Sunday’s NFL Super Bowl XLVII on CBS in New Orleans is a collection of great stories ready to be met with a happy or frustrating final chapter. There’s the battle of the Harbaugh brothers as head coaches of the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens that defied all odds to come to fruition. There’s young thrower Colin Kaepernick who rose from obscurity to Super Bowl starter in just a few months after getting his shot to start. And there’s the final game for Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis that many thought would have been a month ago but kept extended until there was only one game left possible to play.
Call it the Brothers Bowl or the Harbowl or any iteration in between, but San Francisco head coach Jim Harbaugh and his brother John Harbaugh, head coach of the Ravens, will make history in Super Bowl XLVII as the first two brothers to be coaching against each other in the big game. The two keep saying it’s just another game, but deep down the ramifications of the game and future bragging rights in teh sibling rivalry must be looming large.
Colin Kaepernick comes into the Super Bowl as the NFL’s new poster boy. The sophomore quarterback took over for injured Alex Smith midway through the season and never relinquished the job, even after Smith was cleared to play again. Kaepernick’s combination of speed outside the pocket and hard, accurate throws has proven extremely difficult to defend against. Just as the Seahawks or Falcons.
On the other side is Joe Flacco who has really come into his own this postseason and put up numbers that rival any other quarterback in the league. Yet for all his success, Flacco is still not viewed as an elite quarterback in the NFL, and still may not be even if he marches the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory after winning an NFL-record six playoff games while playing on the road.
The big story for the Ravens is Ray Lewis and what should be his final game in the NFL. Lewis announced his retirement at the conclusion of the playoffs before the playoffs began. Somehow, some way the Ravens has fought their way into the Super Bowl and granted Lewis the grandest stage of them all to take his final bow. It’s almost as if fate wants him to hoist the Lombardi trophy in his final game.
Super Bowl XLVII 2013 between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens gets underway at 6:30pm EST / 3:30pm PST in high definition on CBS via cable/satellite or for free over the air. In a twist that wasn’t available during the regular season or playoffs, CBS is allowing viewers to watch a free online live streaming version of the Super Bowl here on their official website so you can watch on your tablet or iPad, mobile device or other means of online streaming. All the odds makers are calling for Kaepernick to put up big offensive numbers again and run the Ravens out of Louisiana. My prediction is going to go against the grain and call for an upset 26-24 win by the Ravens, with Flacco hitting at least one big play and not turning the ball over a single time.
