Take Nothing Away from the Seahawks, But... What a Disappointing Super Bowl

RUSH: I tell you, I thought they were gonna have to drag Rupert Murdoch out of the stadium on a stretcher last night. My God, can you believe how much audience they had to lose during that game in the second half? Can you imagine how many make goods or how much money they're gonna have to be rebating to their sponsors because so many eyeballs -- I'm guessing that there was a huge tune-out the second half, 'cause, man.

Folks, look, I have to be real careful here. As you know, I'm a huge football fan, and I don't want to take anything away from the Seahawks. In fact, grab sound bite number two. I want to remind you of my prediction early on, on Friday, on this program. I'm gonna play the prediction for you. And, by the way, the environmentalist wacko pick also came through with the Seahawks. So whatever I'm gonna say, I don't mean it as anything to take away from what the Seahawks accomplished or pulled off in the game last night. But here's what I said early on, first segment of the first hour of the program on Friday.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I'm leaning toward the Seahawks here for one reason, only one reason. I think it has to do with the defense. I think the Seattle defense can keep Peyton Manning off the field. I think their defense -- because I've studied it, folks, I've looked at tape, and the Seattle defense has the ability to prevent Denver's long drives, time, clock-chewing drive.

RUSH: The only thing I didn't foresee was all the turnovers, but I knew the pass rush. Denver, supposedly they'd stared down a great pass rush from the Kansas City Chiefs twice during the season, but they had never seen what hit them last night. During the game Kathryn looks over at me, "You seem depressed." And I said, "Do I? I am." I was down in the dumps. I thought this whole game, the whole thing, every aspect I thought was a bummer. Look, I'm gonna be very careful. I don't mean to be -- it's a game, it's a national pastime, people's escape and so forth, but, man, I just thought there was so much mediocrity.

I thought the ads, maybe three ads, three or four ads were any good. The rest of them were mediocre. I had spent all this time telling all of you to pay attention to the ads, because advertising people have their finger on the pulse of our culture and if you really want to learn where we are as a country and so forth, make sure you watch the Super Bowl ads, and they were a bomb. Well, that's the thing, it may not be wrong, in terms of just the overall mediocrity.

Now, the Seahawks were not mediocre. Again, I want to stress, I'm not trying to take anything away. I predicted the Seahawks to win, so I gotta be real careful. We got big audiences in Denver and Seattle as well here. We own both towns and we have for many, many moons. I'm just telling you what I thought, and I thought the game coverage was a bummer. The Super Bowl, for the last game of the season, I think having it in New York, something about that, I don't think flew. For the championship game, the championship game the National Football League, that game did not at all put forth the best face of the National Football League. It was like one team didn't even show up. And there I go. I'm not trying to anger you people in Denver. This is not a personal comment on anybody.

The MVP, nobody ever heard of the guy. How do you pick an MVP in a game like that? The MVP might have been Peyton Manning from the Seahawks' perspective. Just kidding. Just to make a point. You know, we've got audio sound bites here, the O'Reilly interview of Obama during the pregame show. Now, folks, let me tell you something. I think that is the wrong venue to do a serious interview of the president of the United States. O'Reilly actually asked really good questions that Obama hasn't been asked before. But that's not the place people want to see that, particularly not on the network that's televising the game, not on the network televising the pregame show.

If you're gonna do an interview with the president, it better be about the game, it better be about football, Americana, this kind of stuff, because now, how many of you know what Obama said? How many of you know how he answered the questions? So now it can easily be said, "Okay, questions have been answered. No big deal. We can move on. Nothing to see here." In a sense, just another wasted opportunity. But there was no way it wasn't gonna happen. The only thing I'm surprised at, O'Reilly was on Fox this morning giving his post-interview recap of how he thought it went. He said (paraphrasing), "Look, I think Obama's a great guy. I think he's got a lot of heart. I don't think he wants to hurt people like these right-wingers do. I don't think Obama wants to hurt anybody. I don't think Obama's trying to ruin anybody's life like these right-wingers."

The only thing that surprised me is that O'Reilly didn't tell Obama that in the interview, which I thought would happen. But it happened, what, 12 hours later. At one point during this game I wondered if the parents of the Broncos' players would try to invoke the "mercy rule." You know how parents in high school, when the team is getting ripped to shreds, the parents stand up and say, "End it! End it! This is humiliating. This is embarrassing our children." I wondered if the parents of Broncos players thought about trying to invoke the "mercy rule."

