Dallas Other than a mediocre half here or there, the Green Bay Packers have been the epitome of consistent excellence since their defeat in Detroit almost two months ago.

Now that the Super Bowl is upon us, there's no compelling reason to think that the Packers can't sustain almost that same level of performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Obviously, Mike McCarthy is feeling it. I ran into him Friday morning as he bounced between interviews at the Downtown Sheraton. When a team has played as well over time as the Packers, its coach can be as loose as McCarthy appeared to be.

"The players totally believe what's in front of them," McCarthy said with confidence and just the right touch of bravado at his final press briefing. "We respect Pittsburgh, but we feel that this is our time and Sunday will be our night."

The Steelers are a rugged, veteran team steeled by a pair of Super Bowl triumphs in the last six years. They also have a lot more going for them than just tradition.

Ben Roethlisberger didn't perform well in the 40th Super Bowl but he was the one that carried the sixth-seeded Steelers to three playoff road victories in 2005. Then he and Santonio Holmes beat Arizona in the waning seconds of the 43rd Super Bowl.

As a trio of receivers, Mike Wallace, Heath Miller and Hines Ward probably are underrated. Rashard Mendenhall is one of the two or three best backs the Packers will have seen all year.

Dick LeBeau has confused more seasoned quarterbacks than Aaron Rodgers in his Hall of Fame career as a defensive coordinator.

Troy Polamalu, James Harrison, LaMarr Woodley and Casey Hampton have the brains and brawn to overturn McCarthy's best laid plans.

Coach Mike Tomlin doesn't display the swagger in public as McCarthy has over the past few months, but let's not kid ourselves. Behind closed doors, you know Tomlin has been pounding home the no-respect angle as hard as Mike Shanahan did with his Broncos before the game 13 years ago that few in Wisconsin will ever forget.

Still, the more one analyzes the two teams, the Packers have a better chance to counter the Steelers' strengths than the Steelers do to counter the Packers' strengths.

In other words, Pittsburgh has more holes to hide than Green Bay, and that doesn't bode well for the Steelers if the Packers keep doing what they've been doing.

For two weeks, the Steelers undoubtedly have been trying to figure out ways to help right tackle Flozell Adams against Clay Matthews. As uncanny as Roethlisberger might be escaping the rush, they know that not even Roethlisberger is physical enough to avoid the relentless surges of Matthews.

The best way to slow Matthews would be an effective running game. One of the biggest men I've ever seen, "Flozell the Hotel" can toss Matthews around in close quarters and maybe wear him down physically.

If the Steelers had Maurkice Pouncey at center, they could slide the line toward Matthews and feel fairly confident B.J. Raji could be contained by their brilliant rookie center.

His replacement, free agent Doug Legursky, will need help from a guard in pass protection. In the run game, the guard that doubles Raji with Legursky will have to linger longer than usual and figures to be late getting off to the inside linebacker.

What this scenario really does is throw open the door for Cullen Jenkins to have an MVP-type performance.

Last season in Pittsburgh, the Packers were so thin on the defensive line that Jenkins had to play 60 snaps. Jenkins had one of the greatest games of his career, embarrassing left guard Ramon Foster for 4 of his 7 "pressures." It was a tribute to Roethlisberger's robustness that Jenkins slid off him on four possible sacks.

Back then, Raji wasn't much of a factor so the Packers really didn't have a third rusher. So when Jenkins played himself into near exhaustion on the Steelers' final drive, position coach Mike Trgovac felt he had no choice but to pull him. That's when Roethlisberger completed the winning touchdown pass to Wallace.

Foster has moved to right guard now but Jenkins will find him on that side. He'll also be battering Legursky, and left guard Chris Kemoeatu has agility limitations, too.

Injury prevented Jenkins from playing in the Detroit and New England defeats. Jenkins is rolling now and, with Howard Green doing the dirty work on early downs, he'll be fresh to terrorize the Steelers on passing downs.

For Green Bay, it's a terrific three-pronged rush that, barring a rash of turnovers, will make it difficult for the Steelers to score more than 20 points.

Not only will Roethlisberger be confronted inside and outside, he will find conventional completions much harder to come by than a season ago. The Steelers always find ways to spring receivers from their bunch sets, but unless Roethlisberger can get outside consistently he probably won't have time to go deep.

"It's almost like getting ready for a different defense," offensive coordinator Bruce Arians said. "They're more man-to-man press coverage than they played last year, especially on early downs."

