Seattle Seahawks wins Super Bowl for first time in its history
February 3, 2014 -- Updated 1232 GMT (2032 HKT)
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll celebrates his team's remarkable 43-8 win over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.
HIDE CAPTION
Seattle wins Super Bowl XLVIII
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Seattle Seahawks wins Super Bowl XLVIII
- Beats Denver Broncos 43-8 in New Jersey
- Seattle defense strangles Denver quarterback Peyton Manning
- Five touchdowns for Seattle in dominant display
AFC Champion Denver was
undone by a toxic combination of Seattle's ruthless defense and its own
errors, with famed quarterback Peyton Manning having a night to forget.
He was intercepted twice
as Seattle took an early stranglehold on the match while his
inexperienced opposite Russell Wilson hardly put a foot wrong in an
assured display.
Allied to the powerful
running, epitomized by inspired wide receiver Percy Harvin, the result
was five touchdowns to a single score by Denver and the contest was
effectively over by halftime as the NFC Champions took complete control.
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By then linebacker
Malcolm Smith had intercepted a wayward Manning pass to return 69 yards
and he was to be named MVP although in truth there were many candidates
for the honor.
"This is an amazing team," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. "These guys would never take anything but winning this game."
Wilson, 25, was answering his critics in only his second year in the NFL. "It feels great to win this title," he said.
The franchise owner Paul
Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, said it was an "amazing feeling" to win
the 48th edition of the Super Bowl. Seattle had been beaten in its only
previous Super Bowl appearance by Pittsburgh in 2006.
Fears of freezing
conditions which had dominated the pre-match talk proved unfounded with
the kickoff temperature of 49 degrees (9.4 Celsius) positively balmy.
It was 10 degrees warmer
than the coldest-ever Super Bowl from 1972 in New Orleans, but Manning
and his team were caught cold from the very start.
Denver made a hash of
its first offensive drive. Broncos center Manny Ramirez's snap flew over
Manning's head and Knowshon Moreno was forced to dive on the ball in
his own end zone for a safety and two points for Seattle.
Manning shook his head
as he returned to the bench and he proceeded to spend much of the
opening quarter warming his seat as Seattle took a stranglehold.
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But the Broncos defense
held up well to at least deny Seattle a touchdown, the further scoring
coming from a pair of field goals from Steven Hauschka to make it 8-0.
Towards the end first quarter Manning was intercepted by Seattle safety Kam Chancellor at the Denver 39.
It eventually led to the
first touchdown for Seattle as Marshawn Lynch forced his way over from
close range, showing typical strength.
It got worse for the
37-year-old veteran Manning as Seattle pressure forced him into another
errant and off balance pass which was intercepted by Smith.
He ran it back 69 yards for the second TD for the Seahawks and with the extras from Hauschka it was 22-0 at the half.
It was scarcely
believable that a team which had set an NFL scoring record with 606
points in regular season had failed to make a 20-yard play during the
opening half and Super Bowl history was against a team coming back from
such a deficit.
Denver was left with 30
minutes to reflect on its disastrous start as Hawaiian singer Bruno Mars
delighted 82,000 fans in the Metlife Stadium in the much vaunted
halftime show.
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The clean cut Mars
rounded off his solo act with his song "Treasure," before being joined
by rockers The Red Hot Chili Peppers for their "Give It Away" -- which
ironically summed up some of Denver's efforts on the pitch.
The combination
certainly did rock but the corporations paying up to $4 million for an
advertising slot during the Super Bowl must have been hoping for a
revival by the Broncos for fear of the team's supporters switching off
their televisions in disgust.
Some hope.
It got even worse
straight from the kickoff as the quicksilver Percy Harvin returned for
fully 87 yards for the Seahawks to effectively end the game as a
contest.
Harvin had played only
two games all season after injury, but danced through a jaded Denver
defense to score his team's third and decisive touchdown.
Seattle quarterback
Wilson had played a quietly effective game and his pass found Jermaine
Kearse, who eluded some more weak defense to add the fourth TD towards
the end of the third quarter before Demaryius Thomas finally got Denver
on the scoreboard.
He picked off a pass
from Manning -- his 12th catch a Super Bowl record -- but it was to
prove too little too late as his team trailed 36-8 going into the final
quarter.
A chance to salvage
further pride was snuffed out at the start of the fourth when Wilson
found Doug Baldwin just short of the end zone and he wriggled his way
through.
It completed the scoring
with the Seattle celebrations started well in advance of the final
whistle -- coach Carroll getting the traditional dowsing from his
charges.
By contrast, it proved a
miserable night for his Denver counterpart John Fox, whose hopes of a
reported $1 million winning bonus were in tatters almost from the first
play, while the result will throw Manning's future in doubt, with talk
of retirement.
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