I don't know, folks. It was just a disappointing thing, and the game... I guess you've answered the question now. The number one offense rolls in, facing the number one defense in a pass-happy National Football League where the rules changes over the recent years have been to favor the offense. They have handcuffed the defense. They have made it tougher and tougher with the safety rules and the hits, trying to limit concussions.

They've just made it tougher and tougher and tougher on defenses, and yet last night defense totally dominated with the pass rush. It was total domination. Peyton Manning didn't have more than a second and a half to throw. Everybody's asking, "Well, why didn't he go deep?" He didn't have time to go 10 yards! "Well, he could have thrown it." He didn't have enough time for the receivers to get deep.

That pass rush was swarming, and those guys were hitting. They were creaming. That first little crossing pattern that was completed to Demaryius Thomas, the defender Kam Chancellor for the Seahawks just knocked the guy 10 yards straight back, and that was after the first snap of the game resulted in a safety. So it was a... (sigh) I was disappointed. I'm dialing it back here, folks, in getting into detail with you. (interruption)

Did I like Bruno Mars? It turns out that might have been the highlight of the game, the halftime show. I had never seen Bruno Mars perform, and I've now only seen. I can't hear those shows. I don't know what's happening. Other than when he played the drums, I can't tell what's going on up there. I have to read the captioning for some of the lyrics, but I can't hear melodies or any of that.

But it seemed exciting. It seemed like those people had talent. It seemed like those people were choreographed. It seemed like those people knew what they were doing, and they brought it there that evening, and they got it all done, in and out, in 20 minutes. They seemed like they were professionals. (interruption) Well, I just... Look, I'm really caught here, 'cause I want to unload, and that's just not the right thing to do here.

I mean, nobody wanted to screw up last night. Everybody was, I think, trying their best, and I'm not just talking about the teams. I'm just not talking about the game. The whole thing, to me, was this is not a Super Bowl. (interruption) The injury reports? What injury reports? What do you mean, what injury...? (interruption) You mean pregame injury...? Oh, well, you know... (interruption) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I can't tell you the number of times a player is hurt on the field and they have to come out, stop the game, go to a time-out and come back, time-out, and we never learned what happened to the poor schlub. In some cases, we didn't even learn who it was. (interruption) Don't goad me. (interruption) You're in there goading me, Snerdley, 'cause I unloaded with Snerdley. When I walked in the door I unloaded on him.

Snerdley didn't even see half the game. He was flying back from Washington, so he didn't even see it. Let me take a break here, folks, because we got all kinds of stuff happening on the program today. I do want to tell you: The Seahawks, I'm taking nothing away from them. None. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. (interruption) No. No. I'm not saying in the future defense is gonna rule.

In this case, the Broncos... You know, when you're facing a pass rush like they were facing, it wasn't even... They weren't even blitzing them. When you're facing a swarm, I think.... Peyton Manning had a pack of wasps on him all night! In football, the way you deal with that is screen passes, play action passes. He didn't have time for any of that. He didn't have time to make any adjustments, even.

They couldn't go the short passes, couldn't go screen, couldn't go play action, didn't have enough time for any of that to develop. This pass rush was just over the top. (interruption) Well, they lost Knowshon Moreno early on with an injury, relatively early and they were back to their backup. He's not bad. His last name is Ball. But they weren't able to do anything. I tell you what.

Here's one of the great stats: Peyton Manning set a record last night for completions in a Super Bowl game -- 33. In the first half, he had 54 yards. Not on 33 completions. That was for the game. I think he ended up with 280 yards. He had more completions, but some of them were behind the line of scrimmage,. Some of them, you know, gained a couple/three yards here. They... (sigh)

I don't know. I also detected, I wondered, "Is there something wrong with his arm?" He looked like he was pushing the ball last night, not throwing it. But nobody said anything about that, so I probably was seeing things that were not taking place. Anyway, it's true. The Seahawks fans rioted and the Broncos fans didn't -- and I thought, logically, it should be the other way around.

