Comments

1
Great victory, Seahawks! Of course, it would have meant even more if the Broncos had bothered to show up.

I'm more and more convinced, they all thought the REAL game was NEXT Sunday.

But nonetheless, flawless play by the Seahawks! I doff my hat to you.
2
Thanks for this post! Now the rest of the bullshit, hype, and glurge that gets thrown at me today will seem like nothing.
3
Spike, you'd do it for a Seattle NHL expansion Stanley Cup run wouldn't you?
4
The Broncos didn't not show up. The Seahawks made them play that way.
5
Edgar and Griffey making that great playoff run in ''95 is the best Seattle sport memory for me. Go Mariners!
7
In two games played at MetLife stadium this year:

Seahawks 66
Mannings 8
8
@7 as a Giants fan fuck you. As a Seahawks fan when they're not playing the Giants, uh, I'm conflicted.
9
A very enjoyable game for a non-fan. The TV coverage gave me enough detail to have some backstory for some players while I watched, and the camera work and explanatory graphics were terrific. If they make the league championships and super bowl next year I'll be sure to see those games also.
10
Next up for a championship is the Seattle Storm! They've already won 2 Championships in this century!!!!!!!!! They seem to be forgotten!
11
The good kind of tears. Lovely re-cap!
12
The good kind of tears! Great re-cap
14
What @13 said.
15
Better watch out for the Sounders this year...
16
@13

I like slo-motion. I hope next year that use super super slo mo more often, like when a baseball hits a bat. Only in the past year, because of it, one can see the bat wiggle a bit on contact. Ah fuck, I take it all back. I hate slo-mo with a passion.
17
@1 Only people who don't know football would suggest that the Broncos failed to show up. They were there, they just got their asses kicked from start to finish. They couldn't do anything because the Seahawks wouldn't let them do anything.
18
As a dork and a calculator-button-pushing bespectacled pencil-neck geek, I would like to refer to my previous work on the frequency of final scores in the NFL and point out that while my dream of a 5-3 final did not come true, something even weirder did: 43-8.

Guess how many times a team scored 43 points in an NFL game this year? Zero. Guess how many times a team scored 8? One time.

Every other point score below 43, except the impossible 1 and the almost impossible 4 and 5, was done. (Side note, I saw a 5-0 game once, in person, Dallas over Detroit in the Cotton Bowl, a 1970 Divisional Playoff, shortly after we moved to that godforsaken city.)

Who can tell me how many teams have led a Super Bowl from the very first snap of the game to the end? I don't know, but this has to be the first time, right? The only other time a team scored on the first play was a kickoff return, by the Chicago Bears in 2007, but they ended up losing that game (to Peyton Manning's Colts).
19
@17, The Broncos showed up physically, but from what I could see, there was a failure of preparation and mental toughness on their part and their secondary tackled (or rather semi-tackled) like a bunch of wusses.

It was almost as if the Broncos held there asses out and said to the Seahawks, "here, kick me"
20
I had to watch the game alone. I loved Eli's face. Peyton seems like a good guy, but it's a better win against him. Seattle wouldn't have gotten half the credit destroying the Giants and Eli. With that said, I can't fathom why Peyton and the Broncos didn't take the 3 points before half time.

I love Russell Wilson scrambling, and the comeback against Atlanta last year was one for the ages. That said, the thing he did best yesterday was to not try to do too much. The stat about the Seahawk offence is right on the money. It was the defense's to win, and the offense's to lose. There will be another day when Wilson has to make the play of his career (and, of course, he'll be ready).

Great story about Smith. I thought I mis-heard he was MVP. Defense really deserved MVP. Cliff Avril was phenomenal yesterday too. He helped caused both interceptions.
21
@18: Weird indeed. This was the first game to end with a score of 43-8 in the history of the NFL!
22
@18, not sure how many times one team led the full game, but it happened to Denver in Super Bowl XXIV against the Niners.
23
@22, yes, but not the WHOLE game -- Denver had the ball first and went three-and-out, and then SF scored on their first drive but not the first play of that drive -- the game was scoreless until 10:06 in the first quarter. We scored in this game on the very first snap.
24
The feeling that swept this city out of its suicidal grayness was capturing the Super Bowl in fine style, creating a shared togetherness uninfected by red or blue mindsets. Much as I hate to credit Charlie Sheen with anything - what he said - "Winning!" is flamingly appropriate. Paraphrasing what Sophie Tucker said about being rich and poor: "I have lost and I have won. Winning is better." And mostly we should be grateful no one has suggested the name of the essential fan base be changed to "the 12th person".
25
@19, well said. That's often true of Wilson -- he gives the team what they need, and often they don't need the world carried on his shoulders. It's what makes him (and many other Seahawks) so fantastic -- they really play with the team's best interest in mind. The way the secondary moves and sticks to their coverage is almost deceptive in its simplicity. Peyton lives and dies on getting defenses to follow his lead -- which is why he had no luck yesterday.

