The final American football championship, the Super Bowl, will be played on Sunday. I have been contemplating the contest, between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears (as did several of the young men in my recent Winter Study course) from the perspective of Sun Tzu, and I can now say, with some confidence, that the Bears will win.
At this point, the Colts are favored to win by seven points; so, my Sun Tzu analysis is running against the conventional wisdom.
My unconventional conclusion is drawn from one of Sun Tzu's key ideas: attack weaknesses, avoid strengths. When we consider the strengths and weaknesses of each side we notice that the Colts' strength, their offense, is matched by the Bears' strength, their defense. Thus, the best strategy for each side is not to expect the winning strike to come from that particular area. The Colts offense will move the ball and score points; but the Bears' defense will come up with some big stops. We have to assume that the Colts will score somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 points. The Bears will not stop them completely, though they might limit them at key moments. For all of its potency, however, the Colts offense will not be the key to the game.
The crucial factors will be the weaknesses of each side: the Bears' offense and the Colts defense. The team that holds the edge here, that is able to exploit the opponent's weakness, will have the advantage.
The Bears' key weakness is Rex Grossman, the quarterback. If the Colts can bring a lot of pressure with an effective pass rush and blitz scheme, they can rattle Grossman and force him into errors. The Bears would not, then, be able to keep pace with the Colts scoring machine and, voila, a Colts victory.
But this is not the most likely outcome. Rather, I think the Bears will be more effective exploiting the Colts weakness, which is their run defense. The Bears were quite effective in their running game against New Orleans. If they can repeat that against the Colts, they can win the game. And they are likely to be able to do that because the Colts, focusing on Grossman, will be emphasizing the pass rush and blitzes. This will open up running opportunities for the Bear running backs: on those occasions when they inevitably get past the blitzing linebackers, they will rack up big gains.
In the end, then, the Bears will do better exploiting the opponent's weakness than the Colts. As long as their strength holds up and they keep the Colts to 28 or so points, the Bears will be able to match the scoring and prevail.
Score: Bears 31, Colts 28
MVP: Thomas Jones
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