NEW YORK: Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos players and coaches counted on routines to get them through the final hours before Super Bowl 48 kickoff today.
Preparations that began with pre-season training camps in mid-July were set to culminate in the National Football League’s championship extravaganza at East Rutherford, New Jersey.
“We’re ready to go,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “I don’t know if it’s loose, but we’re where we are supposed to be. This is how we always prepare. This is the exact routine we always do and the guys did it perfectly.
“It has been great. It has been exactly what we hoped to get done. We are physically right and mentally right and we’re ready to go.”
Denver Broncos coach John Fox said he was not worried about the long hours between waking up and a 6:30pm kickoff.
“We’ve played a lot of (night) games. This is just another one,” Fox said. “It gets bigger on the outside, that’s true all through the playoffs, and this is probably the ultimate of that, but they have listened and managed it pretty good.”
Denver’s 37-year-old Peyton Manning, who could become the first starting quarterback to win Super Bowl titles with two different teams after leading Indianapolis to victory in 2007, has stressed maintaining routine to his teammates, only a handful of whom have ever been to a Super Bowl.
“As far as pre-game rituals go, I don’t do anything crazy like eat gummy bears four minutes before kickoff or something like that,” Broncos backup quarterback Brock Osweiler said.
“But as far as the quick review I do before kickoff, all of that is going to be the same. Peyton has preached it — keep your schedule as regular as possible.”AFP
