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Super Bowl XL is the 40th Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the major professional league of American football. Kickoff was at 18:23 EST (23:23 UTC) on Sunday, February 5, 2006, at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan, home of the Detroit Lions.

The American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers compete against the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Seattle Seahawks for the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

As the AFC champion, Pittsburgh is designated as the home team and has elected to wear its white jerseys, which the team has worn on the road during its entire playoff run this season . Consequently, Seattle will wear its metalic blue jerseys, which the team normally wears at home.

Background

Ford Field was selected to host Super Bowl XL on November 1, 2000, two years before the stadium opened in 2002. This will be the second Super Bowl played in the Detroit area; Super Bowl XVI was played at the Pontiac Silverdome in the suburb of Pontiac, Michigan, on January 24, 1982, when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 26-21. It will also be the first Super Bowl to be played on the FieldTurf surface; each of the previous Super Bowls has been played either on natural grass or on AstroTurf.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers entered Super Bowl XL, the sixth Super Bowl in team history, after finishing the regular season with a 11-5 record and becoming the first team ever to defeat the first-, second-, and third- seeded teams on the road in the playoffs. In addition, the team became the first sixth-seeded team to reach both a conference championship game and the Super Bowl since the NFL expanded to a 12-team playoff format in 1990.

Under Bill Cowher's reign as Steelers head coach since 1992, the team has been one of the top teams in the NFL, making the playoffs in 10 out of his 14 seasons, advancing to the AFC Championship Game six times, and making an appearance in Super Bowl XXX. After having finished the 2003 season with a 6-10 record and after splitting its first two games to open 2004, Pittsburgh lost starting quarterback Tommy Maddox to injury. Maddox was replaced by rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was drafted with the 11th pick in the 2004 NFL Draft. The Steelers had not expected him to play during in his first season. Nevertheless, Roethlisberger led the Steelers to victory in all of the team's 13 remaining regular season games, giving Pittsburgh a 15-1 record and making the Steelers the first AFC team ever to win 15 games. However, the Steelers lost to eventual Super Bowl champion New England in the AFC Championship Game.

Pittsburgh began the 2005 season by winning seven of its first nine games, but suffered a major setback when both Roethlisberger and his backup, Charlie Batch, went down with injuries; with Maddox back as the starter, the team was upset by Baltimore. The Steelers would drop two more games after Roethlisberger's return, falling to division rival Cincinnati and then-undefeated Indianapolis. The postseason hopes of the Steelers were in peril, but the team recovered to win its final four regular season games and to claim the sixth—and final—seed in the AFC playoffs.

Roethlisberger was efficient in his 13 regular season games, throwing for 2,385 yards and 17 touchdowns with only 9 interceptions, while adding 3 rushing touchdowns. The Steelers' main deep threat was wide receiver Hines Ward, who led the team with 69 receptions for 975 yards and 11 touchdowns. His 69 catches gave him a career total of 574, surpassing the previous club record for receptions held by Hall of Fame wide receiver John Stallworth. On the other side of the field, speedy wide receiver Antwaan Randle El was a constant breakaway threat, catching 35 passes for 558 yards, while gaining 448 yards and 2 touchdowns on punt returns. Rookie tight end Heath Miller also recorded 39 receptions for 459 yards and 6 touchdowns.

Pittsburgh's main strength on offense, however, was its running game. Running back Willie Parker was the team's leading rusher with 1,202 yards; Parker added 18 catches for 218 yards and 5 touchdowns. In short-yardage situations, the team relied most prominently on 255-pound running back Jerome Bettis, who rushed for 368 yards and scored 9 touchdowns. The 33-year old Bettis finished his 13th NFL season as the league's fifth all-time leading rusher (13,662 yards and 91 touchdowns) but never having appeared in a Super Bowl; Super Bowl XL was especially enticing to Bettis in view of his having grown up in Detroit. The Steelers rushing attack was powered by an offensive line led by Pro Bowl guard Alan Faneca and Pro Bowl reserve center Jeff Hartings.

The Steelers defense ranked fourth in the NFL, giving up only 284.0 total yards per game. The Pittsburgh defense was led by its linebacking core: Joey Porter, James Farrior, and Clark Haggans. Pro Bowler Porter led all NFL linebackers with 10.5 quarterback sacks and also recorded 2 interceptions and a fumble recovery. Haggans tallied 9 sacks and 40 tackles, while Farrior added a team-high 119 tackles to go with his 2 sacks and one fumble recovery. In the secondary, free safety Chris Hope led the team with 3 interceptions, while Pro Bowl safety Troy Polamalu, the team's top threat in the defensive backfield, notched 91 tackles, 3 sacks, 2 fumble recoveries, and 2 interceptions.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks entered Super Bowl XL after finishing the regular season with an NFC-best and club record 13-3 record. Seattle had never advanced to the Super Bowl before, and had been a mediocre team for much of the 1990s, recording eight consecutive non-winning seasons from 1991 through 1998. The team's fortunes began to turn after Mike Holmgren became head coach in 1999. Holmgren previously was the Green Bay Packers head coach from 1992 to 1998, and had led that team to Super Bowls XXXI and XXXII.

