II. The LOSE got to be that one guy the last time the Seahawks reached the Super Bowl, which was in 2006. At every newspaper I’ve ever worked at, there is always that one guy who is a fan of one of the teams in the Super Bowl. And come Super Bowl Sunday, they’re dressed in their team’s colours, screaming at the TV, stomping about the office, jumping up and down with excitement, and generally making a fool out of themselves. In 2006, that was me. For once. It was fun to be that one guy for a day, even though the game didn’t go so well.
III. The LOSE couldn’t help but giggle a little bit this past fall when, in the last week of the season, the playoff fate of the Pittsburgh Steelers was determined, in part, by a bad call in the Kansas City-San Diego game. The officiating crew working that game at
IV. The LOSE doesn’t believe the officials cost the Seahawks the game, however – 90% of the bad calls went against the Seahawks, but there were some doozies that went the other way as well. The Seahawks organization, however, was rather annoyed at the time because the game in Detroit, for all intents and purposes, turned into a Pittsburgh Steelers home game – and if you’ve done your proper IN PLAY LOSE related reading and read the book Scorecasting, you’ll know that one of the chapters deals with the nature of home field advantage, which comes down a lot of the time to the home side getting the breaks from the officials. Players know this in all sports, of course, and play through it, knowing that those little things which don’t go your way during an away game are likely to go your way at home, which is why bitching about it, from a player’s standpoint, is pointless. That Pittsburgh got the breaks from the zebras in a home game wasn’t that surprising. That it had become a Steelers home game was the problem. Huge swaths of the supposedly neutral field in Detroit were awash in black-and-gold, as Pittsburgh was a reasonable driving distance and Steelers fans scooped up every available ticket possible. And the primary narrative in the media was about how vaunted Steelers RB Jerome Bettis was going home to Detroit to play his final game. And don’t think for a minute that such narratives aren’t orchestrated. The NFL is the most media savvy enterprise out there. The Bettis angle made for a catchy hook, of course, and the Steelers are an easy sell, given that they’ve won 6 Super Bowls and are a model franchise, whereas those weird guys dressed in all blue from somewhere near Alaska had/have never won anything. In the moment, the Seahawks and their fans resented Bill Leavy and his officiating crew. In the larger sense, the Seahawks and their fans didn’t like being treated as 2nd-class citizens.
V. The dominant narrative of this upcoming Super Bowl was likely to be that it’s one last hurrah for Broncos QB Peyton Manning, and this is understandable. Manning is 37, is arguably the greatest QB in NFL history, and who just had the greatest season by a QB in NFL history. His intelligence, affability, and willingness not to take himself serious has also made him a great pitch man and one of the game’s best spokesmen. But just as he jumps routes, Seahawks CB Richard Sherman seems to have hijacked all of the media attention. As someone who tired rather quickly of the whole “Driving the Bus Back to Detroit” narrative in 2006, I’m glad for this deviation from the predictable script. The Seahawks aren’t playing second-fiddle this time around.
VI. As for what Richard Sherman did in the aftermath of the Seahawks 23:17 win over the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game: good for him. I didn’t care what Sherman said, nor would I have cared if Crabtree had made the catch on the critical play and then yakked on and on about how Sherman was actually a chump. (Well, I would’ve been sore about it in the moment, but only because the Seahawks had lost.) The LOSE doesn’t care what people say on the field – and when you’re interviewing players on the sidelines, it’s still on the field. You’re in their house. You play by their rules. Even the game’s greatest spokesperson loses it from time to time in the heat of battle. Sherman trashing 49ers WR Michael Crabtree was somewhat refreshing in its honesty. This idea that we expect athletes to be polite and modest and bow to their fallen opponent after the game is nonsense, of course – it takes enormous ego and arrogance to be great at anything. On the field, games are always full of chirping and woofing and chattering. It’s part of the game. It’s a ploy to try and take the edge off the other side, make them lose their focus. And sometimes it works. (Whatever it was that Materazzi said to Zidane, the LOSE can’t believe that, in the course of his long and storied career, he hadn’t heard it before, if not something worse.)
