Super Bowl 2012: Pass Happy Season in Danger of Lacking Marquee QB in Title Tilt

In the Year of the Quarterback, the year that the NFL was due for a sea change from a defensive league to an offensive one. The year that great passers came to the fore—the Super Bowl could very well go down without any of the league's top signal callers taking a snap in Indianapolis.

And not just because Peyton Manning spent the year sidelined with a neck injury.

Drew Brees, who broke Dan Marino's 27-year-old single-season passing record, bowed out of the running when his New Orleans Saints had been (ironically enough) outgunned by Alex Smith and the San Francisco 49ers in a fourth-quarter shootout 36-32.

Aaron Rodgers, who's likely to be named the NFL MVP after throwing for 4,643 yards, 45 touchdowns and six interceptions with an insane QB rating of 122.5, saw his hopes for back-to-back Super Bowl titles dashed when Eli Manning and the New York Giants waltzed into Lambeau Field and left with a 37-20 trouncing of the 15-1 Green Bay Packers.

Now Tom Brady, the last man standing of the NFL's "Big Three" at QB, finds himself on the chopping block, with Ray Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens angling to upend his New England Patriots in Foxboro on the way to Super Bowl XLVI.

The Pats are already favored to send the Ravens back to the Beltway, and advance to their fifth Super Bowl of the Bill Belichick era. Apparently, a 45-10 throttling of Tim Tebow's impotent Denver Broncos was enough to sway public opinion in New England's favor, and Brady's six-touchdown masterpiece to put the team in position to play for yet another title.

Not to mention Baltimore's less-than-convincing 20-13 win over a Houston Texans team, starting rookie TJ Yates under center—a team that got walloped by these Ravens during the regular season when it had a healthy Matt Schaub taking snaps.

Still, there's reason to worry about Brady's viability to carry the QB torch all the way to the Circle City. The Ravens have had considerable success in their last two visits to Gillette Stadium.

They had come away with a dominant 33-14 win over the Pats in the playoffs two years ago, and built up a 10-point fourth-quarter lead before losing in overtime during the 2010 regular season. Brady threw just three touchdowns against five interceptions in those two contests.

That's not to say that Brady is necessarily doomed for failure or the Year of the QB will end with a thud two weeks before Super Bowl Sunday. Baltimore has been decidedly mediocre on the road this season, losing to the likes of the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Seattle Seahawks away from the M&T Bank Stadium.

And if nothing else, there's always hope for Eli Manning. He announced his arrival as an elite NFL quarterback before the season, and has backed up those claims with the best campaign of his up-and-down career.

Still, with all the hype surrounding the supposed primacy of aerial attacks and blowing out the scoreboards, it appears as though the NFL may well find itself beholden to the same old, tried-and-true adage.

Defense wins championships.

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