Super Bowl XL — 2005 Season

Result

Super Bowl MVP

Hines Ward (WR, Pittsburgh Steelers)

Starting lineups

Starting offense

Starting defense

Note: No tight end appears among Seattle's 11 listed offensive starters despite TE Jerramy Stevens scoring a touchdown in the game itself (he is credited in the receiving table above) — flagged as unconfirmed whether this reflects a genuine 3-WR base personnel package or a gap in the source, rather than guessed. A trick-play completion (Antwaan Randle El to Hines Ward, 43 yards, touchdown) is separately documented in this site's game-context narrative rather than in the passing table above, which lists only the two starting quarterbacks' lines.

Box score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving

Game context

Super Bowl XL delivered Pittsburgh a fifth championship, tying the franchise with San Francisco and Dallas for the most in NFL history, but the 21-10 win over Seattle became far better remembered for the officiating controversy that trailed it for years afterward than for the game itself. Pittsburgh, the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs, became just the fourth wild-card team to win a Super Bowl, capping an improbable postseason run in which the Steelers won four straight road playoff games before finally getting a neutral-site matchup against the top-seeded Seahawks, who had gone 13-3 during the regular season behind league MVP Shaun Alexander. Wide receiver Hines Ward was named MVP after catching five passes for 123 yards and the game's clinching touchdown, a play set up by a trick-play halfback pass from Antwaan Randle El, who took a handoff and threw downfield to Ward for a 43-yard score that put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter. Running back Willie Parker was the offensive workhorse for most of the afternoon, breaking off a 75-yard touchdown run, still a Super Bowl record for the longest rushing touchdown, en route to 93 rushing yards on just five carries. Rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger struggled badly through the air, completing just 9 of 21 passes for 123 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns, a 22.6 passer rating that remains the lowest ever posted by a winning Super Bowl quarterback, but at 23 years old he became the youngest starting quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl. Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck threw for 273 yards and a touchdown, and Alexander managed 95 rushing yards, but the Seahawks could never fully overcome a series of penalties and non-calls that went against them at critical moments. The officiating became the enduring story of the game: a disputed offensive-pass-interference call against Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens, a controversial holding penalty that wiped out a long Seahawks kickoff return, and a reversed Roethlisberger touchdown call that stood despite replay evidence many observers found inconclusive at best all drew significant criticism from Seattle players, coaches, and national media in the years that followed. Referee Bill Leavy later publicly acknowledged making mistakes on multiple fourth-quarter calls, telling reporters years afterward that he had lost sleep over the game and wished he could have made up for the errors, an unusually candid admission from an NFL official regarding a Super Bowl. Despite the controversy, the victory gave Pittsburgh's veteran core, including Ward, Jerome Bettis (playing his final career game in his hometown of Detroit before retiring), and head coach Bill Cowher, the championship that had eluded Cowher for years, while extending the Steelers' status as one of the league's flagship franchises. Seattle would not return to the Super Bowl until the 2013 season, when the Seahawks finally won their first championship.

Sources

• Pro-Football-Reference: Super Bowl Index
• Wikipedia: Super Bowl XL