Then in 2001, the Seahawks acquired quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who had seen only limited playing time in his first two NFL seasons as the backup to Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The offense was also improved by the development of running back Shaun Alexander, who rushed for 1,318 yards and 13 touchdowns in just his second NFL season.

Behind Hasselbeck, Seattle finished the 2005 season as the league's top offense, scoring 452 points. The quarterback completed 65.5 percent of his passes for 3,455 yards and 24 touchdowns (against just 9 interceptions); Hasselbeck added 124 yards and one touchdown on the ground. Alexander, who had scored at least 16 touchdowns in each of the previous four seasons, had the best campaign of his career, leading the league with 1,880 rushing yards and scoring an NFL-record 28 touchdowns, for which he was rewarded with the NFL Most Valuable Player Award. Although the Seahawks suffered injuries to starting wide receivers Darrell Jackson and Bobby Engram throughout the season, the passing game nevertheless proved potent, as Engram managed 67 receptions for 778 yards and as Joe Jurevicius, a backup when the season began, started 11 games and made 55 catches for 694 yards and 10 touchdowns; tight end Jerramy Stevens also emerged as a Hasselbeck target, catching 45 passes for 554 yards and scoring 5 touchdowns. Hasselbeck was protected and Alexander was given time to run by a stout offensive line, led by Pro Bowl offensive tackle Walter Jones, guard Steve Hutchinson, and center Robbie Tobeck, and by bruising Pro Bowl fullback Mack Strong, the longest-tenured Seahawk, having played 12 seasons with the team.

Though unheralded—the unit had no players elected to the Pro Bowl—the Seahawks defense recorded 50 quarterback sacks, leading the NFL in that category; defensive end Bryce Fisher, in his first year with the team, led the Seahawks with 9 sacks, while defensive tackle Rocky Bernard added 8.5 and veteran defensive end Grant Wistrom recorded 4. Though for most of the year the Seahawks started two rookies at linebacker, the Seattle linebacking core played well, led by rookie middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who topped the team with 104 tackles and added 4 sacks, 3 interceptions, and 1 fumble recovery; Tatupu would later be rewarded with a selection to the Pro Bowl as an injury replacement. From his strong safety position, Michael Boulware paced the team in interceptions with 4 and also tallied 2 sacks and 1 fumble recovery, as the Seattle secondary suffered sundry injuries throughout the year, notably to free safety Ken Hamlin; second-year cornerback Jordan Babineaux played well as he appeared in all 16 games for Seattle, intercepting 3 passes and making 61 tackles. For the year, the defense surrendered just 271 points, 181 fewer than the Seahawks offense scored.

Statistical comparison

The chart below provides a comparison of regular season statistics in key categories (overall rank amongst 32 teams in parentheses).

Playoffs

The Steelers became the second Super Bowl team to have won three road playoff games (joining the 1985 Patriots). Pittsburgh defeated the third-seeded Bengals, 31-17; the top-seeded Colts, 21-18; and the second-seeded Denver Broncos, 34-17, in the AFC Championship Game. The Steelers also became the ninth wild-card team to go to the Super Bowl and the fourth in nine seasons.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks became the first team to advance to the Super Bowl without having played against any single division champion in the playoffs. Off a first-round bye, Seattle defeated the sixth-seeded Washington Redskins, 20-10, before eliminating the fifth-seeded Carolina Panthers, 34-14, in the NFC Championship Game.

Television and entertainment

The game was televised in the United States by ABC with play-by-play announcer Al Michaels, color commentator John Madden, who was named the day before to the Class of 2006 by the Pro Football Hall Of Fame, and sideline reporters Michelle Tafoya and Suzy Kolber. This will be the first time Tafoya and Kolber will both report on the sidelines, which they will do when ESPN takes over Monday Night Football coverage during the next season. This is the sixth Super Bowl telecast for Michaels, and the tenth for Madden (whose first was Super Bowl XVI, also played in Michigan). The opening theme was sung by Hank Williams Jr.

Chris Berman from Disney-owned corporate sibling ESPN returned to host ABC's pregame show, which he previously did for the network's coverage of Super Bowls XXXIV and XXXVII. Berman was joined by his fellow analysts from ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show: Michael Irvin, Tom Jackson, and Steve Young along with co-host Mike Tirico and New England Patriots head coach (and three-time Super Bowl winner) Bill Belicheck.

With the expiration of the current television contracts among ABC, CBS, ESPN and FOX following the 2005 season, this game served as the final telecast for ABC after 36 seasons with the NFL, at least for the foreseeable future and thus the second (after Super Bowl XXXVII) and probably final Super Bowl telecast with the broadcast team of Al Michaels and John Madden. In addition, since the game was being played close to the US-Canada border, Canadian television rights holders Global had a pre-game show telecast live from the NFL-sponsored "Passport To The Super Bowl" event in nearby Windsor, Ontario, featuring a perfomance by the newly-revived 1980s rock group INXS with Canadian native lead singer J.D. Fortune.

The game was also televised in Australia (SBS), Austria (ORF and TW1), Brazil (SporTV/FX), Denmark (TV 2), Finland (MTV3), France (France 2), Germany (ARD), Hungary (Sport1), Iceland (SÝN), Japan (NHK BS-1), Mexico (TV Azteca), the Netherlands (SBS6), Spain (Canal +), Sweden (ZTV), and UK (ITV/Sky Sports).

The main NFL international feed of the game featured FOX broadcasters Dick Stockton and Daryl Johnston providing commentary tailored to those largely unfamiliar with the rules of American football.

The Rolling Stones performed during the halftime show, which was sponsored this year by the American telecommunications company Sprint. However, the choice of The Rolling Stones sparked controversy in the Detroit community because the band did not represent Motown Sound or any other artist or style from the area's musical history. The pregame ceremonies, though, featured a performance from Stevie Wonder, performing, along with Joss Stone, India.Arie and John Legend, a medley of his hits. Singers Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville along with pianist Dr. John and a 150-member choir performed the national anthem as part of a pregame tribute to New Orleans, a nine-time Super Bowl host city that continues rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The national anthem was performed in American Sign Language by Angela LaGuardia, a teacher at Michigan School for the Deaf.

To honor the 40th Super Bowl game, the coin toss ceremony featured the previous Super Bowl Most Valuable Players. Tom Brady, MVP of Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII, tossed the coin, which landed on tails, in favor of the Seattle Seahawks. Brady was the first active player to participate in a Super Bowl coin toss.

Throughout the 2005 season, the National Football League heavily advertised the game with its "The Road to Forty" promotion, featuring 14 past and present players in six different movie trailer-style television commercials. During the playoffs, actor Don Cheadle returned to participate in ads.

Commercials

As usual, the American television broadcast of the Super Bowl is expected to showcase top commericals and will command a top price, expected to be $2.5 million US for a 30-second spot. According to Advertising Age, Anheuser-Busch will be the top advertiser during the game, having purchased 10 30-second spots. The magazine reported that other companies having purchased multiple commerical segments include Ameriquest (two), CareerBuilder.com (two), Pepsi-Cola (four), Pizza Hut (ten, though most are scheduled to run prior to kickoff), Sprint (three), Procter & Gamble (four, three for Gillette razors), Warner Brothers (three) and GoDaddy.com (two). Three companies will air 60-second advertisements: General Motors (for the Cadillac brand), Burger King, and ESPN. Agency BBDO was scheduled to be the biggest single producer of commericals, creating 19. . ABC will also air several 60-second commercials for some of its shows, including Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy.

Game summary

First quarter

After the first four possesions of the game ended with punts, Seahawks punt returner Peter Warrick gave his team good field position by returning Chris Gardocki's 37-yard punt 12 yards to Seattle's 49-yard line. Quarterback Matt Hassleback then started off the drive with a pair of completions to receivers Darrell Jackson and Joe Jurevicius for gains of 20 and 11 yards. Then on the third play of the drive, Hassleback threw a 16-yard touchdown pass to Jackson, but officials ruled that he had commited pass interference in the end zone before he caught the ball, nulifying the touchdown. On the next two plays, running back Shaun Alexander ran twice, but only gained three yards. Hassleback's subsequent pass on third down fell incomplete, forcing them to settle for a 47-yard field goal from kicker Josh Brown.

By the time the first quarter ended, the Steelers had failed to gain a single first down and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had completed just one of five pass attempts for one yard.

Second quarter

In the second quarter, Michael Boulware intercepted a pass from Roethlisberger at the Seahawks 17-yard line for the first turnover of the game. However, Seattle could not take advantage of the turnover and had to punt after three plays. After the punt Pittsburgh finally got a good drive going, and advanced to the Seahawks 22-yard line. But then they were pushed all the way back to the 40-yard line on the next two plays. First tight end Heath Miller was called for offensive pass interference, and then Seahawks defensive end Grant Wistrom sacked Roethlisberger for an eight-yard loss on the next play, bringing up third down and 28 yards to go. However, Roethlisberger managed to overcome the situation with a 37-yard completion to receiver Hines Ward at the three-yard line. Running back Jerome Bettis then attempted to run the ball into the end zone on the next two plays, but he was stuffed at the one-yard line both times. After the two-minute warning, Roethlisberger took the third down snap, faked a handoff, and dove into the end zone for a touchdown, giving his team a 7-3 lead.