RUSH: How about the Coca-Cola commercial? You see the Coca-Cola commercial in the Super Bowl? The Coca-Cola commercial, it says here in an AP story, "landed in the proverbial hot seat, but not for being lewd -- it showed Americans of different races and ethnicities singing America, the Beautiful in a variety of different languages. After it aired, many took to various social networking sites to express their outrage at the song being performed in any language other than English."

Now, I gotta take back everything I said about watching these, 'cause I warned you -- not warned you, I urged you -- you know, "Watch these commercials, and you'll get a good handle on the pulse of the country. It's up to these advertisers to know how to reach these people to accomplish whatever they want, be it brand enlargement or brand identification, reinforcement, or the actual sale of product that they can track that day."

I mean, ultimately, every advertisement's designed to sell product, but some are results oriented and they want to start tracking it immediately. Others are just brand ID, brand recognition. There are any number of different reasons, but whatever the reason, with as much time as these advertisers have and as many money as they've committed to it, you figure they've got the best people on the campaign whatever it is gonna be run.

So Coca-Cola comes up. If you think the best way, if you are convinced that the best way to sell Coca-Cola to Americans is to sing America the Beautiful in multiple languages, then why don't you produce the product with labels printed in 10 different languages? Every market gets 10 different label versions of Coke. You get 10 Diet Coke labels, 10 more for Sprite and so on, and if you run out of shelf space, just go buy more shelf space and load 'em up. (interruption)

Is that the way to sell Coca-Cola? Is that what...? The whole world sees the Super Bowl, yeah. But I don't think the commercial is intended to be international, and I don't know which commercials... I don't think they're selling these commercials with world advertising rates. They're selling with US sponsorship in mind. These things would be so prohibitively expensive if they were selling spots guaranteeing a world audience.

They couldn't afford it, and you wouldn't know how to measure it in the first place. I thought maybe the Republican leadership was behind the Coke commercial. That's what I thought when I saw it. I said, "Whoa, who got hold of this advertising campaign? The Republican leadership's gotta be doing this." Anyway, there were only three or four ads in the Super Bowl that were memorable. The whole thing just didn't seem like...

You know, I use the word "karma," but it seemed like everybody -- except for the Seahawks -- was running at half speed, at half consciousness. Everybody. It was the weirdest sensation watching the Super Bowl. I never got comfortable watching the whole game. Nothing seemed right, and I really did, I really had visions of Rupert Murdoch being carried out of there on a stretcher in a panic over the ratings.

We'll see. (interruption) Yeah. Snerdley is saying, "It does line up with the times, 'cause it doesn't feel right." There was just too much mediocrity out there, and not commented on as mediocre. The mediocrity was championed as excellence or that we should at least accept it as excellence and I thought it was disastrous.

RUSH: I'm getting e-mail. "Rush, why are you holding back? You don't worry about offending people." Here's the thing. It's a football game. We're not talking about issues and parties and things that dramatically affect people's lives and the status of the country here. I don't want to call people out individually. The best I can tell you is, I thought the whole thing was like everybody involved was at 50% consciousness or 60%. It was not even a good game. It wasn't a fun game to watch. I love good defensive football, don't misunderstand. This game was filled with mistake after mistake after mistake after incompetence after incompetence after incompetence, and there were no adjustments made.

That's why I said I don't want to take anything away from the Seahawks because they may be the primary reason why the Broncos just didn't look like they were even there. I think the game was so bad that the Fox TV crew didn't quite know how to deal with it, 'cause they can't sit there and say, "That's bad. This is horrible." They pay gazillions of dollars to televise this thing and they have to sit there and pump up their partner, the NFL. So they had to try to cover for it, and they did it. I mean, how do you build up something that has nothing redeemable in it, or very little, other than to focus on the defensive players, which, that game, the MVP, nothing against the MVP. I mean, did you see the 911 truther that hijacked the MVP press conference?

Some 911 truther from Brooklyn storms -- think about the security of this. You've got more security at this Super Bowl than at any event in New York in recent years, or at least as much, and the minute the MVP begins his press conference, some 911 truther comes out camera left, takes over the microphone, grabs it with his hand and for five or six seconds starts mouthing the fact the government blew up the buildings, 911 was government run, look into it, and finally security came and dragged the guy away. The MVP's standing there looking, "Oh, gee, what is this? I need some help up here." Who's the security firm here? Wile E. Coyote, with equipment bought from the Acme company?