VII. That Sherman was condemned in the media for this violation of decorum and post-game protocol was silly. The media loves a good interview and a good story, and Sherman is both of those. That some dumb, ignorant, redneck, white trash muttonfuckers came out of the cyber wordwork and threw racial slurs and innuendos Sherman’s way was somewhat disturbing. Noted trashtalker Sir Charles Barkley covered both of these points during a press conference in Seattle I happened to be attending: “there are a lot of idiots in the world, and most of them happen to be reporters.”
VIII. And a few athletes chimed in as well:
All I have to say to that is that maybe Justin Verlander should have thrown some fastballs high and tight to Pablo Sandoval in Game 1 of the 2012 World Series, instead of tossing up these softballs. I’ll make a prediction at the end of this post on the Super Bowl, even though I’m generally terrible when it comes to predictions, but one prediction I am most proud of came up in 2012, in talking about the World Series while walking in the rain with The Official Girlfriend of IN PLAY LOSE after the Giants’ 9:0 clobbering of St. Louis in Game 7 of the NLCS: “sure, the Tigers have Verlander, but what happens to them when Pablo takes him deep in the bottom of the 1st inning of Game 1? The Tigers won’t seem so invincible anymore, will they?” That and basically nailing South Africa 2010 – Spain-Netherlands final, 3/4 of the Semis and 7/8 of the Quarters – are about the only times I’ve ever predicted anything right. So take none of this to Las Vegas. Gambling is wrong! Except if I turn out to be right, of course, at which point I will say, “why didn’t all of you listen to me!”
IX. Getting back to Detroit in 2006: the Seahawks didn’t lose the game because of the officials. It certainly didn’t help. It also didn’t help that an injury to their starting safety created a gaping hole in their defense through which the Steelers scored two of their three TDs in the game. Nor did it help that the Seahawks genius gameplan – the key to which was getting the ball to matchup nightmare TE Jerramy Stevens – was undone by Stevens dropping multiple passes. Yeah, the officiating sucks in an away game, which is why the away team needs to play even better than the norm. The Seahawks didn’t that day. They had the right game plan and didn’t execute, and there will certainly be some wrinkles in the game plan for both teams this coming Sunday, but we’ll get to that here a few more Roman numerals from now.
X. The LOSE and his B-Zero chums threw a Super Bowl party in 1990 while in England. The Brit kids who lived with us wondered what the fuss of the Super Bowl was all about, so we all stayed up until god-knows-what-hour it was to watch the game. The Denver Broncos were playing the San Francisco 49ers, and the Broncos were down 27-3 at the half, which meant everyone else went home early. The Broncos were a walking buzzkill in the 1980s, their regular appearances in the Super Bowl being equivalent to putting on some terrible 1970s soft rock record like Seasons in the Sun or something when you want to get people to leave the party. They would get beat early and beat often, the outcome would be decided by halftime, and then everyone could go home.
XI. The LOSE was living in the Rocky Mountain states when the Broncos won their Super Bowls in 1998 and 1999. On the Sportin’ Life front, my time in Western Colorado in 1998 was pretty cool, not only because the Broncos won the Super Bowl, which generated a whole lot of excitement in the state and the region, but also because of the Winter Olympics, which is a big deal in a winter sports paradise like Steamboat Springs, which has produced more Olympians per capita than any city in the country. I listened to the Super Bowl on the car radio, in fact, as I was driving back from Salt Lake City. I remember the day of the Super Bowl well, not only because the Broncos beat Green Bay 31:24, but because it was also the day that a suicide deer sprung from out of the darkness along the highway and ran right into the front right side of my car, which was slowing mightily at the site of said deer but probably still going a significant rate of speed. This could’ve been disastrous, but the LOSE was driving a Saturn with those springy, dent-resistant panels. The suicide deer bounced off the side panel, stumbled and then ran off into the brush to live another day – albeit likely with some sort of deer concussion. The car didn’t even have a dent.
XII. But yeah, it was kind of neat to see people get excited over their favourite team’s successes. Having grown up in the Northwest, I know very little about this, as only team I grew up following ever won a championship, and that team no longer exists. (Die in a fire, OKC Blunder.) It definitely put a little extra spring in everyone’s step, even in a town 270 miles away from Denver. That sort of effect on the collective psyche of a city, and an extended community, shouldn’t be discounted. We have a tendency to take our games and pastimes far too seriously, but success on the field of play translates into a heightened sense of community and shared purpose which, I believe, is a good thing.
