XPost: alt.sports.football.nfl, alt.sports.football.pro, alt.sports.football.pro.ariz-cardinals
XPost: triangle.general

The statistics bore out that assessment. The losing team was a
dreadful 3-for-15 on third-down attempts. The team that won was
an even worse 1-for-14 on those efforts. There were only 32
first downs in the entire game, with Peyton Manning’s Broncos
advancing the chains just 11 times on the way to victory (and
only nine if you exclude first-downs off of penalties). The
Broncos finished with 194 yards of total offense, the fewest of
any Super Bowl winner ever. The game’s six turnovers were tied
for the seventh most since 1971. The Panthers were sacked seven
times, tying a Super Bowl record. The two teams were sacked a
combined 12 times, also a Super Bowl record. Adding to the woes
of Carolina’s offensive line, league MVP Cam Newton was
pressured the most times of any game in his career. There was
also fewer yardage gained on offensive touchdowns—a grand total
of 3 yards on two scores—than in any previous Super Bowl. For
its part, Denver nearly became the first team in NFL history to
win the Super Bowl without scoring an offensive touchdown, only
finding the end zone with a few minutes left in the game, and
only thanks to a turnover by the Panthers near the goal line and
a dumb holding penalty against Carolina when Denver had failed
to convert on third-and-goal. Oh, and there were 15 punts, tied
for the second-highest total in any Super Bowl.

So not only did the game look atrocious on every level, it was
also played absolutely atrociously. Unless, maybe, it wasn’t.
The other way to look at Sunday’s game was that it was a contest
between two of the best defenses in Super Bowl history. You
could look at it that way, because that’s actually what
happened. As FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine pointed out before the
game, this was the third-best defensive matchup in 50 Super
Bowls. Heading into the game, Paine described how the Broncos’
stifling pass defense was the 11th best of any team ever in the
Super Bowl era, according to Football Outsiders’ defense-
adjusted value over average. So it shouldn’t have been a
surprise when the first score of the game came after human
wrecking ball Von Miller sprinted around Carolina tackle Mike
Remmers and ripped the ball out of Newton’s hands, forcing a
fumble that Malik Jackson recovered in the end zone for the
score. At the end of the game, Miller essentially clinched the
win for the Broncos with another extraordinary forced fumble,
swatting the ball out of Newton’s hand in the final few minutes.
He finished the game having collected 2.5 sacks, 6 tackles, and
the MVP trophy. His teammates were nearly as impressive, though,
stifling Carolina’s normally potent run and holding Newton to
just 18 completions on 41 passing attempts. This was an
astounding defensive performance by one of the truly astounding
pass defenses in NFL history.

The Panthers defense was nearly as good. As previously
mentioned, the team held the Broncos to the lowest yardage total
of any Super Bowl winner ever and almost prevented them from
scoring a touchdown. If the Panthers had won, the MVP would have
likely gone to defensive end Kony Ealy, who had three sacks, a
forced fumble, and an interception in his first 16 snaps on the
field. So, Carolina also lived up to its billing as one of the
best defenses ever to play in a Super Bowl.

Why then, was the game so aesthetically painful? The NFL
Network’s Deion Sanders suggested what could be seen as a
possible answer in discussing why he was one of the few
commentators to pick the Broncos to score the upset win. “I
would never pick against a No. 1 defense in the NFL,” he said.
“I’m a defensive player. Most of television is former offensive
players who [are] offensive [minded].” If what Sanders said
about his colleagues is true, it could be that there’s a bias
among NFL pundits toward offense that is priming viewers to care
more about one half of the game than the other.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/02/why_you_ hated_the_super_bowl_this_year.html
 

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)