Super Bowl XLVIII

[Glenn]

I don't know, man, Denver played a cake schedule. Niners battled through some adversity and had some heartbreaks like the loss to New Orleans that really swung the home field advantage in the NFC. I don't have advanced stats to back things up, but the NFC and the NFC West in particular were just on another spectrum of eliteness that no team in the AFC could touch. The Super Bowl was really played two weeks ago and had the 49ers got home field advantage, they may be hoisting that Lombardi right now. F Seattle.

The homer in me agrees totally bur I'll also bet the experts think the same.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Looking at Denver's schedule was a bit eye opening. I didn't go back and look at the Seahawks but I guess I didn't really need to. They lost to 3 of the only decent teams they played and before Talib left the AFC championship game Peyton wasn't doing much either. And oh yeah, it was unseasonably warm in Denver for most of the year and Peyton is notoriously awful outdoors in bad weather.

That said, 49ers vs. Denver is a different ball game. It can be hard to see through the hype and now that Peyton crashed back to earth it is too easy to say that he'd do the same vs. a different team.

 

[uolj]

I don't know, man, Denver played a cake schedule. Niners battled through some adversity and had some heartbreaks like the loss to New Orleans that really swung the home field advantage in the NFC. I don't have advanced stats to back things up, but the NFC and the NFC West in particular were just on another spectrum of eliteness that no team in the AFC could touch. The Super Bowl was really played two weeks ago and had the 49ers got home field advantage, they may be hoisting that Lombardi right now. F Seattle.

I agree that the 49ers were probably better than Denver by the end of the season and think they would have more than likely won if they had made it to the Super Bowl. But if you reseed you have to use some sort of objective measure to determine the top seeds, and the Broncos had a better record, better point differential and higher DVOA than the 49ers.

Also, the 49ers were a play away in the losses to both New Orleans and Carolina (see Ahmad Brooks hit on Drew Brees). A win in either of those games gives them home field and maybe enough to beat Seattle. Lots of "if just one play goes differently" scenarios for San Francisco the last few years.