it wasn’t garbage time - it was that Seattle wasn’t giving up anything more than 5 yards from the line of scrimmage. Manning completed a shitload of passes, but 5.7 yards per attempt and 8.2 yards per completion are well below his season averages (8.3 and 9.3, respectively). Demaryius Thomas set a record too with 13 catches, but he averaged 9.1 yards per catch as opposed to 15.5 ypc over the regular season. Denver’s longest completion was 23 yards. Seattle had everything deep covered, and when Manning threw short they made immediate tackles without giving up any yac.
Manning and Thomas didn’t set those records by playing well - they set them because the Seahawks didn’t allow Denver to play the game they wanted to.
Yeah, the only thing the passer rating says about Pennington is that he was extremely efficient. Which he was.
But since Pennington’s name was brought up in the context of Peyton’s legacy, it reminded me of their head to head matchup in the playoffs: Jets 41, Colts 0
This is largely true, but with 2:58 left in the 3rd quarter the Broncos got the ball down 36-0. Anything after that is garbage time, IMO. In fairness, though, looking more closely at the numbers, they didn’t really feast on garbage time yards.
From that point (2:58 left in the 3rd) until the end of the game, Peyton was 11 of 16 for 111 yards, 1 TD, 0 Ints.
Question: one thing I remember about the game was, just before they called the teams back onto the field for the second half kickoff, I thought I noticed some commotion on the field, and the TV shots kept jumping around as if there was something the director didn’t want anyone to see, which is usually caused by somebody on the field who shouldn’t be there. (Remember the “eighth official” that ran on a few years ago?)
Did anybody else notice this, or am I just reading too much into something that wasn’t really happening?
But it’s not low 20s we should be looking at. OK, yeah, the Denver defense didn’t have anything to do with the interception or the safety, but that still leaves 34 points that they did have something to do with, against a team that wasn’t noted for its offense. 34 points is a lot. That tells me that either Seattle’s offense is a lot better than they’ve been given credit for, or Denver’s defense isn’t all that great. Or probably, a combination of both.
Also kickoff return for a touchdown, which brings it down to 27. That’s special teams, not defense.
I’m spotting them a few more points for the other Manning interception and the fumble. Sure, their job is to deal with that, too, but there’s only so much they should be expected to deal with when their offense falls apart like that. A lot of their defensive success comes from playing from ahead or within striking distance. Their whole plan pretty much fell apart from the get-go.
Only the field goals really count. One of the TDs was a KOR, which is not really the defense’s fault, that was a special teams breakdown. The first offensive TD came after 31 intercepted a pass: it was only a 33 yard drive, nothing to write home about. By the time the Broncos got Kearsed on that pinball pass/run in the third, the game was already obviously lost to them, they were shell-shocked. The last TD was a simple reply, “Your shadow? I’ll teach you to poke your head up like that.” When a team get a thorough spanking like that, they scream a bit at first, but after a while it just turns into crying, and it is hard to concentrate with eyes full of tears.
Some might say it was garbage time for the last 29:48.
Still, the Broncos did what they were trained to do, they adjusted to their situation and found a way to move the ball. But the Seahawks’ great play insured that none of it mattered. You might say the Broncos got punked.
Sure, but even of one half, 27 is nothing. It’s too much of an advantage to an already better D, to tell them “wait aínt running”. And, since passing was not working in scoring points, they could’ve tried a bit more running.
The Broncos did not completely abandon the running game in the second half, but it gave them basically nothing. They ran the ball six times: the first two, on a drive in the 3rd, added up to 0, the second two, on a drive in the 4th, added up to -1, and the last two gained 9 yards, the last two plays of the game. So, they did not gain 27 in the first half, they gained 19, except, the safety was supposed to be counted as a -14 rushing play, so their real total on the ground should be 13, not 27.
Generally speaking, winning leads to rushing, not the other way around. The Broncos were way behind basically the whole game and the running game was giving them nothing (whereas they were at least moving the ball *OK *by passing); they were wise to abandon it.
I can’t be arsed to look it up, but assuming that both teams were equally represented in the stands, the difference in crowd noise between the two factions was pretty impressive to begin with, and increased as the game got farther and farther out of hand.
The way the crowd noise destroyed Denver’s audible game was rather impressive, for being the “visitor” in a neutral stadium an entire continent away from home turf. And a good audible game is one of the best weapons against an aggressive defense.
IMHO, credit the Road Edition of the 12[sup]th[/sup] Man for a lot of Seattle’s defensive success.
