THAT OTHER STORY TO COME OUT OF SUPER BOWL 50

by The Rabbi, OTSL Video Editor/Producer

If you watched media coverage in the two days after the Super Bowl, all we heard was about Cam Newton.  Why didn't Cam Newton dive for that fumble?  Why did Cam Newton say nothing to the media?  Why is Cam Newton so cocky?

One more question should be asked:  Why are we focusing on the QB of the team that lost Super Bowl 50?

What the winners did (oh by the way, that would be the Denver Broncos) in the NFL's Golden Game was extremely historic.  Historic in so many different ways, that when people look back at this Super Bowl 50 years later (Super Bowl 100?  Perish the thought) they’ll shake their heads in disbelief.

The Denver Broncos made history by being the first Super Bowl team to win having less than 200 yards of total offense.  That last sentence is just mind boggling to me.  When you looked at the field on Sunday, fans had a very good idea that we saw a shell of the Peyton Manning who played in three previous Super Bowls.  What we didn't know was this wasn't a shell of a former great, this was basically a shell fragment. 

Peyton, who seemingly had one job on the field in managing the game, was responsible for one interception and one fumble.  It got so bad in the second half for Manning, that it kind of looked like in my view that Head Coach Gary Kubiak didn't let him do ANYTHING.  Not even a pass over ten yards.  The best pass that Manning threw, especially in that second half, was the two point conversion he threw to make the score 24-10.  It was probably the last pass of his career.

Emmanuel Sanders was virtually the only reliable target for the Hall of Fame QB (he had almost four times as many receiving yards as anyone else did Sunday night).  The running game was decent enough, as CJ Anderson went for 4 yards a carry (23 for 90yards).  All those numbers and the fact that the offense for Denver was basically two people makes it even more amazing that the Broncos were not only leading the entire game, they didn't look like they were in trouble.

Now, we get to the Defense of the Super Bowl Champions.  Orange Crush is not even the best way to describe this unit right now, but only because they are SO much better than their predecessors ever were.   On Sunday, they hit Cam Newton 13 times.  Eight Broncos got to the QB who ran the league's number one offense in 2015.  As you all know by now, the chosen one got sacked six times on the night (they also sacked Ted Ginn Jr. once), with Denver's bookend Outside Linebackers Demarcus Ware and Von Miller getting credit for 4.5 of them.  The only other team to get seven sacks in a Super Bowl?  The 1985 Chicago Bears. 

This postseason Denver got to their opponent’s QB 33 TIMES, which is an unbelievable stat considering the other two signal callers they manhandled were Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger, who are responsible for five Super Bowl wins.  When you take into account Von Miller's two strips of Cam on Sunday, the final score of the NFL's Golden Game should really read as: Broncos Defense 14, Panthers 10.

Since the 2000's the NFL has been a game dominated by offense.  “You can't win a game without a great QB performance” people always say.  Super Bowl Sunday proved different.  Since 2000, I've only truly seen two Super Bowl winning performances that have been on par with Peyton Manning's on Sunday:  Trent Dilfer in Super Bowl 38 for the original team who won with only defense, the Baltimore Ravens (153 yards, 3 sacks, 1 fumble); and Big Ben Roethlisberger in the last anniversary game for the NFL, Super Bowl 40 (9-21, 123 yards, 2 INT's).  Being responsible for a single TD (Dilfer throwing, Big Ben running) in their respective Super Bowls was really the only positive thing either of them did.  Peyton really can't even take any credit for that.

That Sunday showed us things we've never seen before from a WINNING team in a Super Bowl.  Whether it be because of the Broncos own futility on offense or their amazing defense; either way, it’s truly historic.  And either way, the DENVER BRONCOS are the TRUE story of Super Bowl 50, not the Carolina Panthers.

Or you know, we can talk more about how Cam is a sore loser again, your call.