Mike Klis Is Still Not Taking the Broncos Super Bowl Loss Very Well

We first heard from Mike Klis when he stated the key to winning the Super Bowl is to lose games. Well, the Broncos dutifully did as he suggested and lost the Super Bowl, but that probably doesn't count as what Klis was talking about. Then we heard from Mike Klis when he started dropping excuses/reasons for the Broncos Super Bowl loss. He was acting like an angry fan-boy who couldn't handle that his favorite team lost the Super Bowl. Well, Mike is still acting like a baby and still not taking the Broncos Super Bowl loss very well. He's very excited for the Broncos to face the Seahawks twice (yes, he is including the abomination that is an NFL preseason game) so the Broncos can exact revenge. Because we all know a victory in Week 3 is directly equal to a Super Bowl victory. It's pretty much the same thing. My apologies to those who read Mike Klis in the Denver area. He sounds hideous. I'm sure all in the Denver area get tired of his schtick.

Can't anybody tell those mouthy Seahawks in Seattle to shut up?

I wasn't aware the Seahawks were still talking junk about the Broncos and their Super Bowl victory over the Broncos. It sounds like Mike Klis is reminiscing rather than the reality being that the Seahawks are still rubbing their Super Bowl victory in...at least to my knowledge. 

"We really felt like we could knock the crud out of these guys," Carroll said shortly after 43-8. 

That was seven months ago. It's a new season. Let it go. Carroll was cocky after the Super Bowl victory and now he's stopped talking about it. Perhaps Mike Klis should take the hint and do the same. 

Seattle linebacker K.J. Wright said his team would beat the Broncos "90 out of 100. They might've got lucky those other 10 times."

I'm pretty sure Mike Klis used this exact quote in his last bitter, fan-boy column about the Broncos losing to the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. If he's going to write a column which starts off insinuating the Seahawks are still being "mouthy" and not shutting up, then he may want to find new quotes that show this to be truth. Otherwise, this column is just message board material. Actually, it's worse than message board material because it's intended to be sports journalism. 

Act like you've won it before. Oh, wait. They hadn't. 

What a burn. Act like the Broncos have won it in the last 15 years or don't have a 2-5 record in Super Bowls. Nothing against the Broncos, but a team that has gone 2-5 in the Super Bowl doesn't exactly have room to taunt a team that has gone 1-1 in Super Bowls and just manhandled the 2-5 team in the Super Bowl. "Count the rings" usually feels like a loser's argument coming from the loser of the Super Bowl.

"That's where they get their edge from," Broncos defensive tackle Terrance Knighton said. "They have a quarterback (Russell Wilson) who came in underrated. People don't talk about their offensive line. Sherman was a fifth-round pick. Then they have receivers with chips on their shoulders.

"That's how they make themselves feel better, or build their image. But they have the right talk."

The Seahawks incessant talk could hide some inferiority complex, but they are the reigning Super Bowl champions. To shut them up, you have to beat them. The Seahawks will have the right talk until they can no longer back that talk up.

Chest-thumping became cheap shot, though, when another windbagged Seattle linebacker, Bobby Wagner, took the bait from ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, a loquacious man himself.

"They looked scared out there," Wagner said. "Nobody wanted to catch the ball. Nobody wanted to come up the middle. ... They were very timid."
 
Bobby Wagner said these things back immediately after the Super Bowl. Come on, write a new article and don't just take the same quotes from the old less-than-message board material article and claim the Seahawks are still talking shit. No one needs to close the Seahawks big mouths because they aren't running their mouths anymore. 

It's correct to say Seattle destroyed the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. Beat them up. Bullied them.

But scared to come up the middle? Demaryius Thomas set a Super Bowl record with 13 catches — averaging 9 tough yards per reception.

It's correct to say Demaryius Thomas did have these 13 catches for 9 yards per reception, but that's a little misleading. Here is the funny part, Mike Klis knows it's misleading but doesn't really care. 

Granted, the record meant nothing. Many of those catches were in garbage time. But it does mean Wagner's claim is a lie.

Granted the record that Mike Klis just recited as if it meant something in response to Bobby Wagner's comments made 7 months ago means nothing to him, but wouldn't it be cool if this record did mean something? 

Let's look at Demaryius Thomas's catches to see if Wagner's claim is a lie. He's probably using hyperbole, but let's see the yardage of catches Thomas made, where he made them, and when he made them.

From the play-by-play: 

1- P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to DEN 40 for 2 yards (1st quarter)
 
2- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to DEN 22 for 6 yards (2nd quarter)
 
3- P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to DEN 25 for 3 yards (2nd quarter)
 
4- P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to DEN 37 for 7 yards (2nd quarter)
 
5- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to DEN 40 for 1 yard (2nd quarter)
 
6- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to SEA 34 for 9 yards (2nd quarter)
 
7- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass deep left to D.Thomas to SEA 43 for 19 yards (2nd quarter)
 
8- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to SEA 46 for 4 yards (3rd quarter)
 
9- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to SEA 43 for 3 yards (3rd quarter)
 
10- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to SEA 44 for 10 yards (3rd quarter)
 
11- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass deep left to D.Thomas to SEA 21 for 23 yards (3rd quarter)
 
12- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas for 14 yards (3rd quarter)
 
13- P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to DEN 45 for 17 yards (4th quarter)

So Mike Klis is partially wrong. 7 of the 13 catches Thomas made were in the first half, not garbage time. Thomas did have more yardage in garbage time though.

