Super Bowl 48 Was Filled With Winners and Losers

Super Bowl 48 was filled with winners and losers. For winners, you have the entire Seahawks roster, but on the loser’s side, many people are focused on Peyton Manning’s performance and the Denver Broncos defense.

I agree, Peyton Manning sucked, and so did the defense as a whole, but if you look deeper into the Denver side, there are many more losers on this team. 

1. The Running Backs.

The running back tandem of Knowshon Moreno and Monte Ball ran for a combined 11 carries for 18 yards. If you remove their longest run of the night (a 9 yard rush by Moreno) you come out with a 10 carries for 9 yards. Brutal.

Ball looked like a deer in the headlights every time he touched the ball, and Moreno just couldn’t seem to find any holes in the Seahawks front 7. 

2. Eric Decker.

Decker and Welker were going to have to play huge games in order for the Broncos to win that game. Julius Thomas and Demaryius Thomas isolated the most important members of Seattle’s league leading secondary.

Welker was able to have a decent game for himself, catching 8 balls for 84 yards. Demaryius was able to have a great game, setting the Super Bowl record for receptions with 13, for 118 yards and a touchdown.

Julius Thomas didn’t have an amazing game, with only 4 catches for 27 yards, but he managed to keep Richard Sherman occupied for most of the game. While the majority of the receiving core did their jobs, Eric Decker did not.

With only one catch for 6 yards, Decker proved to be ineffective against the back half of the Seahawks secondary. His inability to get open forced Manning to base his passing game around Demaryius Thomas and Wes Welker, which led to bad throws and interceptions. 

3. The Broncos’ Pass Rush.

Fine, the whole defense played pretty bad. They are a pretty bad defense in general.

However, if you take away a pick six, a kickoff return touchdown, and a safety, the Broncos’ defense only let up 27 points, which shouldn’t be impossible for “the best offense in NFL history” to overcome.

The real problem came in Denver’s inability to get to Russell Wilson. They didn’t sack Wilson once during the game, and even worse, they weren’t able to hit him once. They allowed Wilson to be confident in the pocket, and gave him more than enough time to make smart decisions with the ball.

Not putting pressure on the quarterback is a recipe for disaster. 

This game was about more than Peyton Manning, and more than Richard Sherman.

The reason that these two teams got to Super Bowl 48 in the first place was because of their strengths all over the field. While Seattle was clicking on all cylinders, Denver had too many chinks in their armor to play a competitive game of football.

Seattle played better at every position, and that is how they won the game.