Most right-thinking NFL fans already know the outcome of this Sunday's game — that is, that the Pittsburgh Steelers will win their league-leading sixth Super Bowl. Yet seemingly every sports pundit on television is yelling about how the Cardinals have a chance in one form or another.

Even by the NFL’s standards for goofy outsized pomp and tolerance for poor punditing there’s a sense that all of the yelling and campaigning is just selling too hard. But because the Cardinals are such extreme underdogs, it’s easier and more necessary to dial up the pomp-o-meter for Arizona than it is for Pittsburgh. There’s simply no reason to inflate the Steelers too much. This team is fairly obviously supposed to be in the Super Bowl.

Even though, yes, their offense is very average, which is an insulting-sounding way of saying that they have the problems that afflict most NFL offenses — in the Steelers’ case it’s lame pass blocking, inconsistent production from the running backs and a quarterback prone to gunslingery excesses good and bad.

When RB Willie Parker is at his best, as he was against Cleveland in Week 17 and a postseason win over San Diego, Pittsburgh’s offense can look good. A fast, confident Parker eats up yards and loosens things up for Ben Roethlisberger, whose playground-y skills improve the looser things get. But Parker has really only looked good against suspect D-lines — Cleveland, San Diego, remember — and was pretty effectively bottled-up by Baltimore.

Arizona doesn’t belong with the lame defenses, or with Baltimore. They’ve played very well recently, but they’ve also been gashed for huge games by questionable lineups; the Patriots, for instance, hung 183 rushing yards on them using LaMont Jordan, Sammy Morris and Heath Evans. In the final analysis, the Cardinals defense probably falls somewhere between average and very average. The same can be said of the Steelers, perhaps, but the bigger point is that there’s no reason — sorry you’re just hearing this now — even to really read this paragraph.

Because as explosive as the Cardinals’ offense has been this postseason — quite explosive, if you’re just joining us — the Steelers defense is better. Better than the Cardinals offense or better than the defense of any team the Cardinals — or any other NFL team — has played this year.

The simple fact of this game, is that the Steelers defense has been impenetrably, impermeably good essentially all season long. The obvious metrics tell an impressive enough story: It’s fairly hard to misread the significance of the fact that the Steelers D allowed fewer yards and points than any other team’s and got more than half its 51 sacks from its two dominant outside linebackers. Actually watching the Steelers play adds a depth of understanding to all that quantifiable excellence.

There just aren’t many weaknesses visible. You could take issue with Troy Polamalu’s hair, I guess, but personnel-wise it’s pretty much all there. It’s almost impossible to run against Pittsburgh’s hulking, mobile defensive front; Its pass rush deploys two super-skilled edge rushers and a solid D-line in the service of protean, disorienting schemes. The secondary tackles hard and finishes plays started by the aforementioned pass rush. And at a less easily explained level, the Steelers just always seem to be coming out of nowhere and plowing into somebody.

Yes, it’s a football game, so it’s not totally out of context — let’s hope, all of us, that such a thing isn’t common on, say, Pittsburgh’s city buses — but even by NFL standards these guys are everywhere, and tackle really hard. The absence of a full-on shutdown corner might be cause for concern, but the Steelers plan to double-team the currently superhuman Larry Fitzgerald and have a top-of-the-world anticipator and ballhawk in Polamalu. And also it’s likely that Kurt Warner will have a hard time passing effectively with so much sod in his teeth.

What we are saying is that the Steelers defense is very good. Yes, the Steelers offense is “very average.” A list of the top 10 reasons why Pittsburgh can’t lose might include the sentence, “The Steelers defense is very good” eight or so times, but those are eight very compelling arguments. More so than anything a pumped-up sports pundit can give you to the contrary. Sometimes, really, it just is this simple.