XIII. New Mexico seemed evenly split between Broncos and Cowboys fans, and I gravitated towards the Broncos in 1999, simply because the Cowboys are evil incarnate, and also because a local rooting interests doing well tends to make things easier when you’re primarily working the Sports Desk at a daily newspaper. It’s much easier to come up with an issue on a daily basis that way. Winning is good for business. The LOSE had never been a Broncos fan, of course, owing to the fact that I grew up in the Northwest, and the Seahawks and Broncos were rivals in the AFC West back then. I’d never much cared for Broncos QB John Elway (who, by the way, is actually enshrined on my hometown’s Walk of Fame) but pragmatism ruled the roost during those two years in the Rockies. And I could appreciate the fact that such a great player and great competitor as Elway was ultimately capping off a career with two championships. Elway was fortunate in that he got five chances to play in the Super Bowl in his career (the first three times, his team got blasted). Lots of great players never even get a sniff. To that end, this is an interesting series on ESPN about great players who never reached the Super Bowl.
XIV. The Broncos beat the Atlanta Falcons 34:19 in 1999. The Falcons were enormous underdogs to begin with, and it didn’t help matters that Atlanta FS Eugene Robinson was arrested the night before the game for soliciting a prostitute. This is taking the idea of trying to kick back and relax the night before the game a little too far. (This is also as close to porn as this entry is going to get.)
XV. Speaking of relaxing, the Super Bowl is always a carnival rife with distractions. The tendency, among coaches, is to try and wall their team off somehow from the fêtes going on around them, imploring their players to stay 100% focused. That seems like the right approach, except for the fact that these are human beings we’re talking about here, and human beings are capable of multitasking and being focused when needed. I’m reminded of the 1981 Super Bowl between the Raiders and the Eagles in New Orleans. The Raiders’ entire franchise ethos had been established by recently retired coach John Madden, who only had three rules: be on time, pay attention, and play like hell. Quite a few of the Raider players made sure to get out and enjoy Bourbon St. prior to the 1981 game, which they ultimately won 27:10 in an upset. The Raiders were free spirits and, to a man, the former Raiders have said that they were loose and relaxed for that game, whereas the Eagles seemed tightly wound, and it made a huge difference. It’s never made that much sense to me to try and shudder guys up and pretend that nothing is going on around them. The Super Bowl is a huge spectacle, and one of the things you should do in that situation is ENJOY THE MOMENT, because you do not know if/when it is going to come again. The team that seems most like themselves come game time is the team that’s likely going to be the most successful.
XVI. Which, going back to the Richard Sherman bit, is yet another reason why I couldn’t care less that he said what he said about Michael Crabtree. That’s who he is. Nor do I care that he’s said in the past that Peyton Manning throws some passes that are wounded ducks. The Seahawks are boisterous, confident, brash, obnoxious, and they have fun with the game. They’re not going to try to be anything they aren’t – nor should they. And, like most great trash talkers, they don’t actually take themselves all that seriously, since being willing to dish it out also means being able to take it, and a part of being able to take it is being able to laugh.
XVII. Like I say, the Super Bowl is something of a carnival, the day having become something of a national holiday. I explained this to all of my friends in Bangladesh that they asked why we were up at 5:30 a.m. watching the Patriots play the Panthers on ESPN India. It was an actual national holiday in Bangladesh – it was Eid that day – so we got to celebrate two ‘holidays’ at once. (Don't ask me to tell you what became of the cow that was tied out front of the hotel.) And speaking of that trip to Bangladesh, the other person who was on that trip with me – Kate, who is saxophonist extraordinaire for the House Band of IN PLAY LOSE – is breaking out her Brazilian trio for a gig on Sunday night after the game and any Bay Area readers of this blog would do well to check it out.
