You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you run with the ball, you tackle the guy with the ball. Every now and then, the skinny guy on the team will trot out and try to kick the ball between two weird-looking yellow posts.
Bigger guys are better than smaller guys, faster guys better than the slower ones. The more you have of the bigger and faster guys, the better your chances at winning.
When you break it down to its simplest maxims, American football can be a fairly easy game to comprehend.
In Super Bowl 50, the Denver Broncos were a bigger, faster, stronger team than the Carolina Panthers. Of course they won, and we should have seen it coming.
Even though the Broncos’ 24-10 demoralisation of the Panthers is by most pundits’ standards considered an upset — Carolina were favoured by nearly all the prognosticators — perhaps it shouldn’t be.
How could we not see it coming?
Game report: Impenetrable Denver Broncos defence star of Super Bowl 50 win over Carolina Panthers
Sure, Cam Newton was the biggest, baddest dude in the league all year. The NFL even gave him their top individual prize for the showing. By his presence alone, Carolina should be favoured against most teams. They were the team with Newton. They would win this game. They should win this game.
But these Broncos did something the rest of the league proved unable to do all season: they stopped the unstoppable. A near-unanimous MVP, Newton is just one man after all.
He deserved every bit of that MVP award for a remarkable season, but it was evident watching his shaky performance that he underestimated Denver the way the rest of us did.
That’s our fault. Denver surrendered the fewest points, allowed the fewest yards and dominated the defending-champion Patriots two weeks prior in the AFC Championship Game. There was greatness right in front of us all along, we were just looking in the wrong place.
Gallery: Denver Broncos stun Carolina Panthers to win Super Bowl 50 — in pictures
The lasting story of Super Bowl 50 will likely revolve around the redemption — and likely swan song — of Peyton Manning. His story is a great one, to be fair.
After returning from injury mid-game in Week 17, he kept the reins from Brock Osweiller, capably managed each Denver play-off win while avoiding turnovers and did so while absolutely looking finished as a starting-calibre quarterback.
The fact that Manning can now retire as a two-time NFL champion completely changes the narrative of one of the greatest Hall of Fame campaigns American sport has ever seen.
While Manning is deserving of the praise, it’s not the true tale of Super Bowl 50. This was the victory of a great defence over a good-but-not-great offence, a tale we’ve seen told on screen year after year in the Super Bowl — the 1985 Bears, the 2001 Ravens, the 2007 Giants beating the undefeated Patriots thanks to their pass-rush. Heck, even these Manning-led Broncos only two years ago saw their prolific, record-breaking offence fall short to a better defence in the title game.
But this Denver team proved different from the one that was embarrassed by Seattle in Super Bowl 48.
Newton had to deal with Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware, TJ Ward and several other big, fast dudes who weren’t around two years ago, and helped turn the Broncos from a flashy offensive team into a defensive, championship juggernaut.
In Super Bowl 50, Denver were the bigger, faster team. It’s only right they won.
kjeffers@thenational.ae
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