Baldwin, Seahawks saw Super Bowl blowout coming

By Brady Henderson

Surprised that an unprecedented Super Bowl matchup turned out to be a complete mismatch?

The Seahawks weren’t.

“I sat next to Kam Chancellor and we’re eating pregame meal together and basically we just said we thought we were going to blow them out,” receiver Doug Baldwin told 710 ESPN Seattle’s “Bob and Groz” on Tuesday. “And it’s not an overconfident, cocky-type attitude. It’s just when you’re playing in the Super Bowl you’ve got to have confidence in your abilities, and for whatever reason this whole team was very confident that we were going to come out and [be] successful.”

This was what the same sentiment several Seahawks shared after beating Denver 43-8 for the third-largest blowout in Super Bowl history. They set a few Super Bowl records along the way, including the quickest score (12 seconds in) and the most consecutive points to start a game (36).

It was a shock to just about everyone but them.

“We saw this coming,” defensive end Michael Bennett said Sunday. “Like I said, we never went into this game thinking we couldn’t win. We always knew that if we played the type of defense we can play then there is no offense that can play with us.”

Denver’s certainly couldn’t. This was the first Super Bowl matchup between the No. 1 offense in terms of both points scored and yards gained during the regular season and the No. 1 defense in both categories. After scoring more points than any team in NFL history during the regular season, the Broncos were actually outscored 9-8 by Seattle’s defense Sunday.

And after it was over, the only disappointment was that Seattle couldn’t pitch the first shutout in Super Bowl history.

“We thought we could hold them to zero points,” linebacker Bobby Wagner said.

Follow Brady Henderson on Twitter @BradyHenderson.