XVIII. My other foreign Super Bowl witnessing experience came in 1988, when the Redskin Potatoes unleashed one of the greatest single quarters in the history of football on the Denver Broncos. I was in Belgium and I have don’t remember which TV network I was watching or even what language(s) it was in. There were networks on the cable system in Brussels in French, Flemish, Dutch, English, German and Italian, so pick one. The Broncos went all Seasons in the Sun in the 2nd Quarter and went from up 10-0 to down 35-10, but I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. and watched the anticlimactic 2nd half of the Potatoes’ 42:10 victory out of annoyance. If I’m going to stay up that late for the game, damn it, I want to watch ALL THE GAME. Same applied in 1990, when the British Super Bowl party had basically been reduced to me and a handful of 49er fans, who didn’t think trouncing the hapless Broncos 55:10 was enough and wanted the 49ers to score even more, and who also never wanted the game to end.
XIX. Read that score again. The 49ers won the Super Bowl in 1990 by a score of 55:10. Gads, I’ve watched a lot of terrible Super Bowls over the years. It always seemed odd that a league which strove so much to create parity consistently wound up with championship games which were so lopsided. 55:10, 46:10, 42:10, 52:17, 49:26. Yuck. There were some dominant franchises during that time, to be sure – the 49ers, the Cowboys and the Potatoes pretty much took turns, and you can add in the Bears from the mid-1980s as well – and the AFC teams seemed either to be dogs or choking dogs. For someone who doesn’t care a whit about neither the commercials nor the halftime show, this was always something of a downer.
XX. I’m now realizing I’m going to be hard-pressed to write 48 things in this list, as I’m free associating all of this in my head and just sort of vamping on whatever idea came up beforehand.
XXI. I mentioned legendary Bronco QB John Elway’s connection to my hometown before. (His father was an assistant coach at W.S.U. at the time.) Peyton Manning’s connection to my hometown is that his first collegiate start at Tennessee was against The Good Guys in Knoxville in 1994. The Volunteers won 10:9 in an ugly slugfest. That W.S.U. team went 8-4 and led the country in total defense, but couldn’t score. Manning's Vols and W.S.U. simultaneously put a stamp on collegiate football history on New Year's Day 1998 when they lost to eventual national co-champions Nebraska and Michigan, respectively – the former never in doubt, as the Vols got waxed by the sodbusting Cornhuskers; the latter subject to perpetual controversy, as Michigan eked out a 21:16 win over the Cougars in a Rose Bowl with a disputed ending. Manning was the #1 pick in the 1998 draft, taken right ahead of W.S.U. QB Ryan Leaf, whose pro career was somewhat less successful and, ultimately, extremely sad. There were, in fact, pundits at the time who thought the Colts should’ve taken Leaf.
XXII. Manning’s first TD pass as a pro was to Marvin Harrison in an exhibition game against … the Seahawks. When asked about the play afterwards, he said something along the lines of that it was a play called ‘Throw the Ball to Marvin Harrison.’ One of the things which is fascinating about this particular Super Bowl is that, in the complex scheming world of pro football, the juicy matchup of this game, the Broncos best offense v. the Seahawks defense, features two sides whose actual schemes are, by NFL standards, not all that complicated. For all of his running around screaming with his arms flailing and shouting Omaha and such, the offense Manning runs in Denver, much like it was in Indianapolis, is pretty straightforward stuff, while the Seahawks 4-3, cover 3 defense is not far removed from high school sets. That both teams can be this good in the modern NFL speaks to the talent levels. These guys are sick.
XXIII. And here at IN PLAY LOSE, we tend to focus a fair amount on the business aspect of sport, and that so much talent is going to be out on the field on Sunday is a testament to the administrative skill of both squads. The Broncos have done it with some underappreciated free agent moves, and also a bit more bona fide star power – signing the Peyton Mannings and the Wes Welkers and such – whereas the Seahawks have been built through the draft and through shrewd moves by their GM. The Seahawks have done such a good job drafting players, in fact, that a great number of their top flight players are young stars who were low round draft picks. QB Russell Wilson came to them in the 3rd round; badass DBs Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor in the 5th round. Lower round draft picks are also cheaper in their first contracts. Most franchise QBs command $10 million or so, but Russell Wilson in his 2nd year in the league makes around $500,000 – and that extra $9.5 million you’re not spending on a QB you can then use on a couple of badass pass rushers, like Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett, and a playmaking WR like Percy Harvin (more on him in a minute) and still stay under the salary cap. Many of the Seahawks best players are basically underpaid, which means more money available to sign more good players.
