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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
Seattle Seahawks routed Denver Broncos Sunday 43-8 in one of the most one-sided contests in Super Bowl history to win the coveted Vince Lombardi trophy for the first time.
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 game 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.
Read: Weather improves ahead of Super Bowl XLVII
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.
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.
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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.
