The Sheriff got his fairy tale ending and rode off into the sunset clutching his second Lombardi trophy, sort of… For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, let me explain…
It seems appropriate that, working for a sports and fitness design agency, I should write a little bit about my favorite sport, and that sport is American football. Coincidentally, this fell around the time that the NFL showcases the Super Bowl. So, what better event to cover? This year there were a few factors that made this year’s Super Bowl a bit more important than many of it’s predecessors…
Firstly, this wasn’t just another Super Bowl. This was the 50th anniversary of the most prestigious event in the NFL. The whole point of the Super Bowl is for the best team from the AFC and NFC (the two conferences that make up the NFL) to square off against each other to determine who will be crowned the best team in the league (for that year). So it’s always pretty exciting to watch.
Although it was a special milestone, that for me wasn’t what made this one interesting. What I was really looking forward to, was the potential storybook ending for a quarterback who has slowly been betrayed by his age, diminishing arm strength and multiple neck surgeries. This was the chance for him to bookend his career with a Super Bowl title and to finally cement his legacy as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
So, let’s get right to it… This year’s Super Bowl was between Cam Newton and his steamrolling Carolina Panthers team, who finished the season with a 15-1 regular season record, (15 wins, 1 loss) and they were pitched against an aging legend in Peyton Manning, limping along behind a solid Denver Broncos defense who finished with a 12-4 record.
This (in my opinion and many others’) was Peyton Manning’s last season as an NFL quarterback. He has long been described as one of the greatest of all time, however, age has now caught up with him and in order to leave a lasting impression on his critics and his fans, he needed this title. What ensued didn’t disappoint. It was, however, a bit different to how I expected things to go…
The Broncos got out to an early 10-0 start thanks to Von Miller and the pressure his defense got on Cam Newton. That set the tone for the whole game really. The Broncos defense completely stole the show. They hounded Cam Newton all day and made him look like a high school quarterback. Quite the downfall for the league’s number one scoring offense. Carolina’s defense weren’t exactly sluggish though. Forcing 2 fumbles and picking off Peyton Manning once. However, the Panther’s offense couldn’t capitalize on the chances they got. By half time the story was set in stone. You could sense the fear among the Panthers. They were running scared. This was game was no longer ‘immovable object meets an unstoppable force’. It seemed more like these teams were mirror images of each other. Leaning on their defenses because their offenses were backfiring. It just so happened that the Broncos defense was superior.
So, in an odd conclusion, Cam couldn’t escape pressure as he was known so well for and Peyton wasn’t a touchdown machine. The only time Peyton found the end zone was on a two-point conversion attempt to give the Denver Broncos a 14-point lead in the 4th quarter. Von Miller earned the MVP and that prolific Panthers offense was left in the dust. The true stars of Super Bowl 50 were the Broncos defense. Peyton didn’t really ride off into the sunset, but was carried by the league’s best defense.
