I'd like to say that I've correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner the last two years but last year all I kinda said was that the Baltimore Ravens would make the game and for some reason never really came to any sort of end with that. Eh. Half a point?
But I definitely said that the Seattle Seahawks would win it all this year and wouldn't you know it...they did!
Sure I said that they would be playing the Houston Texans but that just goes to show you how much of a crap-shoot this thing really is...you could peg anybody in there really. What's that? A lot of you thought that the Denver Broncos would make it to the Super Bowl too? Well fine! I'll just go stand in the Stupid Corner with everybody else that makes ridiculous statements as if they're premonitions that don't come true to allow enough space for the rest of the world that loves to decree themselves Nostradamus incarnate!
Actually I won't.
I am just like the rest of you (not really, because I really do study the history of the game, but for all intensive purposes I am just a man who can't predict the future) and maybe it was my blind hatred for Peyton Manning but I knew deep down in the very hearth of my gourd (that's a saying) that Lil' Top Heavy never stood a chance in this game. But it wasn't even just him it was the rest of his horse-loving, Coors Lite drinking, mountain skiing yahoo gang as well. They were screwed the minute Richard Sherman managed to deflect everyone's attention away from the fact that Colin Kaepernick is a terrible quarterback.
I'm not even going to invoke the Weather Defense either. Look, the NFL lucked out completely in the fact that it was a clear-sky balmy 50 degrees for the game because Roger Goodell is the arch-villain from Die Another Day. I'm still against cold-weather Super Bowls because the Devil always collects his due and I don't want the best thing ever to become a farce of itself because of a blizzard. I'm getting ahead of myself here though because the thing that I've always known, and assumed that others knew but was proven wrong this past week, was that blizzards don't just affect Peyton Manning...they tend to get to the other players on the field too.
Peyton Manning can't play in cold weather. What? Why? Is he out there in board shorts and a mesh tank-top? Is he the Heat Miser? (Which now I'm mad at myself for never, ever referring to Peyton Manning as the Heat Miser because Eli makes the peeeeerfect Snow Miser)
Just stop! Weather doesn't affect ONE person or ONE team and this is coming from a life-long Miami Dolphins fan. The Miami Dolphins still to this day think that they have some sort of home-field advantage in August and September because it's way too friggin' hot for somebody not from here to perform well. We've gone forty years without a championship, folks, and it's looking more and more each day like we can't blame the damn weather anymore.
The collective body of sports enthusiasts seems to suffer some sort of temporary Alzheimer's whenever we are treated to a great offensive team. "Wow, look at all those points!" "Wow, they can score on anybody!" "THIS IS THE BEST TEAM EVER!!!!!"
I must be the only one living in the Twilight Zone that knows that I'm actually living in the Twilight Zone because I've heard all of this before. I heard it in 2002 for the Oakland Raiders, again in 2007 for the New England Patriots, and once again this year for the Denver Broncos. The thing that all three have in common? They lost the Super Bowl to a really, really great defense because that's what the best offense in the league does...they lose to the best defense.
I wasn't planning on Seattle playing Denver in the big game because I thought Denver would have Denver'ed out in one of the earlier rounds of the playoffs. I thought at the time that Houston would have been a more intriguing team for Seattle to face in the Super Bowl because I thought Houston had a comparable defense--at least in the front seven...okay...maybe front four! I also failed to realize that Houston had the emotional stability of a 16-year old girl on Junior Prom Night. That's right...Junior Prom Night.
Seattle's defense this year was absolutely amazing. They didn't just stop other offenses...they smothered them. Offense in the NFL is all about timing and rhythm and the mark of a great defense is being able to disrupt that timing even if just for a second longer. Things like being able to get to the quarterback quickly and knocking wide receivers off their routes are tools that tend to get this job done and Seattle utilized both of those things last night.
The Seattle win was inevitable and the blow-out was just the cherry on top. Do I revel in the fact that most of the world is targeting Peyton Manning for this loss? Yes, of course I do! What kind of question is that? I loathe Peyton Manning and his suffering is my life force. I just gained ten more years! To pin the loss on Peyton is moronic, like I've mentioned in this post, but I'm going to allow it.
So, thank you, Seattle. Enjoy the title and I hope it's not as fleeting as I hear it is. I only mention that because, you know...the whole forty years thing and if I was writing this in my forties I would have to really sit back and reflect on some of the choices I've made and how the Hell I've gotten here...I'm going to eat these words in twelve years, aren't I?
All that's left for Peyton is to retire and pitch a sit-com to CBS where he and Dan Marino have to move in together after their respective football careers are over and open up a pizza joint together. Peyton, of course, will play the smart guy and Dan will just be the guy who gets all the chicks. Then the cycle will have completed itself and hopefully by then I'll be dead.
Float on, graceful swans.
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