All-time Super Bowl power rankings: Which game was the best?
By James Dudko
4. Super Bowl XXXII: Denver Broncos 31, Green Bay Packers 24
Playing for the AFC wasn’t an enjoyable experience for most of the eighties and nineties. How could it be when the NFC won 13-straight Super Bowls?
The monopoly looked like it would never end, certainly not when the upstart Broncos took the field against the defending champion Packers in 1998. Green Bay boasted a fantastic team, one loaded on both sides of the ball.
The offense was led by the dynamic improv of quarterback Brett Favre. He tore defenses apart connecting with receivers Robert Brooks and Antonio Freeman and handing the ball to versatile fullback Dorsey Levens.
The Packers defense was also a force, a unit housing intelligent veterans turned loose by great coordinator Fritz Shurmur, maybe the most creative defensive play-caller the NFL has ever known.
Denver weren’t expected to offer much resistance to the Pack’s bid to repeat. Not even with John Elway trying to finally win that elusive ring. Fortunately for Elway, he had Terrell Davis in the backfield.
What followed was one of the standout rushing efforts on a Super Sunday. Davis piled up 157 yards on the ground, including a record three touchdowns.
Yet for all Davis’ heroics, he even stayed in the game with a migraine, Elway made the play everybody remembers.
The 37-year-old’s desperate scramble and ballsy helicopter-spin to convert a crucial third down in the third quarter epitomized Denver’s will to win.
3. Super Bowl XIII: Pittsburgh Steelers 35, Dallas Cowboys 31
Scott Norwood, Jackie Smith knows your pain. The Cowboys tight end ended an illustrious career in the Hall of Fame.
Yet the lasting image fans have of Smith is him dropping Roger Staubach’s pass in the end zone in the dying seconds of Super Bowl XIII. Staubach had fired a pinpoint bullet right between the numbers, but Smith somehow failed to make the grab.
His drop cost the Cowboys the game in one of the highest-quality Super Bowls ever played. It was a contest filled to bursting with spectacular plays and outstanding individual performances.
One of those performances came from Bradshaw, who threw four touchdown passes, before Staubach nearly brought the Cowboys back from 35-17 down.
Had head coach Chuck Noll’s Steelers not been what they were in the seventies, the decade would have belonged to Landry’s Cowboys. However, Staubach and the ‘Boys never seemed able to get past Bradshaw and Co.