XXIV. The two clubs also have two of the best coaches in football. Pete Carroll just won a poll of NFL players as being the coach they’d want to play for, which is a ringing endorsement (good thing they have some cap flexibility to sign more guys, since Seattle may be high on a lot of FA’s lists here pretty soon). Denver’s John Fox, meanwhile, is someone I have always thought was among the élite minds in the NFL. He managed to maximize the abilities of Tim Tebow and win a playoff game in the process, so clearly he knows what he’s doing. And that’s not a slight against Tebow, to whom I hold no personal animus but an awful lot of other people seem to. Fox built an offense for him emphasizing the run game and controlled passes, and did so believing it gave the Broncos, in 2011, the best chance to win. And he was right. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you coach. But then Peyton Manning came available, and when you have the chance sign Peyton Manning … well, duh, you should do that …
XXV. Quite simply, this is one of the best matchups the Super Bowl has ever seen, two enormously talented teams and two of the smartest, best-run organizations in sports. And MY TEAM IS ONE OF THEM! And The Lose doesn’t really know what to do about this. Not even two World Series titles by my favourite baseball team in recent years has gotten me used to winning. I posess that skepticism and sense of dread and doom that is engrained in Northwest sports fans after years of failure. (And for those of you who don’t understand my allegiance to the San Francisco Giants, I was rooting for the Giants before the Mariners existed. Some would argue they still don’t exist. No argument here.) The Seahawks went from not quite good enough to not quite good at all to not quite good enough again, the Mariners have had about 10 good years out of 42, the Sonics squandered the golden opportunity in the early 1990s and then disintegrated and ultimately left town, the Vancouver Canucks always finish their seasons exactly one playoff level below where their talent dictates they should finish. Seattle ranks down with the likes of Cleveland and Buffalo on the Misery Index when it comes to professional sports. So to have this badass team in the Super Bowl is fucking cool. Not just a really good team, mind you – the Seahawks who lost in 2006 were a really good team – but a badass team that really represents the id of the place from whence I came.
XXVI. And I plan on talking a whole lot of shit and being a pain in the ass to Broncos fan and IN PLAY LOSE East Bay bureau chief Phonerz J. Magratheazaphod at the Super Bowl party on Sunday.
XXVII. But first I need to figure out what to make for the party. Hmmm … I am leaning towards muffuletta for Sunday, because it rules. I made Cajun food when the Saints reached the Super Bowl – poboys and muffuletta. We also had a scrabble tourney that day and I played the word ETOUFFE(E) for some ungodly amount of points. I had the whole Saints thing dialed in that day. I suppose I could go regional with this and do salmon or something. What’s important to remember is that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose so long as you’re drunk and well fed.
XXVIII. I’ve always preferred going to Super Bowl parties to going to bars, although last year I went to about 10 bars. I told a pal of mine working the news desk here in S.F. that I would amble about the Mission and let her know any goings on, particularly if the 49ers won the game, so I would go to a bar, have a drink, watch the game for a series or two and then amble on to the next one. Hey, I’m being asked to go to 10 bars, what’s not to like about that? I supposedly should loathe the rival 49ers but this rivalry is still too new to be on that level. AFC West teams like the Broncos were the sworn enemy during my formative years of fandom. It would’ve been fun for the city if the 49ers had won last year (and it would’ve done all of us a service, since the Baltimore Ravens are about the most thoroughly annoying franchise in sports), and I was somewhat disappointed when they lost. I felt like they were the better team and let the opportunity get away from them. And, as we saw with the 49ers this year, those opportunities can be hard to come by. And I was probably more animated in wanted a 49er win than I should’ve been, me being a Seahawk guy and all. I’ll sight my pragmatism again along with a time-tested excuse: “I was drunk!” Going to 10 bars will do that to you, since you should patronize the establishments accordingly.
