Commentary – Super Bust 50

Eric Beideman tackles Super Bowl 50

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Eric Beideman, Staff Writer

Alright football fans, let’s admit it. That was dreadful. The 50th Super Bowl was an absolute bust for the NFL.

It started with the National Anthem, which Lady Gaga decided to turn into a holiday sing-a-long making U.S. servicemen and women in Afghanistan cringe on national television.

And what followed can only be described as horrendous.

Super Bowl 50 quickly became very reminiscent of early NFL Championship-esque run-heavy days. Truthfully, it was a celebration of the prevent offense. All year Peyton Manning has been asked to simply be a field general, run the offense and matriculate the ball down the field. However it was even worse in the Super Bowl. Manning was a measly 13 of 23 for 141 yards, no touchdowns and an interception. He also fumbled twice, losing one of them early in the fourth quarter to set up a Carolina field goal drive.

Collectively, the two quarterbacks were 31 of 64 (48%) passing, were sacked 12 times, put the ball on the turf 4 times, 3 of which were turned over, 2 turned into touchdowns for their opponent, and each were picked off once. Oh, and neither one threw a single touchdown pass. That’s only the fourth time in Super Bowl history that has happened.

The game resembled the Super Bowl debacle of 2000, which featured Trent Dilfer and Kerry Collins attempting to play quarterback and producing an absolutely ugly 33.2 passer rating collectively.

Working in tandem with the horrific quarterbacking, some individual plays stuck out as something that you’d expect on a 55lb. Pop Warner field, not the big game. And there were more ugly plays in Super Bowl 50 than gnats at a southern barbeque. Like when Cam Newton was picked off by T.J. Ward, who proceeded to put the ball on the ground when he was tackled by Mike Tolbert. Fortunately for Ward, linebacker Danny Trevathan came out of the pile with the ball. The second-half play could have ended up with Carolina mere yards from the Denver end zone. That would have been the closest the Cats would have come to the end zone.

Or when Cam Newton, inside his own 10, forgot that he was facing off against one of the best pass rushes in the NFL and decided he could cement himself in the pocket for 5 seconds, and then was surprised when Von Miller met him with bad intentions and stripped the ball from him. What ensued looked more like beached whales flopping about than football players vying for a loose ball. And in the end, two Broncos found themselves lying in the end zone hugging one another, with a football tucked in between them.

Later, Mike Tolbert, who resembles more of a truck than a football player, also decided that ball security was optional and coughed one up which led to a Brandon McManus field goal (because the Broncos couldn’t find the end zone either).

Denver was guilty of ball security problems as well. In an episode which looked more like an intoxicated man throwing his shoe at a junkyard dog than an NFL quarterback attempting to complete a pass, Peyton Manning decided that it had been a while since he had thrown an interception and bestowed Kony Ealy with an early Valentine’s day gift.

In a game which seemed to serve as a case study on why the forward pass is passe, NFL fans would have expected an explosive performance from at least one running back. Nope. C.J. Anderson led everyone with a modest 90 yards on the ground.

Oh, and then there was Aqib Talib. Talib did his best Courtland Finnegan impersonation, (who, I’m obligated to mention was very well behaved Sunday and was able to make it through the game without ripping anyone’s helmet off and punching them in the face. So good on you, Courtland.) and let his hot head get the best of him. In the first 18 minutes of the game, Talib had already been the target of 3 flags, 2 of which were personal fouls.

His lack of restraint continued when right after the game, in the middle of taking a question from a reporter at the podium, he turned to his wife and said “You’re looking gorgeous baby, we’re gonna get it in tonight.”

Throw in a recycled, mediocre halftime show headlined by a British band and the worst set of Super Bowl commercials in recent history and you had a 4 hour epic which ended with football fans looking at each other going “That was underwhelming.”

And it truly was. It was rather deflating. Pardon the pun.