Super Bowl Toughness

The Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers are two NFL franchises known for their toughness and gritty play.  From Lombardi, to Knoll, Cowher, Bradshaw and Favre these two teams have a tradition of winning.  The current quarterbacks of the teams embody that image with their own play.

Aaron Rodgers was a late first round draft pick in the 2005 NFL draft and sat for three years behind Brett Favre.  He finally started in 2008 after Brett became a Jet and started all 16 games throwing 28 TDs.  Ben Roethlisberger started his career as a Steeler a little differently.  He was the the first round pick of the team in the 2004 draft and has virtually started since day 1.  He is leading the Steelers to his third Super Bowl appearance in his 7 year career, having already won twice.

Besides the different path, these two strong arm quarterebacks have a lot of similairities.  Roethlisberger had a life threatening motorcycle accident in 2006 and two alleged sexual assaults (which subsequently led to a 4 game suspension at the beginning of the season).  On top of that, he has dealt with an injured ankle this year as well as suffering a broken nose against Baltiomore (which needed surgery).  None of this kept him out the last 12 games.  Aaron Rodgers suffered two concussions this season.  That is serious. He missed the New England game on Sunday night because of his second such head injury this year.

Between Rodgers being a first round pick and having to wait behind a legend and Roethlisberger coming back from such social and physical adversity (in the case of the latter much of it was self inflicted) these two young men are great examples of what it takes to play in the Super Bowl.  With Rodgers, especially, the pressure that he has had to perform and fill theshoes of Favre must have been tremendous.  But, his play the last three years has possibly exceeded even his biggest fans expectations.  The best part about these two is that neither is even 30 yet, so we can look forward to them lining up behind center for a long time to come because adversity won’t keep them off the field.