Defense will carry day — for Denver

The Broncos are 2½-point favorites over the Seattle Seahawks today, and there are important aspects of the matchup to analyze while ignoring the mild weather forecast in East Rutherford, N.J.

The Broncos and Seahawks both have had extraordinary 15-3 seasons filled with stretches of greatness and some days where they were not at their best. Seattle used its stout defense and conservative offense to routinely win the turnover battle. Denver’s stellar offense often gets most of the accolades, but its defense has come up big of late.

The old adage is that the No. 1-ranked defense usually beats the No. 1-ranked offense, but what if that offense is the best offense of all time?

In the 1989 season, the Broncos had the top-rated defense going into the Super Bowl and they faced perhaps one of the greatest offensive machines ever seen up to that point, the No. 1-ranked unit of the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers rolled, 55-10.

Granted, San Francisco was a 12-point favorite, and the Denver defense was undersized. The Seahawks’ spread deficit (2½) and size and speed of their defense make them more capable of stopping a high-powered offense than Denver was that day.

However, similar to that 49ers team, the Broncos’ offense this season has operated with amazing efficiency, scoring more points than any other team in NFL history, and doing so with just as much zest on the road as at home. The same can’t necessarily be said about the Seahawks.

At home, Seattle gets four points attached to its rating — the highest in the league — and rightly so. But on the road, the Seahawks are just a pretty good team. They struggled to win at Houston (23-20) and St. Louis (14-9), and lost at Indianapolis (34-28) and San Francisco (19-17). Even at home, Seattle stumbled a couple of times, needing overtime to beat then-winless Tampa Bay and losing straight up to Arizona in Week 16.

Obviously, the Seahawks recorded a few good wins by large margins, but over their past six games, the offense has sputtered, while credit for their 4-2 mark over that stretch goes entirely to the defense.

The best offense they faced all season was New Orleans, an opponent the Seahawks beat twice, but the Saints play well under their rating on the road, going 1-7 against the spread during the regular season.

The point I’m getting at here is Seattle has been able to get away with its dink-and-dunk offense and win 15 games because its defense has been feasting on offenses that aren’t exactly characterized as the most creative. The NFC West is the best division in football, but the four teams’ defenses mirror each other and the offenses rank as mediocre.

What I like about the Broncos is they sort of reinvented themselves in the latter stages of the season to prepare for postseason games that would be played outdoors. Manning drained the play clock down to the final seconds before snapping, which helped their past five games stay under the total, after going over in 11 of their first 13 games.

In each style, the fast and slow pace, Manning was equally effective. In its first 13 games, Denver scored more than 40 points six times. In the Broncos’ past five games, they never reached 40 and topped 30 points only twice, but that was by design.

Now they have given the Seahawks something to think about: Will they face the hurry-up offense from the first 13 weeks or the slow-down tempo from their past five games?

The Denver defense has looked much better when not on the field so much in a slower game. New England had one of the strongest running attacks in the league during the last quarter of the season, but the Patriots were held to 64 yards in the AFC Championship Game.

Slowing the game seems to be working for the Broncos, and with fewer possessions for each team, Manning still has an advantage.

Through 18 games, the Denver run defense is allowing only 97.5 yards per game. Seattle’s rush offense, a strength behind Marshawn Lynch, has averaged 132 yards per game. If the Broncos continue to dominate the trenches, the Seahawks will be in for a long day, because that means quarterback Russell Wilson will have to match scores with Manning, whose quick trigger will negate the Seattle pressure.

So, how might this game play out?

I think we’ll see Denver use a little bit of both offensive styles, beginning with a fast pace early that nets two touchdowns. With a 14-3 lead going into the second quarter, Manning goes into grind-the-clock mode, and then scores again on a seven-minute drive, making it 21-10 going to the half.

From there, it’s just a game of keep-away, with the Seahawks playing at a frantic catch-up pace they’re not used to, while the Broncos’ short passing attack and running back Knowshon Moreno grind down the clock.

It’s played evenly in the second half, 10-10, but in the end, the 31-20 score (over the total of 48) has everyone in the media saying it was a thorough beatdown, much like Denver’s low-scoring 26-16 victory over the Patriots two weeks ago.

Yes, a great defense usually does beat a great offense, but what about a good defense (Denver) against a mediocre offense (Seattle)? Or, how about the best offense ever against a great defense?

The Seahawks don’t have enough offense, so that’s the end of my tale, and I’m sticking with Manning and the Broncos to win and cover.

Micah Roberts, an analyst for “The Linemakers” on SportingNews.com and a former sports book director, won this season’s Las Vegas Review-Journal NFL Challenge with a 49-32-4 record against the spread.