Super Bowl Xl
Shortly following the 2005 regular season of the National Football League (NFL), Super Bowl XL was held in Detroit’s Ford Field. The championship tournament featured the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football Conference (NFC) and the Pittsburgh Steelers of the American Football Conference (AFC).
Seattle Seahawks
When the Seattle Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl XL, it had a record of thirteen wins and three losses in the National Football Conference (NFC). At the start of the regular season, the team was not performing admirably but surprisingly, it was able to establish a feisty return with eleven consecutive triumphs before being defeated by the Green Bay Packers. Amidst the rollercoaster ride, the franchise was still able to qualify for the championship tournament which is actually its first entry over a thirty- year history. Back in the nineties, the Seahawks were like underdogs with not victories for a seven straight period.
It was in 1996 that the Seattle Seahawks experienced its lowest point. Former owner, Ken Behring, announced that he has plans to transfer the team to Los Angeles. The next year, the future was shining bright for the franchise especially when Paul Allen, co- founder of Microsoft, acquire the team with a deal to construct a new stadium which is now currently known as te Qwest Field. The arena was replace Kingdome which was already needing a lot of renovations then. By 1999, former coach of the Green Bay Packers, Mike Holmgren, was employed by the Seahawks who led them to Super Bowl XL.
Not only was Mike Holmgren instrumental in leading the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl XL because Matt Hasselbeck greatly contributed through his performance on field. He is actually number in the National Football Conference (NFC) in terms of offense garnering a score of four hundred sixty- two points. This athlete was also able to make twenty- four touchdowns and three thousand four hundred fifty- five yards. There was Shaun Alexander who worked on sixteen touchdowns in the last four regular seasons before the team qualified for the championship tournament.
Pittsburgh Steelers
In the regular season prior to SuperBowl XL, the Pittsburgh Steelers was struggling. The team may have had an early record of seven wins but also with five losses. Interestingly, the franchise won top seeded clubs in the playoffs namely Cincinnati, Denver and Indianapolis. With that, the Steelers became the pioneering sixth- seeded group to participate in the final match of American Football Conference (AFC) and the championship tournament of professional football in the United States since the National Football League (NFL) broadened to a twelve- squad format in 1990.
By 1992, the Pittsburgh Steelers was already among the best in the whole of the National Football League (NFL). At that time, the team was under the coaching expertise of Bill Cowher. He led the franchise to the playoffs ten times out of his fourteen seasons where eventually, it won six times in the final match of the American Football Conference (AFC). The Steelers are actually not neophytes in SuperBowl 40 because they were able to qualify in Super Bowl XXX however, they lost to the Dallas Cowboys with a score of twenty- seven is to seventeen. In 2003, the club lost one of its key athletes, Tommy Maddox because of an injury.
When the Seattle Seahawks lost the injured Tommy Maddox, he was replaced by Ben Roethlisberger who was then a rookie quarterback. In the 2004 draft pick of the National Football League (NFL), his name was first heard of but he was expected to be only on the sidelines considering that he was still a neophyte compared to the other veteran athletes in the team. However, even if he was new compared to the rest, he led the team to win the fourteen remaining games of the regular season. With that, the franchise became the pioneer in the American Football Conference (AFC) to consecutively triumph more than ten matches.
By the end of the Super Bowl XL, the AFC’s Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the NFC’s Seattle Seahawks.