Thomas caught four passes over the middle for gains of 2, 3, 10, 17 yards. 
Thomas caught three passes on the right for gains of 6, 1, and 9 yards. 
Thomas caught 6 passes on the left for gains of 3, 7, 19, 4, 23, and 14 yards. 

Thomas averaged 8 yards per catch in the middle, 5.3 yards per catch on the right, and 11.7 yards per catch on the left. It's not right to negate one of the catches but I think it's important to know his average in the middle would have been 5 yards per catch if the last catch in the fourth quarter when it was a 43-8 game wasn't counted. So Thomas does seem to have gotten more yardage in garbage time, but not more receptions. I don't believe the Broncos were scared to come over the middle, but Thomas did gain 71 of his 118 yards in the second half when the Seahawks were playing a softer defense. His average yards per catch was 6.7 in the first half. It's impossible to know if the Broncos were scared or not, but the numbers reflect while Thomas caught the ball for longer gains in the second half, in the first half when the game wasn't entirely decided the Seahawks had managed to keep his gains to a minimum.

It's nearly impossible to know if Wagner's claim is a lie anyway and it doesn't really matter. 

Wes Welker caught eight passes. He receives between the hash marks.

Welker's catches during the Super Bowl: 

1- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to DEN 25 for 5 yards (1st quarter)

2- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 43 for 16 yards (2nd quarter)

3- 1st and 10 at SEA 43 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 38 for 5 yards (2nd quarter)

4- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker to DEN 37 for 14 yards (3rd quarter)

5- 1st and 20 at DEN 10 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to DEN 13 for 3 yards (3rd quarter)

6- 1st and 10 at DEN 41 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker to SEA 47 for 12 yards (3rd quarter)

7- 1st and 10 at SEA 36 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker pushed ob at SEA 14 for 22 yards (3rd quarter)

8- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 47 for 7 yards (4th quarter)

Five of Welker's eight catches were over the middle. So for the sake of fairness I'm not going to leave out an assertion Mike Klis makes that has merit. It doesn't seem the Broncos were scared to go over the middle. If that's his big victory coming from the Super Bowl, that Bobby Wagner exaggerated in making this statement, then I hope it's a great moral victory for Klis. 

It wasn't a case of intimidation," said Broncos tight end Julius Thomas, who caught four Super Bowl passes. "That's certain. When you win and you're the Super Bowl champion, you've earned the right to say whatever you want. That's something that can't be taken away from them.

Yeah, but Mike Klis wishes the Seahawks would stop mouthing off about their Super Bowl victory, even though they haven't really mouthed off about it publicly in several months. In Mike's fan-boy head, the Seahawks are still chirping about intimidating the Broncos. It's causing him to go insane. 

The Broncos and Seahawks meet again in their preseason opener, Aug. 7 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. The starters won't play long. Just long enough to get some pushing and shoving in.

But if the Broncos win this game, then revenge is Mike Kli---I mean, revenge is the Broncos to savor!

The teams meet again for keeps in Week 3 of the regular season.

Yes, this regular season game is "for keeps." The season ends after this game is played. If the Broncos are able to defeat the Seahawks in Week 3 then the Super 48 title will be handed to Denver and the Seahawks will forever be shamed. This Week 3 game is "for keeps," just as long as the other 13 games each team plays, as well as the playoffs, aren't counted as being part of the 2014 NFL season, which apparently is how Mike Klis views it. 

That game will be played in Seattle. Home of the gloats.

I'm pretty sure the Seahawks stopped gloating a few months ago. The reality in Mike's head isn't adjusting well to this.

The visiting team's locker room figures to have a filled bulletin board.

Does the visiting team's locker room even get a bulletin board to hang comments the home team has made in the past on? I feel like a bulletin board isn't provided to the visiting team. Maybe the comments will be written on the whiteboard in the Broncos locker room. Even if the Broncos beat the Seahawks 43-8, it won't make up for the Super Bowl loss. It may be revenge, but it will be a bittersweet revenge. Well, except for a sportswriter like Mike Klis who seems to think a regular season game counts as playing "for keeps." 

"Me, personally, I'm tired of hearing about it: Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks," Knighton said. "We accomplished some things last year. Not everything we wanted, but we took a step forward from the year before. We're going to reload, and when the time comes, we'll be ready to play them. And it's a good thing we play them twice."

And when/if the Broncos beat the Seahawks we can be sure that Mike Klis will write a column about how the loud mouthed Seahawks have finally been shut up, despite the fact they quit talking smack about the Broncos a few months ago, and he will believe revenge was really sweet and the teams are now considered "even." Good for him. It won't be true, of course. If the Seahawks win that Week 3 game, which is apparently the most crucial regular season game ever, then I'm sure Mike Klis will complain further about the Seahawks big mouths...or just blame it all on injuries.