What happened last night?
A question reserved for blackout drunk moments should not be asked about the biggest game in American sports. Last night was less a game, and more a slaughter. The Denver Broncos seemingly did not want to show up and ended up losing to the Seattle Seahawks, 43-8. That’s right. The number one offense in the NFL was taken apart by the number one defense in the NFL. The people that say “defense wins game” have never had a better reason to gloat. It’s hard to argue with them after last night.
It also doesn’t help that everything else involved just seemed incredibly uninteresting. Even last year’s Super Bowl, despite the hour-long blackout, had more entertaining moments sprinkled throughout the game. Whether it was game highlights or commercials, last year’s game trumped this one by miles, and last year’s game wasn’t even that great!
That said, I scraped the bottom of the barrel to find at least 10 memorable moments, and here they are.
1. The Broncos give up a safety on the first play of the game.
When you watch a Super Bowl, what you want is some moments that stun you. And to go out there on the first play and give up a safety… Well, that’s a stunner. A safety is when a team gets tackled in their own end zone with the ball. It’s basically an “own-goal” but is only worth two points, but you then have to give up the ball to the opposing team, wherein they will then have a chance to add to those two points. The safety is a rare sight to see in games because it takes a very specific situation for it to happen. I can’t think of more than a handful of safeties that happened throughout the 2013-2014 season. In fact, there were only thirteen throughout the 2012-2013 season. Seasons run for 256 games. And to be even more specific, there have only been eight safeties in Super Bowl history. Out of forty-eight games, only eight. So, yeah, it’s not exactly common. To see one happen on the first play of the game, is an event so rare that bookies had it at 50-1 odds. Some people call that silly betting, others call it high risk-high reward. Somebody out there made a lot of money. And that safety may have been the most important moment because it set the tone for the rest of game in the Seahawks favor.
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2. The Broncos paltry offense in the first quarter… first half… whole game.
While I was taking notes of these moments from the game, that is exactly how this particular moment was written out. At first, I figured the best offense in the game was just having a rough quarter, followed by a rough half, and then I realized that these guys were just asleep at the wheel. Call me crazy, but when the two best teams in the NFL are clashing against each other, I expect a close, hard-fought game. The Seahawks defense was so strong, that they caused possibly the biggest Super Bowl blowout in the last thirty years.
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3. Taquitos
There’s no doubt that chicken wings are the definitive Super Bowl food of choice. But I wager that after spending an entire season eating wings while watching the game, maybe it would do best to change it up. The homemade taquitos provided at the Super Bowl gathering I went to yesterday were absolutely killer, and were truly a highlight provided against a really drab game. Taquitos might just become a game-changer for future Super Bowl parties.
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4. The Broncos being shut out at the first half of the game.
So, it’s pretty much been established that the Broncos were absolutely trounced last night. However, by the time the game was headed into halftime, there was still hope for a comeback. With just a couple of minutes left, the man that would eventually become the Super Bowl MVP, Malcolm Smith, intercepted a pass and stopped the Broncos from getting the chance to even put up three points with a measly field goal. With a 22-0 score heading into the half, many fans were ready to call the game, but with Peyton Manning at the helm, there was still a chance. It’s the Super Bowl, after all. Everybody plays that much harder. Unless you’re the Broncos…
5. The halftime show was decent, if uneventful.
Bruno Mars, with only two albums, is a certified mega star. He’s clearly sought after by many thanks to his vocal prowess and entertainment factor. It was a risk to put someone that’s fairly new to the music scene up on that grand stage, but by adding the always-entertaining funky stylings of the Red Hot Chili Peppers they were guaranteed to cover a lot of fan bases and get people hyped up for the halftime show. I wouldn’t consider myself a Bruno Mars fan, but I could totally see a lot of potential in him. His Sting/The Police-lite song “Locked Out of Heaven” is his best song and it was a good move using it to kick off the set and get everyone into the show. His Elvis-style moves brought people to their feet, but the theatrics that we’ve come to expect from the twenty minute interlude just weren’t there. It’s not to say his performance wasn’t fine, but it wasn’t enough. And you’d think with the addition of the ever-energetic Chili Peppers, we’d at least get some crazy-fun times to invigorate us after an uneventful first half, but they just weren’t used enough. Granted, they were his “special guests” but they really could’ve been used to a higher capacity. Maybe they could’ve been used to fill up parts of Bruno’s band? I don’t know. I just wish there was something a bit extra. (TYF Contributor, Cachie wanted to note that she really enjoyed the collective jumping as pictured above.)
6. There were some decent commercials.
If the football game is bad, at least we can take delight in some fun, expensive commercials right? Well, not 100% right. A lot of the commercials were a real let down. But there were a few gems sorted throughout. For example:
1. The commercial for the “Seinfeld” reunion on Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” web series was excellent. And the whole thing can be found at the website for the series.
2. Doritos have been putting out strong ads for the last couple of Super Bowls, and last nights’ were no different. Check out this great time machine ad: http://youtu.be/e5VKvq9iDQo
3. Two movie trailers stood out from the bunch.
The “Transforms 4: Age of Extinction” trailer brought us this highly talked-about image, which despite how bad the previous installments are, looks so hardcore:
And I cannot even come up with words about how excited I am about “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”:
4. The Esurance commercial that played right after the game was done, and starred “The Office” favorite John Krasinksi, definitely won the night because who doesn’t love money? It was some genius marketing on their part. #EsuranceSaves30 indeed.
7. The Seahawks scored within seconds of both halves of the game.
Really? REALLY? If the odds were slim that a safety could happen within the first several seconds of the game, then the odds are even slimmer that a Seahawk would return the second half kick for a touchdown making it twice that the Seahawks score within seconds of a half starting. It looks like Bruno Mars did nothing to help invigorate the Broncos, and at this point the score was 29-0 and it was looking like the Broncos getting shut out of the entire game was an actual possibility.
8. The Broncos scoring their first, and only, points of the game with :00 left in the third quarter.
Don’t call it a comeback.. cause it wasn’t. You might as well call it a miracle. After forty-five minutes of play, the Denver Broncos finally scored some points. It was even a touchdown! And then they scored a two point conversion. It was a good way to make us all think there was still some spring in their step. But it would end up being the only points put on the board by the men clad in orange.
9. Die hard football fans playing Flappy Bird because the game was unbearable.
That’s right. The game was so boring, that my fellow die hard football fans were turning to the highly addictive smartphone game for entertainment. That’s right. The new game in town that has won everybody’s hearts, and garnered the worst kind of frustration was taking precedence over the highest coveted game in all of American sports. Move over Candy Crush, birds are back in style. It almost looked like the Broncos were entrenched in their own discouraging game of Flappy Bird.
10. The Seahawks win their first ever Super Bowl.
After nearly forty years as a franchise, The Seattle Seahawks finally won the Super Bowl. This being only their second apparance, by the way. Maybe the game wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but that’s because the Seahawks played like a team that certainly wanted it more. They played aggressively and consistently. They, also, got a measure of revenge from their first Super Bowl appearance in 2005. See, that year they lost to a second year quarterback, so I think it’s pretty clear that they were waiting for a second year quarterback to pay it forward. #conspiracies
Congratulations to you, 2013-2014 Seattle Seahawks! You deserved it.
BONUS MEMORABLE MOMENT: This guy.
Speaking of #conspiracies, a 9/11 truther, all of thirteen years later finally found his stage. Incredible.
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