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Re: Super Bowl XXX: COLTS vs Cowboys?
Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:20 pm
by 74_75_78_79_
Ten Minute Ticker wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2025 12:58 pm
A lot of wishful thinking in this thread.
By score differential, the Colts were barely above .500 in expected win total. Their 9-7 out-performs their expected record.
Harbaugh was a solid game manager, but nothing more. Marshall Faulk was good, but not spectacular at the time. Defense was decent, but not elite.
They surprised an equally good, but just OK Chargers team in the first round. They then needed a Lin Elliott meltdown to slip past the Chiefs. The Steelers? Decent, but hardly a juggernaut. (Expected record 10-6.)
AFC was really weak at the time. Ripe for a team like the Colts to get hot (as the Jags did a year later), but not a reflection of quality.
Cowboys were plus-144 in score differential and had championship pedigree. They ranked top five in offense and defense.
And to those who think Colts mo would have mattered? The Cowboys also put down my Packers, who were rolling on momentum much as the Colts were (Packers were 5-4, only to win eight of nine games entering the NFC Championship Game) only with a much-better team than Indy had.
Cowboys beat the Colts comfortably in that hypothetical Super Bowl. Very likely would have been a 49ers-Chargers style blowout.
Great points! It's simply just my, FWIW, humble opinion that the Colts would have had that, as said, 'Devil may care' stance going into Tempe. Yes, Steelers' D stepped up by then, but Big D's offense did seem to start faltering after that Irvin TD was called back in the 2nd Q. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe not, but I think the Colts would have offered up some nice challenge to that end-of-Dynasty Dallas in the desert. IMHO they don't allow 13-0, Harbaugh no two throws to Larry Brown, so it would have made things tough for Big D!
Green Bay? Yeah, despite Dallas pushing them aside yet again, had the Pack somehow got by them in Texas Stadium, I think the Colts would have had a quite harder time! Packers likely by 10 or maybe more! But only on the theory that GB were on the rise and Big D were just about to tumble.
Dallas SO still had Green Bay's # as exemplified in that NFCCG. So getting to Tempe instead is just the way it had to go!
Re: Super Bowl XXX: COLTS vs Cowboys?
Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2025 6:10 pm
by CSKreager
Ten Minute Ticker wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2025 12:58 pm
A lot of wishful thinking in this thread.
By score differential, the Colts were barely above .500 in expected win total. Their 9-7 out-performs their expected record.
Harbaugh was a solid game manager, but nothing more. Marshall Faulk was good, but not spectacular at the time. Defense was decent, but not elite.
They surprised an equally good, but just OK Chargers team in the first round. They then needed a Lin Elliott meltdown to slip past the Chiefs. The Steelers? Decent, but hardly a juggernaut. (Expected record 10-6.)
AFC was really weak at the time. Ripe for a team like the Colts to get hot (as the Jags did a year later), but not a reflection of quality.
Cowboys were plus-144 in score differential and had championship pedigree. They ranked top five in offense and defense.
And to those who think Colts mo would have mattered? The Cowboys also put down my Packers, who were rolling on momentum much as the Colts were (Packers were 5-4, only to win eight of nine games entering the NFC Championship Game) only with a much-better team than Indy had.
Cowboys beat the Colts comfortably in that hypothetical Super Bowl. Very likely would have been a 49ers-Chargers style blowout.
I actually think the AFC was stronger in 1994 than 1995 (5 10+ win teams in 94 compared to 95’s 3)
The NFC OTOH had practically no depth after DAL/SF (with all due respect to Green Bay)
The NFC in the mid 90s was a joke, basically carried by two teams that essentially violated the salary cap
Re: Super Bowl XXX: COLTS vs Cowboys?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2026 12:19 am
by CSKreager
74_75_78_79_ wrote: ↑Sat Jun 28, 2025 8:47 pm
The more I think of this, I really think more and more that the Colts actually pull this off! Yes, Steelers deserved and earned their trip to Tempe in Jan '96 if, however,
real close it was! But just like the Steelers would have given San Fran quite the better game a year earlier in my and I'm sure most opinions, this '95 Indy team, I'm thinking, gives it to Big D even more so and are all-but a 50% chance at victory, now, with me!
'92/'93 Cowboys? Okay, a different story! Same with '94, I'd imagine.
But '95 Big D, though having strong very credible moments throughout, cracks have been showing and it really came into fruition sometime that 2nd Q in Tempe. Their D still was on-fire throughout, but that's just one side of the ball! Marchibroda simply had that demeanor to get it done on that very day against a
just-about-to-falter Dallas team. If the Steelers aren't so uptight early on IRL, who knows?? I think, most-likely, that the Colts
don't get uptight, but simply un-nervously pull all stops! WAS Harbuagh a better QB than Neil? I feel sure-enough that he doesn't throw those two vital INTs!
End-of-day, I actually think it would have been a better and more-suspenseful game than the actual one which, yes, Steelers still had quite a chance as well!
PS - you DEFINITELY take the COLTS and the POINTS! Heck, they may win OUTRIGHT!
I don’t buy it. The 95 colts were one of the luckiest teams of all time. They were literally 3 plays from 6-10.
Jim Harbaugh’s smoke and mirrors somehow made him the NFL leader in passer rating despite utterly mediocre stats in a year where so many QB’s lit it up.
They would have been humiliated in the SB because at some point you can’t just keep relying on voodoo and BS.
The 95 Colts would have been a waste of a SB spot. They were never that good. They just had a lot of good fortune