I remember that following his team's narrow loss by a single point to the New York Giants after Super Bowl XXV, Bruce Smith felt that he had been playing for the better team on the field that day. Remember that this was before the Buffalo Bills would make a habit of losing Super Bowls.
That I can understand, although I am not entirely certain I agree with it. The Giants were involved with another Super Bowl in which many people felt that they won a game in which they were not the best team on the field, when they shocked the undefeated New England Patriots.
When Super Bowls are that competitive, you can indeed make an argument about who the better team was on the day. It seems fair enough.
But this one was a new one on me: a player from the team that lost by 35 points is apparently claiming that his Denver Broncos were the best team on the field that day!
Never mind that the Broncos were outplayed literally from the first play. Never mind that they allowed points earlier than any other team in Super Bowl history, and that they never seemed to really be in the game. Never mind that they followed up a dominant season where they set all sorts of league records with offensive explosiveness by completely reversing their fortunes and setting a low bar with their team futility in the biggest game, when it mattered the most. Some people were suggesting that the Broncos might be one of the best teams of all time prior to the game, particularly on offense. But following their actual performance on the field on that day, the Denver Broncos last season will forever be remembered for their greatest failure - getting slaughtered in the Super Bowl.
In fact, Peyton Manning did establish a Super Bowl record with the most completions, while Demaryius Thomas set a Super Bowl record by catching more of those passes from Manning than any receiver in Super Bowl history had done before. But, again, those records were rendered pretty much meaningless by the Broncos poor performance.
If the token records were somewhat of a silver lining (and that's debatable) on the offensive end for Denver, than there really is no silver lining for the defense, which got pushed around by a far superior and more physical Seattle Seahawk offense, which punished Denver for it's inferior physicality all night long. In allowing 34 points (remember that Peyton Manning threw the pick six, and that Denver gave up 2 points on the first play), the Broncos defense played one of the worst games that any Super Bowl team has ever played, and that against an offense that was not seen as elite. Jeremy Mincey was one of those defenders that was rendered completely ineffective for Denver. Yet, he apparently has not learned to keep his mouth shut, as he claims that "Sometimes the better team don’t always win."
Well, I hate to break it to you, Jeremy, but the best team absolutely did win on Super Bowl Sunday, and they left no doubt, at that! The Broncos may have scored a record amount of points that season with an offense that looked truly explosive, but they obviously were not facing a defense of the caliber that the Seahawks displayed on that day. Otherwise, they would not likely have produced all of those wonderful records.
Mincey has moved on to the Dallas Cowboys now. I can understand why he might still believe that the Denver Broncos were the best team in the league last season, since everyone seemed to stand up and take notice of them from early on, and many people prematurely crowned them as the best team last season. It's a hard pill to swallow when someone not only proves that wrong, but leaves absolutely no doubt about it, by humiliating you in the process.
And yes, that is exactly what the Seattle Seahawks did to the Denver Broncos. They exposed Denver as a team that was not able to match all of the hype surrounding them. Almost everyone - and this surely includes most members of the Denver Broncos themselves - had their illusions stripped on that day.
But there is always going to be one who does not get the memo, and thinks that his team getting their asses kicked in every way that a team can get their ass kicked on the biggest stage somehow was merely a fluke, and that the Broncos, if they had really showed up, would have won.
At this point, I think the only person who might believe that is Mincey himself.
"Mincey says Broncos were “lackadaisical” in Super Bowl XLVIII" by Mike Florio of profootballtalk.nbcsports.com, March 15, 2014:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/15/mincey-says-broncos-were-lackadaisical-in-super-bowl-xlviii/?ocid=Yahoo&partner=ya5nbcs
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