Alex Smith's coronation following the San Francisco 49ers win against the New Orleans Saints two weeks ago was, probably, a little premature.

With one minute left in the third quarter against the Giants this past Sunday, Smith had completed 6 of 14 passes for 138 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Not bad, until you consider 2 of those 6 completions, 101 of those yards, and both of those touchdowns had gone to Vernon Davis, Smith's talented but mercurial tight end.

Point? 4 for 12 for 37 yards through all but 60 seconds of the third quarter isn't the stat line people who got so caught up in Smith's performance against the Saints were expecting.

Bottom line? In today's pass-happy NFL, grinders like the 49ers, regardless of regular season success, aren't going to have what it takes to lift the a Lombardi Trophy in February. You need a quarterback who can bomb it with regularity every once in a while.

I know, I know…. Both the Packers and the Saints bit the dust pretty early. Sure. But both the Packers and the Saints, while captained by two of the premier quarterbacks of their generation, are also hamstrung by defenses with one glaring weakness.

Neither team puts consistent pressure on the opposing quarterback, and while the Packers led the league in interceptions that's more a reflection of their secondary individually than their defense as a whole. Facing opponents with better offenses generally and better quarterbacks specifically, teams that can't put that other quarterback on the ground consistently are at a severe disadvantage.

So, to win the Super Bowl in the 21st century, you need a premier, or better than average, quarterback on one side of the ball, and on the other you need speed rushers and maulers who are going to make the other quarterback so unhappy for most of the day that he won't be able to slice and dice the rest of your defense to shreds.

Which is why I picked the Giants and the Patriots to be in the Super Bowl at the very beginning of the season.

I'm sure I've got it written down here somewhere….

Ok, so that might be a slight exaggeration of the facts. Or a monstrous one. Whatever. You can't prove a thing.

But the bottom line is that the Patriots-Giants matchup in store for us on February 5th should be exactly the kind of game everyone hopes for at the beginning of the year: two potent offenses facing off against two angry, pin-their-earsback defenses.

(Yes, yes, I know, the Patriots defense was ridiculed much of the season, and gave up more yardage than Napoleon in the Louisiana Purchase. But that's absurd. Who cares how many yards they gave up. Bill Belichick's employed a bend but don't break defense forever. Just look at how many total points the Pats gave up during the season; suddenly their defense jumps from second worst to middle-of-the-pack average.)

Interestingly enough, the Giants lead the postseason with 9 sacks. The other two teams with 9 sacks? San Francisco and Houston, both of which have been eliminated and neither of which had the kind of maestro they needed running their offense.

What are the odds the team with the next highest number of sacks also had a stellar quarterback? Pretty good.

It's the Patriots, with 8.

And though it pains me, this being the 10-year anniversary of the Tuck Rule game that sent my poor, beloved, bedraggled Raiders into a tailspin from which they've never fully recovered, I'm leaning towards the Patriots to win in February.

Not because my heart's in it. Far from it. Trust me, I'd love Eli to win another one. But I just think, at the end of the day, Brady has more weapons at his disposal. Sadly.

Patriots 34 – Giants 30

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Sad times for Penn State. Considering everything that's come to light over the last few months in State College, I still believe Joe Paterno did more good than harm over his decades in the happy valley. But I'm still stunned every once in a while by Paterno's strangely myopic attitudes about what may or may not have happened to those young boys at the hands of Jerry Sandusky.

Paterno claimed he'd, "never heard of, of, rape and a man." Really? An 85 year-old man, a Catholic, in the age of the internet, in the 21st century, was completely unfamiliar, had never heard of, pedophilia and forced sodomy? Really??

He went on to say, "I'm happy in one sense that we called attention…. that this is going on. It's kind of been like a hidden thing."

Seriously? Child abuse, pedophilia and rape are, "like a hidden thing"? Hidden from whom?

Only those who choose not to look, Joe, only those who choose not to look.