Defense Still Wins Championships
By Tim Benz

THEY say offense wins games, defense wins championships. Often times I am not a big fan of THEY. THEY tend to rub me the wrong way. And THEY have been known to have a lot of good theories, with a lot of big holes that eventually get exposed. THEY have been known to cost a lot of people a whole lot of money on Sunday betting lines.

But THEY are on it with this one. It's become increasing popular to poke holes in the old adage of "offense wins games, defense wins championships." But without elite defensive play, you can have all the offense in the world, and you'll likely wind up at least one step short of the Super Bowl trophy.

The Super Bowl box scores prove the theory. Those who think Super Bowl winners are more about offense than conventional wisdom indicates, often bring up that 19 of the 36 Super Bowl winners have dropped 30+ points on the board. However, look at the final scores of those games. In 13 of the contests, the winning defense held the loser to 20 points or less while its offense was charging up and down the field.

Also, examining recent Super Bowl results is a great litmus test of the "defense wins championships" cliché. While the Rams defense was real good in its two Super Bowl runs, St. Louis got there with its Greatest Show on Turf offense. The Rams lost last year's Super Bowl by scoring just 17 points against a tremendous New England defense. They won three years ago despite posting a mundane 23 points against Tennessee's defense, and prevailed on a final big defensive tackle.

In between those games, Baltimore held the Giants to a lone kick return for a touchdown. Going back a little further over the last twelve years, Green Bay held New England to just 43 yards rushing while sacking drew Bledsoe five times and intercepting him four times during Super Bowl XXXI. The year before, some of you Steeler fans may have a foggy recollection of two Dallas Cowboy touchdowns being set up by Larry Brown interceptions of Neil O'Donnell. And just once in four straight tries did Buffalo's Hall of Fame studded offense break the 20-point mark. Meanwhile, its defense allowed 118 points in those four games, and average of nearly 30 a contest.

Even if you wanted to go further back, decade-by-decade, you could see that defense is the determining factor in winning the big game. The great Bear defense of 1985 inhaled New England in Super Bowl XX. And how about John Elway scratching his way to just 30 points in two straight Super Bowls against great Washington and New York Giant defenses in 1987 and 1988? The offense-first 49ers may have been the team of the 80's, but check out how they won their four Super Bowls in that decade. They held Denver to 10 points in Super Bowl XXIV. The year prior Cincy put up just 16, and seven came courtesy of Stanford Jennings' kick return touchdown. Dan Marino capped perhaps the greatest season ever by a quarterback with just one touchdown and two interceptions against the Niner defense in Super Bowl XIX. And the most memorable moment from San Fran's first Super Bowl win over the Bengals was a third quarter goal line stand. Also forgotten from that game is that the defense set up two 49ers touchdowns by forcing turnovers.

In the 70's the Steel Curtain, Doomsday, Raider, and No-Name defenses allowed no losing team to score more than 17 points between Super Bowl IV and Super Bowl XII. In the 60's the Packers and Jets held the Colts, Raiders and Chiefs to a grand total of 31 points in the first three Super Bowls.

Did all these teams have Canton-bound talent on offense too? Absolutely. But as THEY say…DEFENSE FIRST!

Tim Benz is a talk show host and Steelers' beat reporter on Pittsburgh's ESPN Radio 1250.