to the same New York Football Giants the New England Patriots will face in Super Bowl XLVI. And here is where history repeats itself. But for an improbable sequence of events in Super Bowl XLII, the Patriots would be coming into this rematch with history on their side and an historic season behind them. Had Scott Norwood placed a kick true to the posts in Super Bowl XXV, the Bills would have done down as the 1990's most dominant teams and they would have 1 Lombardi trophy to show for their remarkable run.

In a game pairing the game's best teams, the slightest error in judgment or execution over the course of a 60-minute game can be the deciding factor. As we saw, the Giants made fewer crucial errors of judgement and returned as Champions.