SUPER BORED XLVIII

February 8, 2014

BY: Jeff Schneberk
@Game7overtime

What a horrible game.

I am a Denver Bronco fan.

A really disappointed Denver Broncos fan.

I have been for about two years.

For the past five days or so I have been one of the ones wondering ‘what the hell happened?’

As a continuation, and finale, of my weekly roundup of NFL action which I usually publish on my WordPress page (jeffonlineblog.wordpress.com), things have started to take a back seat to a new FT job (yay for me).

Anyways, it’s taken all kinds of time and a lot of thought, watched a bunch of Bronco player interviews, and I still sit here wondering what the hell happened on Sunday night? I had to go outside for an hour and a half in -10 degree weather to help put that disappointment into some kind of perspective that makes any sense.

There have been some weird stuff I’ve seen online all relating to an NFL football game, most is hard to believe.

HERE IS MY TAKE ON SUPER BORED XLVIII:
I don’t’ agree at all that the Seahawks won the game because they have a good defense. The Seahawks won the game because the other team did not even show up to play.

From beginning to end, they never even showed up to play.

What the hell?

This game was BORing. No sports event should ever be boring. That’s why it’s sports. It’s supposed to be exciting, fun and at times, incredibly intense. This particular matchup was SUPPOSED to be awesome. It wasn’t awesome. It wasn’t even close. It sucked. It sucked donkey balls. It was almost a disgrace to its own profession. Even if you are a Seattle Seahawks supporter, you can’t possibly suggest that it was a great game. This shit was actually on espn’s Classic Super Bowls on Tuesday night. That’s a whole two days after the fact. Have the execs at espn lost their freaking minds?!? This game wasn’t a classic, it was a complete bore.

It was so bad that you can’t even blame 1-2 people, you have to blame the whole friggin’ team. Each and every one of them sucked equally. Each and every one of them. Everyone from the head coach down to the water boy. Maybe there was something in the water (maybe, maybe not, at this point I would listen to anything). It was like they didn’t want to win.

It is absolutely pathetic.

You couldn’t blame ‘A’ player, you have to blame all of them. You can’t blame a coach (even though I would love to blame John Fox for not getting his boys prepared enough), you have to blame all of them. It’s like you couldn’t blame ‘a’ thing, you had to blame everything.
Even though Fox didn’t totally do his job properly and assume that the biggest game of the season between two worthy opponents would be enough to make it a very noisy stadium. Wes Welker admitted that the other day in a story produced by cbssports.com

crowd noise

Earlier in the week, Broncos coach John Fox, who had been to two previous Super Bowls, said in a pool report that the team actually turned down the simulated crowd noise during practices because he didn’t expect it to be an issue Sunday. Are you nuts John Fox?!? I know you are coming off a huge health scare this season but what the hell?!?

The reality is that it was absolutely deafening. And it had an obvious and immediate effect.

“We were using a snap count on the play, but due to the noise, no one could hear me,” Peyton Manning said. “So really I was walking up to the line of scrimmage to make a change and try get us on the same page. The ball was snapped. ”

Ramirez disagreed and took full responsibility for what happened.
“It was real loud. We were trying to go on the cadence. I thought I heard him. I didn’t,” Ramirez said. “He was actually walking up to me because he had already said the cadence, and I snapped it. But again,

I take full responsibility for that. It’s just something that we should have been able to overcome, and we weren’t able to … It’s not an excuse. It shouldn’t have happened.”

The biggest letdown of the entire night was probably the special team unit that fucked up so bad on the kick return; that put the offense under even more pressure all because nobody on the special teams could remember how to make a tackle.

Almost because they didn’t want to. Despicable.

THE SUPER BORED MVP
Guess who the MVP of this game was? Had anyone asked me this question before Sunday’s game, I may have given about six different answers. Of course, Peyton Manning would have been my favourite, but it could have gone to a number of players (forgetting the actual results of the game of course), they could have been in no particular order:

Russell Wilson

Kam Chancellor

Percy Harvin

Beast Mode (Marshawn Lynch)

Eric Decker

Wes Welker

Knowshon Moreno

Damaryius Thomas or

Julius Thomas.

Obviously none of the above were named MVP. None of them were even close. Not by a long shot. They were all so not good enough that none of them combined could have qualified even for one of those split-MVP awards. Not in this game. Not even close. In sports, anything is possible but this was absolutely ridiculous.

A no-name linebacker won the award! Are you fucking kidding me? I honestly believe that those dignitaries whose votes count for this award were probably at a total loss to name their picks.

If you ask me, I may have gone with a non-player. How about Bruno Mars? Lol.

Maybe this proves that even if you have one of the best quarterbacks in the world, if your coach is an idiot, you can still get taken down.

BACK TO THE BRONCOS
They did not pick themselves up. They did not dust themselves off. They did not show to be the team that had traveled over so much rocky road on its way to the Super Bowl. Especially troubling Sunday was the fact that first domino got tipped over on the first play from scrimmage.

HORRIBLE START
Center Manny Ramirez and quarterback Peyton Manning were not only not on the same page. They weren’t even in the same playbook.