XXIX. OK, so who wins? Or, better yet, who loses? (This is IN PLAY LOSE after all.) First of all, the Broncos lose if they turn the ball over. Can’t do that. That’s a 100% surefire way for them to lose, and the Seahawks force more turnovers than anyone in the game.
XXX. The Seahawks lose if they try to outsmart Peyton Manning. That will work for all of one series before he figures it out. No gimmick defenses and such. As I said before, the Seahawks keep it simple on defense and you need to do that against the Broncos.
XXXI. The Broncos lose if they don’t come up with some wrinkles on offense. The Seahawks are a strangely constructed team that seems uniquely problematic to Denver’s receivers. They have big CBs who are physical, they have LBs who are tall and rangy, and they have a safety in Kam Chancellor who has systematically destroyed TEs all season. Seattle are also good tacklers, which means fewer yards after contact. Denver will move the ball, because they can do that on anyone, but this will likely have to be in smaller chunks of yardage, which means longer drives. The longer the drives, the more likely a mistake. A lot of the Broncos’ favourite plays aren’t likely to work so well, so they’ll need some different looks. (EDIT: Phonerz J. Magratheazaphod has argued upon first read of this post that Denver is likely to win through primary use of the running game, instead of the pass. I actually agree with this and it was damn lazy of me not to mention that RB Knowshon Moreno is probably the key player in this game for the Denvers.)
XXXII. The Seahawks lose if they can’t block anyone. The offensive line for Seattle has been something of a mess, mostly due to injuries. Russell Wilson winds up running for his life at times on dropbacks.
XXXIII. The Broncos lose if they don’t get any QB sacks. And I don't mean pressure, I mean sacks, because Russell Wilson is so elusive. Denver’s defense has been good against the run, but their secondary is a bit suspect. And when Russell Wilson is running for his life is also when he can be the most dangerous – Seattle is one of the best teams in the league when it comes to improvisational, free form pass plays where Wilson seemingly makes something out of nothing.
XXXIV. The Seahawks lose if they don’t run the ball. Marshon Lynch doesn’t need that many blocks, as he runs behind his pads and simply runs over a lot of people. The Seahawks have avoided Russell Wilson QB read-option running plays most of the year, simply because they don’t want to their 5’10” QB smashed, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide to pull out some of those sorts of plays and try to use Denver’s overpursuit against them, particularly since they now have a secret weapon to stretch and spread the field ...
XXXV. The Broncos lose if they can’t figure out what Seahawks WR Percy Harvin is going to do. This is one of the more intriguing twists in the game. Seattle traded for Harvin from the Minnesota Vikings in the offseason, signed him to a $67 million contract, and he promptly got hurt and missed the first 10 games of the season. He played one game and did stuff like this:
He then got hurt again, missed the rest of the regular season, played against the Saints in the playoffs and got knocked out of the game. He’s played all of about 30 plays all year. Harvin is apparently now fully healthy and is the ultimate X factor. Percy Harvin is one of the fastest, most dangerous players in all of football. And for the Broncos, there is basically ZERO film from which to gameplan for him. There is basically a whole swath of the Seahawks playbook they haven’t even run all year involving all phases of the offense. If Harvin is a big factor in the game, the Broncos are in big trouble.
XXXVI. The Seahawks lose if Harvin get hurts again. Which seems to happen a lot. He’s had a fairly checkered career. Although some of his ‘injury’ issues last year in Minnesota may have had more to do with him getting into a row with the Vikings coaching staff. The Lose has always been of the opinion that such sideline squabbles often say more about the coach than the player. And the Vikings just fired everyone this offseason after going 4-12, so clearly whatever they were preaching wasn’t working.
XXXVII. The Broncos lose if the officiating crew follows their usual form. Apparently, the crew tabbed to work the game is known for being more defense friendly in nature, calling fewer pass interference and defensive holding penalties than the league average, and calling more offensive holding penalties than the league average. The Seahawks defense is tight, physical, aggressive, and some would say not entirely legal, so this would likely benefit them and hinder a pass-first offense like Denver.
XXXVIII. The Seahawks lose if the zeebs get whistle happy. Seattle is already one of the more penalized teams in the league. Penalties mean free first downs for Denver, instead of making them earn it. Can’t do that. For the sake of the viewing, let’s hope this doesn’t happen, just because too many penalties makes the game insufferable.
