Super Bowl or Super Bust?
February 5, 2014
Whoof.
Eight total points scored for the number one offense to ever play the game? I suppose the
universal saying “defense wins championships” reigned true when it came to Super Bowl XLVIII.
It was over 12 seconds into the game. I caught the premature snap bounce into the end zone as I was lathering a pulled pork sandwich in Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. It immediately made no sense to me. The Broncos had two full weeks to prepare for the game that means the most. Surely they knew what play they were going to run for most of those 14 days.
Was Denver center Manny Ramirez surprised that Peyton Manning was shouting out an audible
call? Manning seemed to call at least one audible per play this season – did one emphatic “Omaha!” trigger a lethal flinch in the right arm of Ramirez? Was The 12th Man so deafening that Ramirez’s cerebellum was falsely signaled? Perhaps we will never know, but that led Broncos fans across the nation to scream flinch-worthy phrases of their own…
From the 2-0 Seahawks lead all the way to 36-0 and eventually the 43-8 final, the Legion of Boom (an alias for the Seahawks secondary) got buckets. The D-line brought the heat on Manning, not allowing him to unleash his seemingly countless number of offensive threats. And clearly, being voted the Most Valuable Player for his record-breaking and historic single-season, Peyton Manning underperformed in one of the biggest games of his best season to date.
Plain and simple, the game was a snooze fest.
The Broncos brought less horsepower than a Smart
Car to New York while the Seahawks flew high from the opening to the closing tick of the clock.
On another note, I’d make the assertion that the NFC West is the best division in the National Football League. With three teams putting up 10 W’s this year and the NFC representative in the Super Bowl the past two years, it’s hard to argue. In 2010, Seattle won the division with a sad 7-9 record. This year, the St. Louis Rams brought up the tail of the division with the same record.
After battling through the league’s toughest division during the regular season and shutting down the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers in the playoffs, the Seahawks ran away with their first ever Super Bowl victory. The win was brought to a close with an orange Gatorade bath on Head Coach Pete Carroll, adding insult to a humiliating loss for the Broncos.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they do the same thing next year, only this time Carroll will be bathed in patriotism as the Seattle squad defeats the AFC representative New England Patriots. Let the red, white and blue Gatorade exfoliate the epidermis of Carroll as the Seahawks become defending champs in 2014.