On first-and-10 from the Broncos’ 14-yard line, with the crowd still in a full froth of anticipation, Manning moved up to the line of scrimmage to change the play as Ramirez snapped the ball past the his head.
Absolutely brutal.
You have Seahawks guys like Bobby Wagner who says his team “sucked the life right out of them.”

I disagree completely.

That suggests the Broncos had life to begin with.

They didn’t have any life, or else they would have had more points on the scoreboard. This Denver team simply did not want to win. Watching them for two hours or so on Sunday night, that was my only conclusion.

“I thought our execution wasn’t really sharp,” Manning told the media while wearing a suit. He was damn right about that.

He wouldn’t comment about Seattle’s defense being the best he has ever faced. It was more like his own offense was the worst he’s ever seen. I cannot remember the last time (if ever) Manning was held to eight points in a football game. Although it has happened.

“I don’t know if you ever really get over it. It’s a difficult pill to swallow. But you do try and make it fuel you for next year.”
Manning said he didn’t feel himself or anyone else on the team being nervous. “The first play was a crazy play,” he noted.
“We just didn’t play very well,” says TE Wes Welker. “It can be a cruel game sometimes. There were so many opportunities that we just missed out on. We just didn’t play very well.”
This is the kind of loss that can really fuck with a team that doesn’t have a lot of experience.

Most people argue that Seattle’s defense is that good, I argue that Denver was just plain pathetic all night long.
Even this description which was put together by USA TODAY is absolute nonsense:

“The offensive line that had barely allowed Manning to be touched in two AFC playoff games (and hadn’t allowed a sack) couldn’t handle Seattle’s ferocious front seven, as Manning had little time to throw and rarely looked comfortable in the pocket. Even if there was time for Manning to throw, the Broncos’ receivers struggled to get open deep against Seattle’s physical defensive backs.”

Manning had time numerous times for the completions. As his stats show, he made 34 of 49 passes and put up 28 yards. Most of those passes were made West Coast Offense style, but he had plenty going, but someone on that Bronco offense wasn’t fully into this game.

SUPER BORED
I’ve never ever seen a sports event more boring than this year’s Super Bowl.

What an absolute disappointment.

Terrible, terrible showing by the supposed home team.
Now it’s time to listen to all of the possible excuses for not winning the game. And there have already been some good ones.
Might have been a lot easier if President Obama was correct when he predicted 24-21.

What a pathetically boring game.

Don’t know what’s worse, for us the fans, or the players who now have to try and piece together EVERYTHING that went wrong.
I hate to single out the first bad snap by Manning’s centre Mr. Ramirez, whom to his credit, has taken the blame for that, but the entire team was out of sync.
I think I screamed ‘Yes Wes!’ once that night. And it wasn’t after his catch on the two-point conversion after the Broncos only touchdown.
The offense played well for awhile, but it took until the second quarter, the defense was solid for the opening quarter, but the special teams fucked up beyond belief at the WORST POSSIBLE time.

Still don’t get it.

Wanted to throw up for most of it, could not believe how Denver’s team couldn’t get anything going.
I still  want to throw up and it’s Friday night.
Seattle didn’t even have to score any touchdowns on offense, they still would have won the game.
Manning did well on a 2nd down and 22 but they missed on a 4th and 2 in the second quarter.
Denver played the way I was hoping that Seattle would.

The great irony is that Manning and Broncos — lauded in the days leading up to the Super Bowl for their experience and attention to detail — looked wholly unprepared against a team with exactly zero Super Bowl experience.

CRAZY STUFF
I heard on Wednesday afternoon at work that Manning was paid off to relay his signals to the Seattle defense who claimed that they knew every play he was going to make. This stuff crosses the lines of craziness HOWEVER when you consider the final score was something that nobody in their right mind could have ever foreseen, I would believe just about anything right now.
Sure people bet on Seattle to win and all, but how many of them bet they would just run away with it?
Think about it this way, had the game come down to one final possession for Denver and Manning was looking at piecing together the Super Bowl-winning drive and there was one play left to go, and the Seahawks held on to a three-point lead and their defense stuffed Knowshon Moreno on the goal line, THEN you give Seattle’s D all the credit in the world for stopping the greatest quarterback and his offense, in the world.

But that didn’t happen. This game wasn’t even close. Something was horribly horribly wrong here. Peyton Manning hasn’t been held to eight points in an NFL game in close to 10 years.
A little Google work by me shows that the last time Manning led his team to fewer than 10 points was during the 2004 postseason when he fell to the Patriots while playing for the Indianapolis Colts. The final score was 20-3.

Something else I heard involved Manning asking Pete Carroll when to expect to be paid for ‘throwing’ the football game. How else would Seattle have claimed to know exactly where Manning was going to go on each play. They are a good team but wtf?

Manning called Omaha so many times against the Chargers and Patriots. I think maybe he should consider moving there.

I’m just kidding. Sort of.

@Game7overtime

Written by timetomovetotoronto Posted in Football Tagged with boring, Denver Broncos, football, NFL, Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks, sports