I don't know, folks, I was just disappointed as a fan. I was just disappointed in the game. (interruption) What cold weather? Oh, well, of course they do, 'cause they dodged a bullet. They got paralyzing snow in New York today, 12 hours difference and they'd be playing the game in that stuff. Of course the cold weather town has now won the Super Bowl. I think it's a mistake. I think the cold weather, the Super Bowl's not supposed to be played in temperatures below 50.

That was one of the age-old NFL rules, Super Bowl game by rule, they had to blow that rule out, cannot occur in a place where the average temperature dips below 50 on the day of the game. That's a law, NFL law. And of course they broomed that 'cause they had to pay off this stadium. I mean, that's the deal. That's how you assign Super Bowls anymore. You get a new stadium, the league will come in and play the game there, help you retire the debt or whatever. That's fine. It's their business. We'll just look at the overnight ratings and we'll see what happened, look at the second half. I'll betcha we're gonna be able to watch the bleed-off of the viewing audience.

Now, we had a sound bite. Let me get on to other things here, folks, 'cause I don't want to be a downer myself. See, I'm gonna tell you. I live in mortal fear that you someday will think of this radio show the way I was feeling watching that game last night, like everybody was phoning it in. That is why I come in here and every day strive to be better than the day before, meet and surpass your expectations. I never, ever phone it in. I live in mortal fear that you will have an attitude like I did about what I was watching last night. I never ever want that to happen. Maybe that's why it's affecting me this way. It's a little personal to me.

RUSH: Here is Matthew Mills, the 911 "truther" that interrupted the MVP press conference with the MVP, Malcolm Smith, of the Seattle Seahawks. This runs by here real quick. It's nine seconds this guy took, but envision this. You've got a crowded, no doubt overheated, small, little area in this giant stadium where tens of 20/30 media people in there, and the MVP still all decked out in winter gear, even though it's not called for. Everybody's sweating themselves crazy, gotta be very close in there, and he's getting ready to answer questions, and out of the blue, from the left on your TV screen, pops up the 911 "truther" who looked like a rabid member of Occupy America.

MILLS: Investigate 9/11! 9/11 was perpetrated by people within our own government!

RUSH: That was the MVP. That was Malcolm Smith, who lightened it up a little bit with his reaction. "Okay, Rush, freedom of speech. A guy can run in there and say whatever he wants." Oh, yeah, he can, but where is the security? How many people were paid? How much security do they have for this event? This guy obviously got on the media press pass. He had to get in that way.

“Frankly I was stunned at the collapse of the Broncos”

Being a MLB or baseball fan, what I had seen Sunday, with the Broncos and the team’s BIGTIME collapse reminds me of the BIGTIME collapse of the Boston Red Soxs a few years back and the struggling that took place for two years before coming back to win it all in the World Series of 2013. Never expected a collapse of such proportions to come to Denver.

Now it is on to waiting for “pitchers and catchers” to show up for spring training.

you might want to retract that...

Retract? No. Modify, perhaps.

I know he won the big one...once. I know he has won some playoff games but his overall playoff record is 9 wins and 11 losses.
One game does not make a trend. Nor does it stand out as much as his string of playoff or Super Bowl losses.

Peyton Manning's One-and-Done record:
(Source; ESPN)

GAME 1: Jan. 16, 2000, divisional, Titans (14-3) at Colts (13-3)

Score: Titans 19, Colts 16

GAME 2: Dec. 30, 2000, wild card, Colts (10-6) at Dolphins (11-5)

Score: Dolphins 23, Colts 17, OT

GAME 3: Jan. 4, 2003, wild card, Colts (10-6) at Jets (9-7)

Score: Jets 41, Colts 0

GAME 4: Jan. 15, 2006, divisional, Steelers (12-5) at Colts (14-2)

Score: Steelers 21, Colts 18

GAME 5: Jan. 13, 2008, divisional, Chargers (12-5) at Colts (13-3)

Score: Chargers 28, Colts 24

GAME 6: Jan. 3, 2009, wild card, Colts (12-4) at Chargers (8-8)

Score: Chargers 23, Colts 17, OT

GAME 7: Jan. 8, 2011, wild card, Jets (11-5) at Colts (10-6)

Score: Jets 17, Colts 16

GAME 8: Jan. 12, 2013, divisional, Ravens (11-6) at Broncos (13-3)

Score: Ravens 38, Broncos 35

Add to that the loss in Super Bowl XLIV.
And then there is Super Bowl XLVIII two days ago that makes it an even 10.