Aided by a 19-yard reception by Jurevicius, Seattle responded by advancing the ball to the Steelers 36-yard line on their ensuing possession, but came up empty after Brown's 54-yard field goal attempt sailed wide right as time expired in the half.

Third quarter

Two plays into the second half, Willie Parker raced 75 yards for a touchdown to give the Steelers a 14-3 lead. The rushing touchdown beat Marcus Allen's record set during Super Bowl XXVIII by one yard. The Seahawks drove to the Pittsburgh 33, but Brown missed a 50-yard field goal. The Steelers failed to capitalize, thanks to Kelly Herndon's 76-yard interception (this also beat a Super Bowl record, set by Willie Brown, 75 yards, in Super Bowl XI, again by one yard), which turned into a Jerramy Stevens 16-yard touchdown to make the score 14-10 after Brown's point after attempt. The teams exchanged punts (Pittsburgh twice, Seattle once) with the Seahawks driving into Steelers territory to end the quarter.

Fourth quarter

Antwan Randle-El threw a reverse pass to Hines Ward to extend the Steelers' lead back to 11 points.

It would appear as if a victory for Seattle is ruled out, due to Pittsburgh making another touchdown to put the score at 21-10 in their favor.

Gambling

• According to Las Vegas oddsmakers, the Steelers opened betting as a four-point favorite.
• The over-under, or expected points total, for the game, opened at 47.
• The money line is set at roughly +160 for the Seahawks and -180 for the Steelers.
• At TradeSports contracts are traded during the whole game. At the moment trading indicates investors pricing in a 68% probability for a Steelers victory and consequently a 32% probabilty for a Seahawks victory.

This was just the fifth time in Super Bowl history when a lower-seeded team opened as the favorite to win; the previous occurrences were before Super Bowls XXXIX (AFC second-seeded New England Patriots were favored by seven points over NFC top-seed Philadelphia Eagles), XXXV (AFC fourth-seeded Baltimore Ravens were favored by three points over NFC top-seed New York Giants), XXIII (NFC second-seeded San Francisco 49ers were favored by seven points over AFC first-seed Cincinnati Bengals), and XVII (AFC second-seeded Miami Dolphins were favored by three points over Washington Redskins). In each but the last iteration, the lower-seeded and favored team won.

This will also be the second time in Super Bowl history when the favorite was a wild card team; the first was before Super Bowl XXXV, when the Ravens were favored.

Trivia

• The game was frequently referred to as "Extra Large" in view of its Roman numeral designation, XL.
• Mike Holmgren became the fifth coach to have taken two different teams to the Super Bowl. He follows Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves, and Dick Vermeil; none won the championship game with both teams.
• With this appearance, the Steelers join the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos as the only franchises to have qualified for six Super Bowls; the Broncos also have six appearances, while the Cowboys have eight.
• The Steelers became only the third franchise to wear white jerseys despite being the "home" team; the Cowboys (Super Bowls XIII and XXVII) and the Redskins (Super Bowl XVII), who traditionally wear white at home, are the other two.
• Ben Roethlisberger became the second youngest quarterback to start in a Super Bowl, behind only Dan Marino, who led the Dolphins to Super Bowl XIX at age 23. If Roethlisberger wins, he will be the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
• Members of the winning team each received a payment of $73,000 for playing in the game, while players on the losing team were paid $38,000. The Green Bay Packers received $15,000 each for winning Super Bowl I in 1967; adjusted for inflation in 2006 dollars, that sum is roughly $86,000. .
• After having held constant at $600 for three years, the face value of the costliest Super Bowl ticket rose to $700 for the game. On eBay, the least-desirable seats—those behind each end zone in the upper level—fetched more than $2000 each, while top seats around the 50-yard line sold for more than $6000.

See also

• 2005 NFL season
• NFL playoffs, 2005-06

References

• Official NFL web site, includes recaps, scores and statistics of the games and teams throughout the season.
• Official Super Bowl web site
• Super Bowl XL Host Committee web site
• Preferred Map of Super Bowl XL
• Confirmation of ABC commercials
• Super Bowl Commericals infomation

• Super Bowl
• 2006 in sports
• ABC Sports
• Pittsburgh Steelers
• Seattle Seahawks
• Detroit, Michigan