Super Bowl XLVIII
Seattle Seahawks 43,. Denver Broncos 8
East Rutherford, New Jersey
February 2, 2014
John Madden used to say that the biggest gap in sports was between the winner of the Super Bowl, and the loser. It might also be the case with the World Cup, for that matter. Who, other than the host nation, remembers the loser?
Quick! Who lost the World Cup Final in 2010? 2006? 2002?
Who lost last year's Super Bowl?
Chances are you don't remember. Or, if you are like me, perhaps you do in fact do remember, although most do not.
Well, whether or not you remember, the fact of the matter is that, sometimes, the loser of the Super Bowl is remembered. You might not remember a team that barely got there, and then followed the script by getting blown out against a far superior team. That has happened quite often.
But teams that fight hard and almost win can be remembered, as well. Like the 1988 Bengals, who were just shy of winning their first ever Super Bowl, in what would have been a shocking upset of the San Francisco 49ers. Everybody remembers the 1990 Buffalo Bills, who had an amazing season, only to see their dreams of winning it all fall short when Norwood's field goal sailed wide right by two feet. The Cardinals put up a memorable performance, albeit a losing one, ultimately, in Super Bowl XLIII, pushing Pittsburgh to the limit, before the Steelers finally pulled it off to win the game.
Other losing Super Bowl teams are remembered for the sheer amount of times that they lose the big game. That would apply for the Minnesota Vikings of the 1970's, the Denver Broncos of the 1980's, and the Buffalo Bills of the 1990's.
Some other teams, however, are remembered for losing the big game for entirely different reasons. These are teams that looked absolutely dominant in the regular season, that grabbed all the headlines, raised eyebrows and had people standing up and taking notice, only to then fall short in the big game. The Baltimore Colts were the first such dominant team to lose the Super Bowl in a shocking manner. You could also argue that the 1984 Miami Dolphins, who had an incredibly explosive offense led by the prolific passing of a young Dan Marino, wound up being shutdown and shot down, ultimately, by the 49ers in Super Bowl XIX. More recently, the New England Patriots had enjoyed a historically dominant regular season and postseason run, scoring more points and winning by a wider margin on average than any other team had in NFL history. But the lasting image of the 2007 Patriots will always be of the defenders failing to hold the Giants on that final touchdown drive that sunk the Patriots hopes of completing the perfect season.
Similarly, I think these Broncos will be remembered in that manner. No, they were not undefeated. But anytime you have an offense that establishes that many records, you know that they were supposed to be historically good. Their numbers suggested that they were unstoppable. This was a team for the ages, a team that people would remember, and talk about, for years, and even decades, to come.
Opposing defenses had only held the Broncos "O" to less than thirty points only three times during the regular season. Three times, Denver scored at least 50 points. Manning threw for a record 55 touchdowns, and passed for more overall yards than any other quarterback in history for a single season. And the Broncos offense looked unstoppable.
I'll admit to having been taken in a bit by the numbers. My familiarity with football, and particularly with the Super Bowl, is that the team that has the superior defense and running game, and which places more of an emphasis on mistake-free football, will win the championship. There have been few exceptions to this general rule. Maybe the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV, who beat the tough Tennessee Titans, who had the better defense and a very strong running game, and did not beat themselves with mistakes. And it took the mighty Rams everything that they had to not only narrowly beat out the Titans in the Super Bowl, but also the tough Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game.
But I was assuming that an offense of this caliber would surely enjoy at least some real highlights in the biggest game. Boy, when I'm wrong, I'm really wrong!
In retrospect, perhaps we could see the writing on the wall. Yes, only three defenses had managed to hold Denver to less than 30 points during the regular season, but the Broncos had not managed to reach 30 points in either of their playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. The same fate that had descended on the 2007 New England Patriots with their historical offense was in store for Denver, as well. The Patriots slowed down a lot in the second half of that season, and by the last two games of the playoffs, they combined for less points in those two most important games of the season than they averaged per game - scoring a total of 35 points in those two games.
Ditto the 2013 Denver Broncos, who had to hold on to win against their division rivals, the San Diego Chargers, 24-17. Then, they more or less just outlasted the New England Patriots, 26-16. Again, the record offensive numbers and fireworks were not there.
And neither of those defenses were anywhere near the caliber of the Seattle Seahawks.
Once it was time for the Super Bowl, the Broncos were clearly outmuscled and outhustled. The record numbers put up against weaker defenses meant little or nothing against a Seattle team that not only was not intimidated by that great monster of a Denver offense, but that did their own intimidating and put a hurting on the Broncos. Denver was almost completely shut down, and that one touchdown basically prevented the Broncos from the dubious distinction of being the victims of the first shut out defeat in Super Bowl history.