I don't dislike him. He IS a great QB. But he is not the greatest. And he IS way over-hyped. I just call them like I see them.

Didn’t miss it at all, I voted for him on the NFL website and it’s the first time who I voted for actually won it, his pick 6 functionally won the game. But none of that anything to do with the fact that the Seahawks eased off the pressure in the 3rd quarter and allowed Manning all the short completions he felt like, with no yards after catch. Once you’re up by 5 scores the clock becomes your opponent much more than the other team, so you don’t ball hawk as much, you don’t as many risks, you keep them on short yardage success, you basically say “you can have all the 5 minute scoring drives you can muster, because it won’t help”.

I'll try to make this point one more time, but since you're so determined to miss it, it probably won't benefit you. [And the pick six didn't win the game, "functionally" or any other way.]

The original point was: the pass rush wasn't the reason the Broncos couldn't advance the ball; if it had been, Peyton would not have been able to clock in a record number of completions.

You can take the position that "he only had a record number of completions because we gave them to him," but that's essentially BS. Given the mauling the wide-outs were receiving in the deep secondary, the Broncos went to the dink-and-dunk game very early; long before they were down five scores. It did not succeed -- not because of the pass rush, and not because of the interceptions -- but because there was no yardage after catch.

Picks are splashy, and turnovers obviously played a huge role. But the play-in-play-out job of fundamental football: understanding assignments, discipline, physicality with receivers, and great tackling are what won the game.

And I’m pointing out that Peyton wasn’t advancing the ball until the Seahawks eased off the pressure. He had less than 100 yards passing at the end of the first half, 51 yards passing when he threw the pick six. He got most of his receptions in “garbage” time (which owing to the score was the vast majority of the second half) when the Seattle defense had gone into a variation of the prevent shell. The pass rush had a lot to do with his lack of success, he got hit a lot including on both interceptions.

The Broncos have been dink and dunk all season (the era of Manning airing it out seems to have passed), but early in the game they weren’t even completing those. Smart teams play the clock as well as the opposition. When you’re up 5 TD in the third the big thing you don’t want to do is allow big plays, so you ease off the defensive throttle, not taking as many chances. You actually outlined EXACTLY what the “nothing deep nothing cheap” mentality is: discipline, great tackling, no yards after catch. It’s low risk defense designed to make the other team slow down, as opposed to taking chances to shut them down. It’s the difference between the defender trying to jump in front of that pass knowing that if he misses the interception the receiver’s going to get a whole bunch of YAC, and staying behind the receiver to make sure he gets no yards after catch. In the first half they took risks to stop the Broncos, in the second half they stopped taking risks to make sure there were no big plays. It’s why 2/3 of Manning’s yards and reception were in the second half, the Seahawks went to garbage time defense which allows the other team to stack up meaningless stats but not points.

Exactly.
All the call by calls that Mike Pereira, formerly the NFL’s Director of Officiating, patiently examined and explained post game to NFL Network’s “Total Access” Rich Eisen.
What no one ever mentions is the Roethlisberger's pass attempt for what should have been a very short easy TD (a pass I dare say a big girl could complete 7 out of 10 times) which was intercepted by Kelly Herndon for a record long return, but during which a pursuing Roethlisberger was illegally blocked in the back but not flagged. It set the Seahawks up for a very short TD drive on a day they otherwise could not sustain a scoring drive.
Yeah, that.

The standings went Seattle 13-3, SF 12-4, Arizona 10-6, and St. Louis 7-9.

Don't forget that part of the reason the stats are hard to really interpret is that these NFC West teams have to play each OTHER, twice.

Once they go against other divisions you see them all do well. Like SF vs. Green Bay in that 5 degree cold, and then them knocking off the Panthers at home.

If you think Seattle is good, SF is almost exactly as good. They barely lost at Century Link, and were it not for a Frank Gore run, we would have won at Candlestick.

Everyone thought that Seattle was a one hit wonder last year with the surprising Russell Wilson, but we still only got stopped by the Falcons.

My guess is that SF and Seattle will both be the best teams in the NFL in 2014. The only question is who will take the division?

And the Cardinals will have something to say, too.

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