The Seattle Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl 48, but honestly, the difference between the play of the two teams was wider than the score indicated. 

The Seahawks smothered the best offense in NFL history using relatively simple defensive concepts Seattle had been playing all year, not with any new looks or anything fancy from a mental aspect.

The Seahawks play largely a cover-3 defense, where each outside cornerback is responsible for covering their respective outside deep third of the field while a middle safety covers the middle third.

While Seattle safety Earl Thomas excels at covering the middle third because of his speed, that means Kam Chancellor often patrols the intermediate zone with the linebackers, while they too play an underneath zone defense.

In the below picture, Seattle shows a two-deep look at the snap which only serves as a pre-snap disguise before they break into their usual cover-3. 

Chancellor drops down from his initial deep position to serve as a "robber" in this case, which means he essentially spies the quarterback and tries to make a play on any intermediate crossing routes. The arrow is where he moves post-snap.

Manning fails to recognize Chancellor's robber positioning, and ends up nearly getting his receiver killed. Here's what happened:

Chancellor sees the play develop, then comes up from his robber position to make the huge hit on Demaryius Thomas. Beautifully executed scheme by Seattle. This was one of the first plays in the game, and really set the tone for what was to come.

Seattle stamped out the Denver offense playing cover-3 zone under all game long, and really limited the ability of Denver's receivers to gain yards after the catch, a skill that the the Broncos relied on all year long. The above play is another Denver crossing route that Seattle's underneath defenders crush.

And another, where Chancellor gets another huge shot on a Bronco receiver and eliminates any chance at yards after the catch.

In last week's Week 3 matchup against the Seahawks, the Broncos made sure they had a plan for Seattle's underneath, physical coverage and speed to the ball.

In terms of play selection, Denver still ran some--albeit a lot less--short crossers and screen passes throughout the game. But this time, they added a new wrinkle:

Instead of a simple crossing route, Denver added designed downfield blocking from its receivers to ensure Wes Welker wouldn't get popped by the underneath coverage (particularly Chancellor) the same way he did in the Super Bowl. The blockers circled above in red aren't even attempting to go out on routes--their purpose on this play is to screen (legally or ilegally, I'll leave that up for the refs to decide) the Seattle defenders downfield to shield Welker from those Seattle zone defenders. Here it is in practice, which proved quite effective:

Denver used the same concept later in the drive. As you can see, they took extra care to ensure Chancellor was blocked, or else he would have been in position to deliver a huge hit to Welker.

And the result:

Don't think for a second that this play design wasn't drawn up to combat any defense other than the Seahawks', and Denver smartly saved this play for late in the fourth quarter before unleashing it and catching Seattle off guard. It nearly helped win them the game, too.

Give the Broncos credit--they got beaten badly in the Super Bowl, but came back and made adjustments to fix their mistakes. This was a cool and effective play call, even though it may or may not be called offensive pass interference in the future. That's a sign of good coaching from the Broncos, and maybe teams that Seattle plays in the future will borrow this concept to help slow down the dynamic playmakers of the Seahawks' defense.

Reach Staff Reporter Andrew McKagan via e-mail here and on Twitter here.