But Capers will have more than a four-man rush ready. He has been blitzing more and more with each passing week, a direct result of Sam Shields' ability to man cover.

For much of his career, Roethlisberger was the first player to leave the building each day after practice. He has never been a diligent study guy.

When the late Jim Johnson, the great defensive coordinator in Philadelphia, found a new way to slot-blitz Roethlisberger from a single-high safety look in 2008, the Steelers were paralyzed and lost, 15-6. The Jets' Eric Mangini badly confused Roethlisberger with a different style of blitzing during a game in 2007. In November, the Patriots blitzed heavily, sacked him five times and won going away at Heinz Field.

"Once you get Ben going, he can't fix it during a game," a source with intimate knowledge of the Steelers' protection scheme said. "He won't be able to adapt."

Capers need not take a backseat to any defensive coach. "You can't get them out of position," Bears offensive coordinator Mike Martz said Jan. 19. "His football teams are just so well-schooled."

The presence of Pouncey would have given Mendenhall the chance to control the game. If the big back can do it with the squatty Legursky blocking, the Packers will have only themselves to blame.

"I'm sure they're going to try to do that," cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt said. "I know Tomlin's mentality, and I respect that. I doubt they can, but we'll see. They're a tough team, but we are, too."

After the 43rd Super Bowl, Arizona offensive coordinator Todd Haley second-guessed himself for not going to the spread even earlier than he did. Kurt Warner ended up throwing for 377 yards, but Larry Fitzgerald argued that it might have been 500 if Haley had gone full out almost from the start.

As it was, the Cardinals rushed a meager 12 times.

In that game, the Steelers removed Casey Hampton against multiple wide sets. He played 14 snaps.

Can the Packers avoid the dominant nose tackle by doing what Fitzgerald once advocated Haley to do?

"We're not going to let Green Bay dictate to us who we put on the field," said John Mitchell, the Steelers' assistant head coach. "They're not. Uh-uh. Casey Hampton will play more than 14 snaps, I'll tell you that right now."

In order, coordinator Joe Philbin listed pass protection, turnover avoidance and balance as the main objectives for the offense. He said the Packers had no interest in asking Chad Clifton and Bryan Bulaga to block Harrison and Woodley snap after snap without the threat of a running play.

"I've sat in enough meetings and heard Dom say, 'Boy, I'd like to make a team one-dimensional,'" said Philbin. "Then they can start bringing guys from all angles. Plus, you send a bad message to your team if you're just chucking it every play."

Based on coaches who have played the Steelers, the best way to run on them is from spread sets. No one really has run on their base 3-4.

"The Packers are an outside zone team and Pittsburgh traditionally has just eaten up the outside zone," one coach said. "Both their defensive ends play almost an inside gap technique. Making the backside cut-off block is hard because you don't have any leverage. And they're great at reading the hat. When you try to cut them off, they cross your face."

It's equally as problematic in the middle, where Scott Wells gets to try to reach-block Hampton, and on the play-side, where 243-pound Andrew Quarless will be asked at times to go mano a mano against Woodley or Harrison.

Against Arizona, the Steelers gave up the flats paying extra attention to Fitzgerald and the Cardinals didn't make them pay. The Steelers probably won't commit to stopping Greg Jennings because the beauty of the Packers' passing game is Rodgers' indiscriminate distribution of the ball.

Unlike Capers, LeBeau must play zone because his three cornerbacks generally can't hold up without a rush. If LeBeau does play man-to-man or run overload blitzes, Rodgers could kill him with his scrambles.

McCarthy said he expects Polamalu to be LeBeau's key pressure player. LeBeau does a great job on third down bringing a safety from out of his walk-around defense.

If Rodgers spends too much time making dummy calls at the line in a game of cat and mouse, the Steelers are masters at timing their blitzes off the 40-second clock and the quarterback's cadence.

Let's say neither team can run the ball. Then it becomes a game of who can protect and which quarterback can figure out the blitzes.

The Packers have the better offensive line plus they have a blitz-pickup ace in Brandon Jackson. Pittsburgh's linemen might have to use their hands illegally to slow the rush down, and if the game is closely officiated the Packers should be the beneficiary.

And Rodgers should win the cerebral game every time against Roethlisberger.

On paper, the Packers would seem to have better players at more important positions, and consistency is their trademark. Those are two powerful forces in their favor.

What will matter most, of course, is which team plays better under the bright lights of Cowboys Stadium.

"Bob McGinn" wrote: