The first few decades of Super Bowls were almost uniformly awful games, depressing blowouts, with the few close ones mostly featuring lots of turnovers. Recently, they were pretty good, but welcome back to what my younger days were like. Oddly enough, the terribleness of most of the first 30 or so Super Bowls didn't stop them from getting ever more popular. Almost every year was the triumph of hope over experience.
What a revoltin' development THIS is!
ReplyDeleteLOL. this one was a laugher.
ReplyDeletebrings us back to the early 90s and the cowboys 49ers blowouts.
i do think the ratings will be down. guess we'll see in a few days.
thank goodness this one was not even close, so we never have to have the peyton manning argument again. that argument is finally over permanently.
looks like elway is still gonna take the fall for worst loss ever, 55 to 10 back in 1990.
Steve, you predicted that Manning would regress toward his postseason mean, since he is one of the few modern QBs to have such an abysmal post season percentage.
ReplyDeleteTonight has been a very ugly mean for him.
But a great game overall from a pure old school defense.
Reminiscent of 70s Steelers, Dikta's 85 Bears, 00 Ravens.
Pete Carroll, former USC Trojans National Championship winner and now Super Bowl winning coach.
Wonder if this one means as much to him, hope that it does.
The best thing about this one was the tweets. Twitter turns bad TV into Mystery Science Theater 3000.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't Peyton's best game, but the Broncos did not even show up. I am no fan of Manning. I believe he is not a big game QB. But the Broncos seemed deflated from the get-go.
ReplyDeleteBut the Broncos seemed deflated from the get-go.
ReplyDeleteYeah, kinda like the Hindenburg was deflated at Lakehurst.
Very rarely does the 1st play from scrimmage symbolize the outcome of the game, but Vasquez snapping the ball past a barking Manning leading to a Seahawk safety showed what we were in for.
ReplyDeleteThe Seahawks press coverage was pretty amazing - they funneled Manning's weak arm into the short middle of the field where they could pulverize his receivers. Only Thomas and Welker could really make plays. Manning had to throw 50 balls to get 250 yds passing. That's an amazing defense.
The Seahawks played the tougher schedule and were the better team. Congrats to them - I look forward to the investigation into their PED scandal in a few years. But enjoy the win now!
(ps - Agree w/ Pinsen. Twitter makes the good great and the awful good.)
(pss - no shame in saying my Bills were the blowout kings of the early 90s.)
Should have kept Tebow
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the Baltimore-New York Giants SB from 2000-2001 season.
ReplyDeleteI remember that Pittsburgh-LA (1980) was closer than the score seemed, and the third 49ers Super Bowl against Cincinatti was mindblowing. I seem to recall Pittsburgh had one other good game against Dallas. But most of the best ones are recent.
ReplyDeleteYeah, in a (very) rare burst of prescience, I was saying to my wife a couple of hours before kickoff that we were due an old-style snoozer after the uncharacteristically awesome Super Bowls of recent years.
ReplyDeleteI don't even like football much, but the only thing that game had going for it was the car-crash spectacle-value. And even that had worn thin by halftime.
The Bob Dylan Chrysler ad, I thought initially was a parody set-up, with the cheerleaders and Little League. Then by the "Let Germany brew your beer" part I realized they're going for the "defiant jerk" aesthetic. Weirdest ad of the ones I saw
ReplyDeleteI'm with Albertosaurus on this one - as far as the PEDs are concerned.
ReplyDeleteThe Broncos looked like someone had laced their food with opiates.
Whereas the Seahawks looked like they were all high on Caffeine/Cocaine/Methamphetamine speedballs.
Something was really badly amiss in this game.
Denver is not nearly that horrible, and Seattle is not nearly that good.
Really weird game, when the opening snap goes flying over the QB's head?
Just weird, weird, weird.
Tinfoil hat stuff.
[Right now, there are some early indications that Denver couldn't run Manning's audibles because of the overwhelming noise in the stadium???]
Ramirez said after the game that no one on the team heard the snap count on the play, but he thought he did and he thought it was late so he let the ball fly as Manning was moving toward the line of scrimmage. Manning said the same thing, calling it a “cadence issue” caused by the noise from the crowd. That difficulty and the resulting mistake called to mind a decision coach John Fox made during the week.
ReplyDeleteThe Broncos turned down the volume on the speakers they use to simulate crowd noise at practice this week because Fox said that his experience has been that Super Bowl crowds were quieter than usual crowds. The Seahawks fans at MetLife Stadium definitely made their voices heard on Sunday, though, and it may have helped lead to the first big play in a night filled with them for Seattle.
In retrospect, the absurd phone ads with Tebow aired throughout -- loosely around the theme of consumer value vs. "being on contract" -- were eerily apropos, to Broncos fans at least.
ReplyDeleteDuring 3rd Q at some point Drudge went with the simple headline: "THE LAMEST GAME OF ALL"
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteFor more than three decades I've called this annual parallel to the Nuremberg Party Rallies the...Stupor Bowl. The whole schmear - the huge publicity buildup, the Sochi-level multi-agency security (owing to our having allowed our Dear Rulers to Import the Third World), the endless juvenility of the "aren't-we-clever" spots - just holds so many people rapt, completely paralyzes their capacity for perspective as they indulge in jabbering over every last scintilla of Stupor Bowl minutiae.
"""Denver is not nearly that horrible, and Seattle is not nearly that good.""""
ReplyDeleteNow finish the sentence, it goes like this....
"AND Manning is NOT that great."
There. Glad to help you out, glad to do it.
There's your 55 TD regular season passes! How'd that help you tonight in the Super Bowl!!!
EH???
EH??????????????
EH!!!??????????????????
Nearly every single post season he finds a way to manage to snatch defeat from any victory jaws he might have caught.
And the big fish, named victory, once again eludes him.
Eli has done better in the Super Bowl and has Steve mentioned, he had a better wonderlich score.
Tis Post Season time and tonight the REAL Manning showed up!
This will be kind of interesting, to watch which theory wins out (inside Sailer's head anyway): so it was merely the routine documented phenomenon of a chain-reaction blowout, confirmed again for all to see; or--there is a specific weakness to a "production"-oriented offense in the SB; cf. both Patriots-Giants games. Or--the Seahawks were hopped up on Starbucks espressos.
ReplyDeleteKnow what? For the dude quoting how the crowd noise completely took poor ol' Payton out of his....
ReplyDeleteGROW UP!
For yrs he played in the RCA Dome, a DOME! And by all measured decibel levels it was consistently measured as being the loudest NFL stadium. When other teams complained they were told "sour grapes, sour grapes. Man up and grow up!"
Yeah, Karma's a bad thing, isn't it?
NOTICE: THE GAME WAS PLAYED OUTSIDE!
NOTICE: Denver is geographically closer to NJ than is Seattle. That means that at the very least 50% of the stadium was filled w/Denver Fans!
Grow up, people! GROW UP.
he's been in the league for nearly 17yrs, he can't handle calling his own plays or audibles?
Excuses, excuses.
It was played OUTSIDE, NOT IN A DOME where that sort of thing would make more of a difference.
Maybe if he hadn't have sucked big time the Denver fans would have been heard!
But then, Payton seldom ever ever shows up in the postseason, why should tonight have been any different???
Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.
ONCE AGAIN....he didnt get the job done.
Grow up and man up. He seldom gets it done in the postseason.
QED
For more than three decades I've called this annual parallel to the Nuremberg Party Rallies the...Stupor Bowl.
ReplyDeleteThat's great that you invented that. Anyway, sounds more like a complaint about the media-industrial complex than about the Super Bowl itself (check the post by Sailer above). Recently most of the ads are po-mo pieces mocking the ceremony aspect in terms basically interchangeable with yours.
Troy Aikman said that "good time-manager" was a "derogatory term" for short guy Russell Wilson. However he didn't say if it's worse or better than "thug"
ReplyDeleteThe Superbowls of the 90's, as I recall -- perhaps ground oddly into archetype -- is that of the Bills playing the Giants and getting blown out consistently. In fact, Superbowl games are generally bad games, from the largely no doggina fight perspective. Beyond the immaculate conception and the trumped up Mustache vs clean chin games of the 70's, it's all downhill romper-rooming.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts (bear fan without any stake):
ReplyDeleteThe Seahawks secondary is really, really good at understanding what they can get away with physically without getting called for holding or interference. (there were a few calls during garbage time) People gripe about Seattle for this reason, but to me its just awesome gamesmanship. They know exactly where the line is with officials and they go right to it but not beyond. Its an art in its own way.
The game was not entertaining in the way that close games can be, but watching Seattle's defense was fun.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous That's racist said...
Troy Aikman said that "good time-manager" was a "derogatory term" for short guy Russell Wilson. However he didn't say if it's worse or better than "thug"
U MAD BRO???
Sincerely,
-Rich
I had grown accustomed to really tight battles.
ReplyDeleteWhile I did think defense would slay offense, I never dreamt it would be over in the first two minutes of play, but it was, even though the score was only 2-0.
Truth, you idiot, I actually didn't care about Sherman's N-word extrapolations. His football analyses are more relevant and usually also lucid/coherent, or at least halfway-amusing. Probably you are more on the verbal level of Cam "In Carolina" Newton.
ReplyDeleteAA, were you also the one who thought up "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field"
ReplyDeleteHave to disagree with Steve in the sense that this wasn't up to snuff.
ReplyDeleteFor Seattle, it was as near a perfect game as possible.
The offense, evenly balanced, scored half its points cleanly.
The defense totally dominated by only allowing 8pts while gaining points off of its turnovers which in itself was excellent since Manning allowed so few turnovers all season.
He gave up 10INTs during regular season but was intercepted tonight (run back for TD) so in effect he gave up 10% of his season's total in the game that counted the most.
Who is the real game manager? I submit that it is Manning for the regular season. He out blows everyone with gaudy stats thus "managing" to win big but when the postseason shows up, he doesnt.
QED
Well, it held enough interest for me to sneak onto the most exclusive golf course in America for almost 2 hrs. Usually they've got someone laying for me.
ReplyDeleteOur president the sports buff talks to Bill O'Reilly:
ReplyDeleteAs for Super Bowl, Obama deftly sidestepped giving a prediction about the winner. The two opposing teams are “too evenly matched,” he said.
He predicted a final score of 24 to 21, but said “I don’t know who’s going to be 24 and I don’t know who’s going to be 21.”
Hope he didn't bet the Obamacare budget.
That camera up Pete Carroll's wizened snout at the end of the game was grosser than anything Janet Jackson did in the same venue.
ReplyDelete"Manning was only one vote away from being named a unanimous NFL MVP"
ReplyDeleteWhat's Whiskey's take on the Taco Bell ad for $1 "grillers" you'll withhold from your hypocritical girlfriend? Chivalry at its finest, methinks
ReplyDeleteThank heaven for little grillers said...
ReplyDelete"What's Whiskey's take on the Taco Bell ad for $1 'grillers' you'll withhold from your hypocritical girlfriend? Chivalry at its finest, methinks."
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Women hate hate HATE burrito males.
Media mentality: Seahawks a better business than Microsoft -- the piece is actually kind of a prize specimen of power-worshiping idiocy and journalistic shibboleths.
ReplyDeletere: Obama's put-upon self-pitying interview -- I'd think the guy fits right in for contemporary D.C. standards. Compare w/ the witticisms from Hillary's Twitter intern.
ReplyDeleteis that of the Bills playing the Giants and getting blown out consistently.
ReplyDeleteThe Bills SB against the Giants was the one where they didn't get blown out. The lost when a late field goal missed by about a foot.
Steve have you been following the controversy about the multicultural Coke Super Bowl ad? On twitter there is a #fuckcoke hashtag that is trending and an outraged response to the outrage.
ReplyDeletewere you also the one who thought up "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field"
ReplyDeleteI'm the one who was talking about weather conditions.
I'm also the one who related the anecdote of Tom Osborne working his players almost to the point of heat death prior to the 1996 Orange Bowl, while the Hurricanes players all lollygagged around on the beach in photo ops for the press corps.
It never dawned on me that John Fox would have been the one to have adopted a lollygagging attitude to his practices like that.
If I were the coach, the team would have been prepping in Edmonton and they would have been whipped incessantly like the good-for-nothing lazy shiznat-eating Iditarod dawgs that they were.
And the speakers would have been cranked up from 120dB to 130dB.
