Super Bowl 50: quarterbacks sidelined as defences steal the show

In the aftermath of the Denver Broncos’ win over the Carolina Panthers, the voters would have loved to award the MVP trophy to Peyton Manning. They even had a statement written in advance, just in case the opportunity presented itself.

It would have been a great moment: one of the greatest players in league history winning the Super Bowl MVP in what could be the final game of his career.

They couldn’t do it, not after one of the most offensively challenged games in Super Bowl history. Instead, the NFL had no choice but to give MVP honours to Denver linebacker Von Miller. It was the right call.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Super Bowl 50 was supposed to be about the two quarterbacks. On one side you had the veteran Manning, nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career. On the Panthers side, there was newly crowned MVP Cam Newton, playing in his first Super Bowl, representing the nearly-here future.

Instead, Manning all but faded away like a Ghost of Football Past while Newton’s growing pains manifested themselves in the form of untimely turnovers. Neither Manning or Newton threw a touchdown pass, but each threw an interception. They had a combined 13.8 per cent success rate in third-down situations. There were 12 sacks in the game, a Super Bowl record. From an offensive standpoint, the game was, well, offensive.

Now that the game is over, much of the conversation about it will revolve around the two quarterbacks. It always does. Get ready for stories about how Manning turned himself into a crafty, game-manager type, and arguments about how Newton’s lapses in judgment cost his team the game.

There’s truth enough in these takes, but they will be ignoring the real story. Super Bowl 50 wasn’t about two sputtering offences; it was about two tremendous defences.

Both defensive units deserve credit. While Denver ended up winning the game, it wasn’t because the Panthers’ defence let up.

They held the Broncos to a 194 yards, a record low for a winning Super Bowl team, they limited them to field goals when touchdowns seemed all but inevitable.

It was when the defence was off the field that the Broncos did the most damage. The Broncos scored their first touchdown when Miller strip-sacked Newton and Malik Jackson recovered the fumble in the Panthers’ end zone. A second Miller sack, this time in the fourth quarter, set up their second touchdown of the night, one that effectively put the game out of reach.

Those two plays were the biggest reasons that Miller became the third defensive lineman to be named Super Bowl MVP. However, as he acknowledged after the game, Miller partly won the award as a stand-in for the entire Denver defence: “If I could cut this award. I would give it to DeMarcus [Ware] and [Derek] Wolfe and all the other guys. That’s what I would do . . .”

Rhythm

Unlike Carolina, Denver needed to have such a strong, perhaps historic, defence to even make it to the Super Bowl. While the Panthers had Newton at the quarterback position, the Broncos alternated between the declining and occasionally injured Manning and rookie Brock Osweiler.

This playoff run revealed that the Broncos had a knack for winning ugly defensive battles, the exact type of game that Super Bowl 50 ended up being.

“Ugly” is a key word here. Defensive battles aren’t necessarily aesthetically pleasing affairs, which is a big reason why there’s more attention paid towards players on the offensive side of the ball. The main goal of a successful defence is to prevent an offense from getting into any kind of rhythm.

When defences dominate a game, that tends to limit the highlight plays. The spectacular catches, high yardage plays and touchdowns get replaced by incompletions, three- and-outs and field goal attempts. When there’s a dramatic defensive play, an interception or a forced fumble, it’s usually presented as an example of an offence making a mistake rather than a defence making a play.

In other words, offence is an easier sell than defence, which is partly why the NFL has become a quarterback-driven league over the past two decades.

Conventional wisdom states that teams now live or die by how well their quarterback plays. Heading into the sport’s premiere showcase, there was every reason to believe that the outcome would be determined by the play callers.

The defences, however, didn’t get that script. On the biggest stage possible they turned both quarterbacks into complete nonentities. That might have been the true upset of Super Bowl 50. Guardian Service