Actually, Fetushead
has tailored his game over the last two years to chiefly incorporate short and midrange passes. (Kirk Goldsberry is awesome.) Many people believe that this indicates that either age or surgery has eroded his ability to throw well downfield with a combination of accuracy and power. The results from the game bear that out: when he did throw downfield, he tended to either overthrow semi-open receivers or throw so slowly that the Hags could pick him off. Part of the credit for that goes to SEA's ability to play more physically in the SB than they would in other games, letting them screw up receivers' routes with DPI, but most of the fault still lies with Manning. (And Denver's defense, of course, did the same thing.)
It's not necessarily that the Hags defense stopped the Broncos' ability to throw deep. All credit to one of the best defenses in NFL history ('91 Eagles and Redskins
might be better but it's pretty close) but honestly the Hags didn't do much to take away deep passes. Carroll's vaunted Cover 3 was abandoned for most of the game in favor of leaving Thomas deep with press coverage on the outside, a sort of Cover 1 that implicitly recognized that Manning would tend to throw short and left open the possibility of 'breaking' the coverage with four verts or something similar. The Broncos couldn't, or wouldn't capitalize on that because Fetushead didn't make deep throws and because the whole team made a variety of other dumb errors throughout the game. And yeah, insert Cliff Avril Cliche Bukkake here, too; the SEA line did a very good job of screwing up deeper pass plays.
Injuries were pretty important, too, like NK said. For the Super Bowl, the Broncos were more injured than they'd been all season, which forced scrubs into starting positions (especially on the defense and offensive line). By comparison, Seattle was as
healthy as it'd been all season, and even added Percy Harvin in for good measure because why the hell not. That advantage eroded very slightly over the course of the game when the likes of Sherman got hurt, but it really wasn't enough to change how the game would work by then.
Also, PB, way to check off most of the stereotypes of an obnoxious bandwagon fan. Well acted.
Admittedly, the SB is one of the few events all year where the house
specifically sets the line to mirror public betting patterns. Most games don't see that at all.
Yeah, 'cause BS is the only person who says that, ever.
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