Excuses, excuses.
Something was badly amiss in this game.
A properly prepared pack of professionals playing at the peak of their prowess simply shouldn't be lobbing snaps over the quarterback's head into the endzone for safeties.
Now I understand that sometimes a team just gets psyched out.
And maybe underneath all that hubris, Peyton Manning really is a closted tard who isn't intellectually capable of rising to the occasion.
On the other hand, sometimes the tinfoil hat stuff really is true.
To this day, Foreman insists that he was drugged prior to the Rumble in the Jungle.
And we know that Belichick has a history of Black Budget espionage shenanigans when it comes to scouting the opposing teams.
And then there's Lance "Holier-than-Thou" Armstrong...
The Seahawks secondary is really, really good at understanding what they can get away with physically without getting called for holding or interference.
This is why I have largely tuned out most professional sports these days.
As The Frankfurt School has solidified their control over the major sports infrastructure in this country [NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL], they have [predictably enough] tossed all of the rulebooks right out the window, and have encouraged the, ah, masses to, ah, behave like the masses that they are.
And I got no desire to watch that nonsense.
Nor, for that matter, to watch any of the wonderfully diverse multicultural let's-all-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya crap that The Frankfurt School is shoving down our throats during the commercials.
I kinda got a little misty-eyed when I saw ol' Chuck Bednarik finishing up the Declaration of Independence there in Philly [he went to Penn, BTW], but then they had to go and immediately ruin it all by giving facetime to the ***-**** and to the ***** who is married to Biden.
Steve was wondering if Manning would play like a symphony conductor or an old quarterback.
ReplyDeleteOld quarterback it was. Although he did display all the grace and agility of James Levine.
The Stupor Bowl is a commercial and entertainment extravaganza at which, on rare occasions, a semi-decent football happens to be played.
ReplyDeleteT.A.WILSON said..."The Superbowls of the 90's, as I recall -- perhaps ground oddly into archetype -- is that of the Bills playing the Giants and getting blown out consistently"
ReplyDeleteExcept the Bills played the Giants just once, losing by one point as their kicker missed a FG. The Bills were then blown out by the Redskins and then twice more by the Cowboys. The NFC East was a rough neighborhood in those days.
Jim Richter of the Bills has since said that they still think they were better than the Giants and that the Cowboys were supeior, but both Cowboys game got away from them with turnovers, etc. However that '91 Redskins team beat them up physically and that if they played that game 10 more times they wouldn't have won.
That Skins team could have been something if they had a QB.
T.A.WILSON said...
ReplyDeleteThe Superbowls of the 90's, as I recall -- perhaps ground oddly into archetype -- is that of the Bills playing the Giants and getting blown out consistently. In fact, Superbowl games are generally bad games, from the largely no doggina fight perspective. Beyond the immaculate conception and the trumped up Mustache vs clean chin games of the 70's, it's all downhill romper-rooming."
Immaculate Reception, that is. And it was a divisional round game. The better games tend to be the conference game, like 82 Cowboys-49ers and 93 Cowboys-49ers. Bills got thumped 52-17 to the Cowboys in 93.
"That Skins team could have been something if they had a QB"... Mark Rypien was the SB MVP
Ron Mexico said "
ReplyDelete"That Skins team could have been something if they had a QB"... Mark Rypien was the SB MVP"
BFD. Larry Brown was a SB MVP. And some guy the other day was the SB MVP.
Rypien was an extremely limited player and almost singlehandedly cost the Redskins their playoff game in San Francisco the next year.
Drudge headline says Sherman says Seahawks cracked Manning's hand signal codes.
ReplyDeleteIf that's true, then Manning blew it, big time. He had two weeks to drill new ones.
there are some early indications that Denver couldn't run Manning's audibles because of the overwhelming noise in the stadium
ReplyDeletesometimes the tinfoil hat stuff really is true... Belichick has a history of Black Budget espionage shenanigans when it comes to scouting the opposing teams...
Seahawks star Richard Sherman says they cracked Peyton Manning's hand signal code during the Super Bowl so they were able to predict every play
Relevant to your interests, Steve: http://deadspin.com/the-big-book-of-black-quarterbacks-1517763742
ReplyDelete