XXXIX. The Broncos lose if this comes down to special teams. Because of the altitude, Denver is a kicker’s paradise, a place where you can hit 64-yard FGs, loft punts that hit the moon and launch kickoffs out the back of the end zone and into the third row of I-Don’t-Care-Who-Sponsors-It-It’s-Always-Going-To-Be Mile High Stadium. At sea level, however, Denver’s kick coverage is terrible – worst in the NFL – and along with his prowess as a WR and running the reverse, Percy Harvin is also one of the league’s best kick returners. Denver’s return man is dynamic but also fumble prone, and the Seahawks have the best kick coverage units in the league: they gave up an average of 1.0 return yards for every time they punted this year.
XL. We all lose if the weather doesn’t suck. Part of the fun of having the Super Bowl in New York should be that the weather for the game is terrible. Football is played in all sorts of weather, from 100% humidity in Miami in September to -20° in Green Bay in January. The weather conditions are part of the game. Part of what makes the game so interesting, in fact, is the enormous number of factors and variables that you have to prepare for, with the weather just being one of them. My thought would’ve been that bad weather, in this particular game, would slightly favour the Seahawks simply because the wind would’ve messed a bit with the passing game of the Broncos. But it wouldn’t make that much difference, as both these teams are used to lousy winter conditions, and it would be cool to see them slopping about in the snow. Apparently, after a dreadful winter back east, the forecast has improved for the weekend.
XLI. The Broncos lose if Peyton Manning throws too many of those ducks Richard Sherman was talking about, and particularly in Richard Sherman’s direction. My suspicion is that Denver won’t throw too much to Sherman’s side of the field, but instead try to pick on the CBs on the other side. (Not that that’s worked very well, either – Seattle has the #1 pass defense for a reason.) Denver needs to find a matchup that works and do it quickly, because Seattle also has eight healthy defensive linemen they will rotate and keep fresh, which means it will be hard to wear them down. The Broncos don’t give up many sacks, but the Seahawks aren’t a team that needs sacks to be effective. They get pressure and disrupt.
XLII. The Seahawks lose if they can’t control the ball. As good as the Seahawk defense is, you don’t want to give Denver all sorts of chances. That offense is lethal. The old adage of the best defense being the good offense comes into play here. Seattle’s offense got mired in the muck at the end of the year, but is actually better statistically than it sometimes appears. I think their ability to sustain drives, and Denver’s ability to get the ball back for Peyton Manning, is where this game will ultimately be determined.
XLIII. The Broncos lose. Which is what I ultimately think is going to happen, because as good as Pot Roast and the rest of the Denver defense looked in their two playoff games, I don’t think they can contain Wilson, I don’t think they can pen in Lynch, and they have no answer for Harvin if he’s heavily involved in the Seahawks game plan. Much has been made in the media of what happens when the league’s best offense goes up against the league’s best defense, but the end result of such games is often, if not always, due to what happens on the other side of the ball.
XLIV. My thoughtful, rational pick for this game is that Seattle wins 27:17.
XLV. My irrational, completely nonsensical, wishful thinking homer pick for this game is Seattle wins 55:10.
XLVI. If I had to pick an MVP, I’d guess either Marshon Lynch or Percy “Mr. X” Harvin.
XLVII. Remember the following for your Super Bowl Squares Pool. In 47 previous Super Bowls:
The number 0 appeared 101 times - 26.86%
The number 7 appeared 78 times - 20.74%
The number 3 appeared 58 times - 15.43%
The number 4 appeared 39 times - 10.37%
The number 6 appeared 31 times - 8.24%
The number 1 appeared 23 times - 6.11%
The number 9 appeared 17 times - 4.52%
The number 5 appeared 10 times - 2.66%
The number 8 appeared 10 times - 2.66%
The number 2 appeared 9 times - 2.39%
And since I'm too lazy to do the math, here is a chart showing the most likely squares to pay off:
And also that remember that gambling is a sin.
XLVIII. Since I’ve already covered porn (albeit briefly) and lists of things, here is a picture of my cat:
