In football, it's usually true that everything you see has happened before and will happen again. Sure, you might only get an Immaculate Reception once every 200 years or so, but when it comes to team-building and paths to success, the league's 32 organizations roughly follow a few similar story lines and situations. In thinking about the four teams left in this year's playoffs, certain Super Bowl winners from the recent past come to mind. They're not perfect matches, mind you, but they're teams that have either been constructed in a similar way and/or have undergone the same trials and tribulations to get where they are today. By understanding how they finished their trip to and through the Super Bowl, we can get an idea of what 2012's playoff teams need to do to win this year's Lombardi Trophy.

That starts in Atlanta, where the comparisons between quarterbacks battling seemingly endless criticism continues …