As our loyal readers know, the Daily put out a Super Bowl preview on Friday where we (not so boldly) sided with the favorites. We predicted that the Denver defense would not be able to slow down what had been a seemingly unstoppable Carolina offense enough to allow their own offense to pull them ahead, and that an aging Peyton Manning would take a bow and humbly walk off the field as young Cam Newton and his jubilant Panthers celebrated the culmination of their runaway freight train of a season with their characteristic dabbing.
We were wrong — but not completely.
The story that emerges in the wake of Super Bowl 50 is that of a relatively surprising upset victory by the Broncos and of the Denver defense stealing the show with their impressive stand as they held a Carolina offense that had averaged 31.3 points per game in the regular season and 40 points in the postseason to a measly 10 points — their season low. We said that we couldn’t see the Broncos average offense, led by an unimpressive Manning this year, scoring more than 20 points, and that that wouldn’t be enough to beat the Panthers, as good as the Denver defense may be.
We merely underestimated the Denver defense and overestimated the Carolina offense in that prediction.
Broncos linebacker Von Miller appropriately won the Super Bowl MVP award after being his team’s biggest defensive — and offensive — weapon in the game. His two strips of Newton led to the Broncos’ only two touchdowns of the game, and he, fellow Pro Bowl linebacker DeMarcus Ware and the Broncos’ inside linemen put enough pressure on Newton to put him on his back and prevent him from either scrambling to pick up big yards or finding his receivers downfield very often, the things that have made him so lethal this season.
Despite some stupid and costly mistakes from Denver’s Pro Bowl cornerback Aqib Talib in the first half that gifted Carolina big yardage on a few personal foul penalties, the Broncos’ secondary did a pretty impressive job of turning all those Panthers receivers we’ve heard so much about into non-factors.
In fact, the Denver defense was the only real saving grace of an otherwise fairly sloppy, underwhelming Super Bowl. Unimpressive Manning and his average offense only put together one really decent drive in the game, which was the 64-yard opening drive of the first half that culminated in a short field goal to give the Broncos a lead they would never relinquish.
Of course, it’s hard to fault Manning: the guy is 39 years old, and while he’s still perhaps the best mental-game quarterback to ever play the game with his ability to read defenses and call audibles to adjust to different blitzes and coverages, and while he’s still going to the Hall of Fame one day, his old body just doesn’t quite cooperate anymore. He missed some open receivers, threw lame ducks numerous times and ended with just 141 yards passing, an interception, no touchdowns and a passer rating of just 56.6. But he was humble and he recognized a lot of those things at least, clarifying several times for the media before and after the game that it was his team’s defense that had gotten them to the Super Bowl and that won it for them.
On the other side, we saw the unraveling of a lot of people’s favorite infallibility myth. What had seemed like an incredibly well-balanced Carolina team all season, with the league’s best offense and one of its top defenses, fell flat on Sunday. Sure, the defense held the Broncos to just a few field goals and a short touchdown run which only came after their offense turned the ball over on their own four yard line. But they were expected to shut down the Denver offense with their four Pro Bowl defenders and league-leading 24 picks in the regular season.
What shocked everybody was how the Panther offense reacted when faced with true adversity, and the answer is, not well. Newton didn’t seem like the NFL MVP, as he consistently struggled to hit his receivers and frequently kissed the turf — both courtesy of the Bronco defense. He seemed stressed, and his youth and postseason inexperience showed through as that childlike energy he’s constantly shown in the past few months, embodied by his exuberant dabbing, turned into more of a childlike tantrum. When stripped by Von Miller with his team down by just six in the fourth quarter and the game still very much up for grabs, he didn’t even dive or try to fight for the loose ball, allowing Denver to scoop it up at the four and take it to the house a few plays later to ice the game. No, he sat watching on his knees while pouting.
The league MVP, while clearly an impressive athlete with a talented roster behind him and a promising future ahead of him still, has some maturing and adjusting to do, along with the rest of his relatively young Carolina team. The Panthers, while accustomed to being the ones celebrating and dabbing at the end of games this year, watched on as the Broncos imitated them in a cruel irony and dabbed in their faces.
Super Bowl 50 does end with some uplifting stories. At the end of the day, Cam and his Panthers are still a pretty all-around solid squad, and this loss doesn’t fully diminish the impressive nature of a turnaround 15-1 season after years of lingering near the bottom of the NFC. And this win gifted Peyton a nice little present, as he can now (and though he says he is still thinking about it, should) walk off into retirement with a Super Bowl win to cap off a long, impressive career.
Still, this Super Bowl didn’t really live up to the “golden anniversary” moniker that the NFL tried so hard to bestow upon it.
2/7/16 – Tufts students watch the Super Bowl in the common room in Houston Hall on Feb. 7, 2016. (Ziqing Xiong / The Tufts Daily) (Ziqing Xiong / The Tufts Daily)
