New faces at QB for Super Bowl
No Tom Brady. No Aaron Rodgers. No Ben Roethlisberger. Not a Manning in sight.
Super Bowl XLVII has a pair of fresh faces at quarterback, bona fide nobodies as far as the NFL title game goes. But one will leave New Orleans as football’s newest star.
For Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco, this is new territory. And, of course, exactly where they want to be.
Flacco, the only quarterback ever to win a playoff game in each of his first five NFL seasons, will lead the AFC champion Baltimore Ravens into Sunday’s matchup against the NFC-winning San Francisco 49ers and Kaepernick, a backup for most of his two seasons.
It’s the first time in more than a decade that the big game doesn’t feature one of the big five household names in the glamour position.
You can’t get much fresher than quarterbacks who never have gotten this far before.
“At the start of the season, I was just hoping to get on the field some way, somehow,” said Kaepernick, the backup for Alex Smith, who took the 49ers to the conference final last season.
Win this one and he’ll have a piece of history, joining a heady quarterback club that includes Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young, who guided the 49ers to five NFL titles — a victory every time they played. No. 6 would tie the team with Roethlisberger’s Pittsburgh Steelers — a record for most Super Bowl wins.