The second half – at least the final 29 minutes and 48 seconds of it – was an extended victory lap, an extra-large encore for an extra-large ensemble, and maybe that’s the way it should be when you are a sporting city like Seattle, when you have waited 35 years for a moment like this, for a season like this, for a team like this.
Thirty-five years since Gus Johnson and Downtown Freddie Brown and Dennis Johnson, since the Sonics went into Washington and won Game 5 and an NBA title. Thirty-five years in which the city nearly lost their baseball team, [ital] did [ital] lose their basketball team, in which a 116-win Mariners club ran into the dynasty Yankees and a 64-win Sonics squad collided with the dynasty Bulls.
So much waiting, so much heartache, so many sleepless-in-Seattle nights followed by Starbucks-fueled mornings, waiting for a team like these Seahawks, waiting for a game like this, for Super Bowl XLVIII.
“It’s a big deal,” Pete Carroll said, “to bring this home.”
A big deal and a bigger performance, capping a Super Bowl week in New York and New Jersey, the first time the Big Game ever visited the Big Town. It ended 43-8, and even that extraordinary spread didn’t seem to tell the story properly. That’s how thoroughly this beating was. That’s how completely the Seahawks dominated the Broncos.
They gave the MVP to Malcolm Smith because they had to give it to somebody, and Smith did pick off Peyton Manning late in the second quarter, brought it back 69 yards to the end zone, turning what still seemed like a manageable 15-0 game into a 22-0 rout.
But it was linebacker Earl Thomas who put words to what everyone inside MetLife Stadium, all 82,529, were feeling.
“Who did you think was MVP?” he was asked.
“Everyone,” he replied. “From top to bottom.”
Let that serve as the thing we’ll remember these Seahawks by, that this might have been the single-hardest MVP ever culled from a winning roster because there were so many candidates. There was Smith, sure, with that huge pick-six, one of three Seahawks (along with safety Kam Chancellor and linebacker Bobby Wagner) to register 10 tackles, the whole defense frighteningly speedy, harassing everyone in orange start to finish.
There was Harvin, whose TD to start the second half might’ve sent some Broncos fans scurrying to the exits (both to avoid witnessing the carnage and to avoid a repeat of the steam-room-on-the-third-rail trains that turned the Secaucus station into a hub of pregame anger and aggravation).
And, of course, there was Russell Wilson, who became the third-youngest quarterback to win the Super Bowl, a former third-round selection picked 18 spots behind Denver’s [ital] backup [ital] quarterback, Brock Osweiler. It’s a testament to how balanced Seattle’s heroics were – and how multiple the heroes were – that it was almost easy to overlook Wilson’s key numbers: 206 passing yards, two touchdowns, zero turnovers, a 123.1 passer rating.
“The defense was relentless,” Wilson, all 5-foot-11 of him, said. “Offensively we were clicking on all cylinders. That’s what we wanted to be, especially the last game of the season. We want to be champions every day.”
On the day that mattered most, they were certainly that. It was the Broncos who seemed smaller than the moment right away, when center Manny Ramirez’ snap sailed over Manning’s head and settled in the end zone for a safety and a 2-0 lead, the fastest points ever registered in a Super Bowl.
“When you fumble the first snap,” Wagner said, “maybe that means you’re scared of the defense.”
And there was Carroll, of course, who suffered one of the worst losses a coach can suffer 19 years ago, across the parking lot at the old stadium, Dan Marino’s fake spike jamming a virtual stake through his career as the Jets’ coach. There was Carroll, returning to North Jersey, this time with his greatest team, joining Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson as the only coaches to win a Super Bowl and a college title.
Carroll, who as much as anybody seemed to understand from the moment he was hired how much this would mean to Seattle.
“I can’t wait to get back there,” Carroll said, “so we can give them this trophy.”
The wait was long enough, 12,665 days since June 1, 1979, since the last time Seattle sat alone atop the sporting world. That was an all-caps TEAM, too, seven players averaging 11 points, unselfish players galore. Thirty-five years later, the Seahawks channeled those old Sonics for one spectacular day. It was worth the wait.