Oh, yes. It was bad. It was brutally bad, epically bad, relentlessly bad.
Was it historically bad?
We need to investigate this. As you no doubt know, sprinkled amid the horse-and-puppy ads, the Jerry-and-George ads, between the Tebow ads and the Red Hot Chili Peppers celebrating the 10th anniversary of Janet Jackson’s nipple slip by showing off four times as many during the halftime show … amid all of that, the Seahawks stomped the Broncos, 43-8, and a day later we are consumed with two things:
1. The reality that, after thousands of games since 1920, this was the first NFL game that ever ended by that score, 43-8. The good folks at fivethirtyeight.com came up with that, and since Nate Silver and Co. are numerical Nostradameses, I’d go with that as gospel.
2. Just how bad was it?
Well, it’s snowing like hell, it’s gray and miserable, it isn’t like we can better use our time working on a suntan, so why shouldn’t we try to figure this out reasonably, rationally and logically and determine where it stands historically?
OK. Let’s go with the candidates. We aren’t like the folks at fivethirtyeight.com, we don’t know from logarithms and algorithms, we can only go with our eyes and our guts, and we follow the wise sentiments of former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who famously declared he couldn’t define pornography but “I know it when I see it.”
So in chronological order, these are the worst of the 48 Super Bowls that need to be heard from when determining the dog of dogs, the dreg of dregs:
Super Bowl VI: Cowboys 24, Dolphins 3 – Miami would bounce back soon enough. But they looked like the JV against Roger Staubach and Duane Thomas.
Super Bowl XII: Cowboys 27, Broncos 10 – You’ll notice a pattern when it comes to the Broncos and Super Bowls. Just a warning.
Super Bowl XVIII: Raiders 38, Redskins 9 – And thus were we ushered in to a rash of some unwatchable, indescribably bad Super Bowls.
Super Bowl XX: Bears 46, Patriots 10 – As colorful and fun as the Bears were, there was nothing colorful and/or fun about this dull beatdown.
Super Bowl XXII: Redskins 42, Broncos 10 – A strike season probably deserves a stinkeroo to end it, and luckily Denver made the game.
Super Bowl XXIV: 49ers 55, Broncos 10 – This one was 41-3 at one point – and the Niners still outscored the Broncs in garbage time, 14-7.
Super Bowl XXVII: Cowboys 52, Bills 17 – Really, we could include all three Bills games post-Norwood, but why pile on?
Super Bowl XXIX: 49ers 49, Chargers 26 – All week the nation warned the Chargers about Jerry Rice. He scored a TD on the game’s third play.
Super Bowl XXXV: Ravens 34, Giants 7 – The fourth time Baltimore and New York met for a championship. The others were a wee bit better.
Super Bowl XXXVII: Buccaneers 48, Raiders 21 – You think Peyton Manning had a rough day Sunday? Rich Gannon threw three pick-sixes.
Super Bowl XLVIII: Seahawks 43, Broncos 8 – After 10 straight competitive games … well, THIS.
So that’s 11 awful games out of 48, barely less than a quarter of the Super Bowls, and that’s not a terrible percentage on the whole. So let’s get it to five. Here’s the six that get my ax, which places them in the really awful place of Super Bowl purgatory: horrible games that weren’t horrible enough.
CHOPPED: Cowboys-Dolphins, because it was Dallas’ time after so many big-game failures and because it probably helped inspire history, since Miami wouldn’t lose again for another 18 months. … Cowboys-Broncos, because it could’ve been a lot worse, and some will still tell you Butch Johnson’s TD catch wasn’t really a catch. … Bears-Patriots, because the Bears really were that good, and sometimes when really good meets really pedestrian, 46-10 is just what naturally happens. … Redskins-Broncos, because the Broncos actually led 10-0 before Doug Williams, Timmy Smith and Co. simply steamrolled them with 35 second-quarter points (and also because “The Wonder Years” debuted afterward, which made up for the football felonies that preceded it). … 49ers-Chargers, because the Chargers were 18 ½-point underdogs, so all they did was play exactly the way everyone expected they would … Giants-Ravens, because even if it was non-competitive, we have to give the ’00 Ravens the same due as the ’85 Bears.
So we have five. And this can go a lot of ways, you can study it, you can factor in results contrasted with point spreads, you can go with comparative analyses. Or you can simply go with your gut. And here’s where This One Gut ranks them, starting with the fifth-worst:
5. Super Bowl XXVII: Look, it was grotesque, and it allowed the Cowboys to return to the top of the mountain (and even allowed us all to foolishly – and temporarily – think Jerry Jones might be a force to be reckoned with), but the lasting image of this game is Don Beebe running down Leon Lett from behind. That has to be worth something, right?
4. Super Bowl XVIII: At the very least, we have the forever image of Marcus Allen galloping triumphantly through the Redskins defense. And there is also Jack Squirek’s pick-six just before the half that might even have rendered Joe Theismann speechless for a few moments.
3. Super Bowl XLVIII: It was bad. It was really, really bad. And when you factor in just how miserable an experience it was for the 26,000 or so who lived through the mass-transit fiasco, you can multiply it exponentially. Still, it would be unfair to rank this any lower because at least the Seahawks reported for work, and did so in a big, bad, brassy way. So there is that.
2. Super Bowl XXXVII: Not only were the Raiders slaughtered, but they were in chaos, too, thanks to Barrett Robbins’ exit and the fact that it was the very last Al Davis team that was anywhere close to respectability. It also made a folk hero out of Jon Gruden, little Chucky, who coached the Bucs and had built the Raiders.
1. Super Bowl XXIV: This may have been the 49ers’ crowning glory, but it was mostly just gory. The Broncos going 0-for-their-first-4 Super Bowls and 0-for-3 under John Elway and looking like an NFL Europe team. Joe Montana and Jerry Rice were superb, but they looked like they were running 7-on-7s in August. The cream of the crap.