The team that has had the most double digit wins in the regular season also has prevailed in sixty percent of the Superbowls played. This is the confidence factor that is so important. I assume its confidence for when a team needs a score.

Setting aside all you know about the Giants great ability at fourth quarter comebacks the fact is they won by a handful of points in those games. Only four games were won by ten or more points.

The Patriots meanwhile won eight games by double figures.

What does that mean?

Nothing absolute it is simple correlation that usually the teams that win the Superbowl are teams that can run up the score. Many times those teams get to the Superbowl because they have put away the opposition early many more times.

Confidence is an asset in the playoffs but I doubt either of these two teams feel that they could get behind by three touchdowns in this game and make a comeback. One touchdown though and I am sure they both think they can convert that one important drive.

Ball control and being able to mix in a running game to wean time off the clock is an important statistic and one merited by 60 percent of past Superbowl winners. Usually the team with the best running game is that team.

There are by the way other ways to keep the clock running by completing passes and staying in bounds but using time on drives may be a better statistic to track for these teams.

If teams just whiz up and down the field passing all day this won’t matter. Just have to watch a rerun of the final five minutes of the 49ers and Saints in the fourth quarter of their NFC playoff to confirm that. In the season both the Giants and the Pats held the ball for about 28-29 minutes a game. On the season while New England didn’t run much they were selective runners when they won. This might be a statistic that tips this game one way or another but I wouldn’t bank on it.

ARGUMENT AGAINST WEAKNESS

And to show that all these indicators may mean nothing, if you analyzed the same five factors before the last Superbowl you wouldn’t have predicted Green Bay as the winner. That’s because we aren’t talking ninety percent and eighty percent probabilities here – it’s a nominal sixty percent of the time that champions have these advantages. 

The Giants made the playoffs by winning less than sixty percent of the time!

Nothing in those tendencies scream Brady is going down or that Eli isn’t already elite.

If anything they make this Superbowl look closer.

Fans of the Giants will want to throw out stats from games played before December and say that with significant players injured the stats of an apparent lack of running game or pass rush early in the season were excused.

Well there isn’t an excuse now and they are quite correct that the team’s renaissance of 2011 coincided with healthy players.

Patriot fans then are just as able to wash out the defensive play from September and October because the team has improved and more noteworthy the stat that measures yards surrendered is very misleading for a team with a kicker that has been backing other teams to well behind the twenty yard line to start each drive.

That also matters since the urgency to defend is not as acute until they get closer to where they might score. So the first sixty yards defended were soft yards.

This Patriots team is the only Patriots team under Bill Belichick to make it to the Superbowl with a defense ranked lower than sixth in the NFL. That has never happened before, it actually goes against the NFL grain where a good defense is supposed to protect a good offense – it appears now that Brady and the offense came to the support of their statistically immune defense.

You are supposed to win because of a dominating defense but New England has done it with a much deeper domination on offense than those great teams which were built for dominating by defense. It is a lack of balance we are not used to at this level.

How else could they win the 13 games, the AFC East and now the conference if they are dead last in surrendering yardage?

That can’t be an excuse if they lose either.

These teams don’t have an excuse to lose. They should both win this game. 

The Patriots aren't facing the Jets, Chargers or Broncos and the Giants aren't up against the Rams or Seahawks, all teams they played this year. They are facing each other and usually when you know the opponent you tweak the game to fit that oppponent and you start by fixing first what they will try and exploit.

NOTHING HIDDEN HERE

They don’t turn the ball over much. They have athletic receivers and quarterbacks that can ace the final drive and they have pretty good specialty teams that came through for them in order to get this far.

My advice to either quarterback might be not to score too fast on that “final” drive or it won’t be the final drive.

They have motivation at every level imaginable. Someone either hasn’t won, wants to win, wants to win another, a second time, a fourth time, so that everyone suiting up is aware of the legacy that may befall the winners of this game.

Nothing is hidden here.

Teams may devise schemes like the Patriots often do to give their defenders an edge or maybe they will pound at each other strength on strength in the trenches as coach Tom Coughlin of the Giants normally prefers to do.

It is completely plausible that New England will win, but also totally possible that the Giants will do it yet again.

The uncertainty though is a great thing for football even though they didn’t need more people interested in the game. 

This is probably a better combination to showcase the game than a San Francisco vs. Baltimore “Harbaugh Bowl” would have been for all fans.

While I might enjoy defensive nail biters through the regular season you know that once one of those teams got a three point lead they would have tossed their playbook and just smothered the other team and the spectre of anyone creating plays to come back with hurry up offenses and down field plays would have disappeared.

The quarterbacks on other teams just don’t have the liberty managing their offenses like we get in Superbowl XLVI and certainly no team could say they have it in the bag with five minutes left if the other quarterback is still healthy and in the game.

This is the season that the lack of a training camp gave an edge to offense.

So it is only suiting that the game this time is offense against offense.

Purists may say any combination of teams make a Superbowl great but we all know that is not true and that the interest has spiked for this one game.

It is not like 1986 when we knew the Patriots were long shots to beat the Bears and they did lose by several scores 46-10. And it isn’t 2001 when the Giants were going up against a Baltimore team that was one of the stingiest ever surrendering points and they were to lose 34-7.

The last four Superbowls have been hard to predetermine like this years. Something has changed since New England was supposed to romp to an unbeaten finish and Brady mocked Giants’ Plaxibo Burress for suggesting they could keep the Pats to only 17 points. The final was 17-14 Giants.

Maybe teams at this stage know each other better than they used to in previous years. Everyone is aware of the weaknesses and what to expect and were naive to think back in 2008 the Patriots were as big a favorite as they feigned to be.

As participants expect to have the opportunity to play their game the Superbowl is living up to be more “super” in this era of the sport.