By: Cameron Merritt
Well, for all the hype that Sunday’s Super Bowl worked up, it let down many who were looking for a close battle between the two goliaths of football. The Seattle Seahawks annihilated the Denver Broncos 43-8, a game which the Seahawks controlled from the very first play.
Perhaps the largest big game blowout since the Chicago Bears’ rout of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, it was hard to believe that the man leading the Broncos had just been voted NFL MVP, taking 49 of 50 possible votes (the other going to Tom Brady). His performance erased all the progress he’d made recently to disprove those who felt he couldn’t close the deal in the playoffs, and could very well set in stone that Brady was the better quarterback of their era.
As for the Seahawks, a team that only a few years ago were a bottom-dweller of the league, their hard work and all the momentum built up in the past few years finally paid off as they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy for the first time in history. Their top-ranked defense easily handled the Bronco’s top-ranked offense, perhaps too easily, led by linebacker and rightfully-deserving MVP Malcolm Smith, who had nine tackles, a 69-yard returned interception for a touchdown, and recovered a fumble.
Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was surprisingly quiet in the Super Bowl, as he only had three tackles in the game and ended up leaving in the fourth quarter after sustaining an ankle injury. However, his pre-game trash talk about Manning throwing ducks worked as the veteran made some truly awful passes for a player of his caliber, with two passes picked off.
While he completed 69 percent of his passes for 280 years, Manning averaged only 5.7 yards per pass. His only touchdown came via a 14 yard pass to wide receiver Demaryus Thomas (13 catches, 133 yds, TD), the only real bright spot on an otherwise dismal Denver offense, on the final play of the third quarter.
On the Seahawks end, Wilson made 18 of his 25 pass attempts with two touchdowns, while also having three carries for 26 yards, an impressive first appearance in what could be one of several Super Bowl appearances for the 25 year old. Wide receiver Percy Harvin only had one catch for five yards, but the former Minnesota Viking made quite the impact running as he rushed 45 yards on two attempts and returned the second half opening kickoff 87 yards for a touchdown.
As for other offensive contributors, veteran running back Marshawn Lynch had 15 carries for 39 yards with a touchdown, wide receiver Doug Baldwin had five catches for 66 yards with a touchdown, and wide receiver Jermaine Kerse had four catches for 65 yards with a touchdown as well.
So congratulations to the Seahawks and all the sports fans of Seattle on the Super Bowl win, only the second pro sports championship in city history, the last coming in 1979 when the Seattle SuperSonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) defeated the Washington Bullets (now Washington Wizards) in the NBA Finals.
Congrats as well to the people who worked so hard to make the big game at MetLife Stadium a success, one which may set a precedent for future cold weather Super Bowls.
Speaking of which, Patriots owner Robert Kraft is already busy trying to bring a Super Bowl to Gillette Stadium in the near future.
“Sochi” Big Mistake?
While the rather out of place Super Bowl seems to have worked, Russia’s experiment to place the 2014 Winter Olympics in a Black Sea resort town has already had its fair share of issues even before the opening ceremonies, and not because of the weather.
The Sochi Olympics opened under a cloud of terrorist threats from groups in the nearby Caucasus Mountains, so bad that U.S. athletes have been advised to avoid wearing their uniforms or anything that gives away their nationality while walking through town.
On top of that, many of the hotels the government promised to have done in time when the nation was first awarded the games seven years ago were still being completed just days before the international event was set to commence.
Even worse, the amenities aren’t exactly up to par for such an event, with the odd decision to put two toilets VERY close to each other in every stall, rooms without running water (or yellow water, as the Chicago Tribune’s Stacy St. Clair found out the hard way when her running water came out yellow), unfinished lobbies and rooms, and for the Canadian Men’s Hockey Team, lucky enough to actually receive finished rooms, beds so small and close to each other that it would be suited more for a Pee-Wee hockey team.
This only adds to a list of problems that Russia has faced on the international level, along with their controversial anti-gay propaganda laws and other reported human rights violations, all of which the nation’s president, Vladimir Putin, firmly defends and stands by.
He defiantly has defended the Sochi Olympics throughout all of their troubles, a project which he has invested much, both personally and economically, in order to make the games a success and showcase the best of what his nation has to offer the world. However, only time will tell how the 2014 Winter Games will be remembered.
Scoreboard is the Eagle’s Eye’s column for Fridays, written by head editor Cameron Merritt. The senior, who came up with the idea for this website, is AHS’s man at Hockomock Sports. He discusses the latest in sports around Boston and the world. Warning: he treats soccer like a serious professional sport.
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