So, despite all the great headlines and stories coming out of Denver, despite the historical season, all that people will remember, fair or not, is Manning throwing those two interceptions in the biggest game of all, particularly the pick six. People will remember Denver's receivers getting pushed around and hit hard, and the nonexistent Broncos running game.
Whether or not Manning likes the term, it fits: Denver was embarrassed. From talk of the greatest offense ever, to being blasted for not even putting up a fight.
Truth is, though, that Seattle's defense really was that good, and deserves to be mentioned among the elite defenses in history. They might not be quite on the level of, say, the 1985 Chicago Bears, or the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, but they are the best defense of their era.
Here is an article that I found that diagnoses exactly how that Seahawk defense put on a clinic in the Super Bowl, and made the record-setting offense of the Denver Broncos look very pedestrian:
"Greg Cosell’s Super Bowl Film Review: This is how Seattle dominated Denver’s offense" by Greg Cosell of Yahoo Sports' Shutdown Corner, February 8, 2014:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/greg-cosell-super-bowl-film-review-seattle-dominated-214531436--nfl.html
And finally, one thing that I noticed following this Super Bowl, was that there seemed to be viral reports spreading through the internet that the Super Bowl was fixed.
One ludicrous report that I ran into even suggested that someone had overheard Peyton Manning asking a high-ranking member of the Seahawks (I think it was Pete Carroll) when he was going to get his money. Keep in mind, that Peyton Manning has a $100 million contract, and I doubt that Carroll, who makes considerably less than Manning does, could actually give Manning any amount of money that could entice him to throw away his chance at history is absolutely ludicrous. Wish that I had remembered to keep the link to that "report", but alas. It's hardly worth remembering, anyway.
But, I guess this is the wave of the future. Fact is that you can literally cast doubt on anything and everything, if you argue it in just the right way, and suggest things that sound even remotely plausible. In this case, yes, I get it. The Super Bowl was not at all what most people expected. The Broncos looked unstoppable all season on offense, and then they look like the worst offense in the league when it matters most. These things do happen from time to time. Maybe the Seahawks defense really is just that good, that they threw Denver off their game like that. It seemed to me that Seattle did completely shut down Denver through most of the first half. Then, Denver made adjustments and started moving the ball, but Seattle's defense was the perfect example of "bend but don't break". They allowed quite a few yards and passes (although Denver's running game remained conspicuously absent), but the Seahawk defense did not allow many points. After all, Manning set a record with the most pass completions, and Demaryius Thomas set a record with the most passes caught. But again, it is understood that most of those numbers were put up when the outcome was no longer in doubt, and the game was out of reach for Denver. Seattle essentially was able to throw them off in the beginning of the game, then hold them off afterward, and the Broncos were never seriously in the game.
Sometimes, it strikes me, just how similar this Super Bowl was to some of those back in the old days of NFC dominance throughout so much of the eighties and the nineties, not least of all because it was the Denver Broncos, once again, being pounded on the biggest stage, as they became the first franchise to record five Super Bowl losses in their history.
No, the game was not fixed. It was just not what most people were expecting, either. Most people myself included, assumed that the Denver Broncos should have been capable of doing much more in the game than they actually did. Very few people could or would have predicted a blowout of this magnitude. But, it happens, doesn't it? In fact, we kind of got spoiled there for a while, with a bunch of competitive Super Bowls. Truth was, there was a time when annual, disappointing Super Bowl blowouts were the norm. It happens, and although unfortunate or unexpected, it does not follow that the game was fixed.
The Super Bowl before this one seems to have had the most conspiracy theories surrounding it. Perhaps it is because 49ers fans with a false sense of entitlement just refuse to believe that their beloved team lost. There are claims that the conversations between Ravens coaches and the officials were suspicious, although I do not specifically remember any horrendous calls, other than the questionable no call on San Francisco's last offensive play, when Crabtree was held. The thing is, he himself was doing some holding, as well - at least as much as the defender. Just watch the videotape, and pretty much any objective fan could see that for themselves. And as for Ravens fans, there are all sorts of questions surrounding the power outage that lasted well over half of an hour, and changed the momentum of the game - remember that Baltimore was on the verge of blowing out San Francisco, holding a 28-6 lead at the time, but the 49ers were able to get back into it and make a game of it afterwards. Admittedly, the power shortage is a very strange, unprecedented thing to happen in such a huge, internationally televised event like that.
In any case, below is the link to the Snopes rebuttal of the notion that this Super Bowl was somehow fixed, and explains the origins of how this rumor took a life of it's own:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/superbowl.asp
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