I've been a growing fan since the tragic '06 Super Bowl. That was my bandwagon moment. I became a diehard last season. my first NFL game ever was the preseason matchup against the Broncos, and I remember ecstatically thinking, wow, this could be the Super Bowl right here. Little did I know that the score would be nearly identical as well (it was 40-10, then.)
26
Manning was not scared of Sherman...he completed several passes during the game to guys covered by Sherman. Denver rarely goes outside in their pass game, it is a very short passing game based on shallow crosses, posts, and YAC. Pretty much as West Coast as the West Coast offense gets.

Peyton fears no one, he finds an open guy and hits them. I would wager that Sherman's guy was probably just pretty well covered the whole game.

That being said, Denver played with no urgency, no fire. All the highlights belong to Seattle. They were playing at a different speed. That is what a team looks like that just wants it more.
27
@21, that's pretty amazing. And as a result of your post I found this, which renders my "work" obsolete -- I should have known.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/bo…
28
Washington State was humiliated by the McMorris-Rogers rebuttal to the Obama State of the Union speech. The kindest comment I heard about her performance was "Substance free". We needed and deserved a cleansing experience to show the rest of the country that we are not all bumbling nabobs. Thank-you Seahawks!
29
I usually watch Hawks games alone, huddled over my laptop, shaking with rage and fear.


You & me both. But I watched the SB w/ some die-hards in a man cave. 'Twas awesome.
30
I am no expert at football but generally in team sports, this kind of blow out score is much more likely to represent respective strengths than some other weird explanation like "they didn't show up" or "they chocked". Sure, the outcome doesn't reflect what the media claimed would happen over the last 2 weeks but did you expect them to tell you that the semi against SF was in fact the final 2 weeks early or does creating as much commercial hype as possible fits the usual MO?
31
We all invested in the team, sure, but it's sort of hard not to when your tax dollars are being spent on said team.
32
Denver didn't choke, they were choked. Seahawk D plays with all the mercy of a pack of Velociraptors in a stable with Shetland Ponies. Chainsaws.
34
@18 -- I almost nailed Seattle's side of the score - predicting 34 leaning to 41. I figured on the 2 FG's and 4-5 TD's (5 if they had both a pick six and a kick return) ... but I never figured Manning to give up a safety.
35
Careful don't eat the German Sausage, there is Bronco Meat in them there dogs.
36
Amen #10, Go Storm!
37
Denver neither choked nor failed to show up. They got blown out because they faced a defense with exactly the right strengths to counter their offense. Denver has a short passing game that relies on their big receivers to gain a lot of yards after they catch the ball. The Seahawks, however, have big defensive backs who are very sure tacklers, so those YAC (yards after catch) just didn't happen. Most of Manning's completions were for 6 yards or less. Denver brought their game, it just didn't work against the Seahawk defense.

LOB!
38
Also, the Denver offense was designed to be pass rush proof by starting the quarterback in the shotgun and having him get rid of the ball quickly to receivers running slants and short crossing patterns. But the Seahawks front four were so damn fast that they got to Manning in the brief time before he got rid of the ball. Having exceptionally tight man-to-man coverage and bumping the receivers at the line helped.

They tried to beat that fast defensive line with screen passes, but the Seahawks defensive line was so fast that they were able to pursue and tackle the receiver from behind after he was held up by a defender applying tight man-to-man coverage.

The Seahawk defensive is built to beat a West Coast offense. And it did.
39
I cannot tell you how joyful it makes me feel to read on SLOG that this was the first team to suffer neither a sack nor a turnover in a Super Bowl. Which just goes to show you how in the fucking in the tank the entire national sports press corps is for Saint Peyton Manning. Seattle's defense is spectacular, the stuff of legends, but Seattle's offense is pretty damn fine, too.

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