Five Things We Learned, John Clayton, ESPN
Clayton shares five things we learned about Super Bowl XLV, including how the long layoff helped the Packers more than it helped the Steelers.

Championship Worthy of Lombardi, Mike Lopresti, USA Today
You’d have loved Rodgers. Loved him like Bart Starr. Persistent, productive, unflappable, no longer in Brett Favre’s shadow. He’s had all those gaudy passing numbers, but what do those mean? You need an MIT graduate student to explain how to figure a quarterback rating. But everyone can figure out if a guy has won the Super Bowl, or he hasn’t.

Big Ben Comes Up Small in Defeat, Dan Graziano, FanHouse
Ben Roethlisberger was supposed to be the unflappable quarterback. The born winner who always made the big play in the big spot. A win Sunday would have meant a third Super Bowl title, and only four members of his profession have ever done that. Plans were being made to carve him right into that Mount Rushmore alongside Bradshaw, Montana, Aikman and Brady, and some were even putting forth the preposterous notion that a victory in Sunday night’s football game might somehow offer Roethlisberger some form of “redemption” for the reprehensible offseason behavior that almost got him drummed out of Pittsburgh and the NFL last year.

Ring Vaults Rodgers to Elite Status, William Rhoden, New York Times
Rodgers recounted how in 2005 he told Packers General Manager Ted Thompson that he would not regret drafting him. After they released Favre, Rodgers told Thompson, “I was going to repay their trust and get this opportunity.”

Steelers Get What They Deserve: Defeat, Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
You commit three turnovers and don’t get any. Two of your most dependable offensive stars fail you in the clutch. Your No. 1-rated defense in points allowed can’t stop the other team’s quarterback from throwing three touchdown passes. You deserve to lose.

Curse of Jerry Leads to Disaster, David Whitley, FanHouse
Everything he touched turned to frozen cow manure before the game, but who would’ve thought it was only a warmup? Sunday’s big hoedown at Cowboys Stadium turned into the imperfect ending to a thoroughly imperfect week. Unless you were a Packers fan, in which case you just want to get out of town before the Curse of Jerry gets you.

What Super Bowl Can Teach Other Sports, Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel
Two of the tiniest markets in professional sports played in arguably the biggest Super Bowl in history Sunday night. There were more fans in the stadium (105,000) than any Super Bowl in history. There were more media (in excess of 5,000) covering this Super Bowl than ever before. All forecasters predicted that the TV ratings Sunday for Green Bay’s 31-25 victory will make this the most-watched event in the history of American television.