In Super Bowl XLVIII, the Seahawks’ scoring snowballed. It started with a safety on the first play from scrimmage, continued with a couple of field goals in the first quarter, included both an offensive touchdown and a defensive touchdown in the second quarter, and it was all the way up to 36-0 by the time Percy Harvin returned the second-half kickoff for a touchdown.
As Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said this morning, that snowball was more like an avalanche.
“I think as we have seen in the past, sometimes games go, and sometimes it can be kind of like an avalanche,” Carroll said. “The scores start happening. Field position just tilts and everything goes your way. We were really ready. We were really ready for the opportunities. The first score, we had nothing to do with that one. [The safety] was just unfortunate for them on the snap and all. From that point on, we really seized the night. Whenever you play turnover football like that, it’s the formula that we try to live by. You get four turnovers and they get none; the game is going to go that way.”
The game got away from the Broncos faster than anyone could have expected. In what most people thought would be a close, back-and-forth Super Bowl, the Broncos were buried in an avalanche.