Anybody that has watched any number of Broncos games this year will realize that Manning doesn't have great arm strength anymore and that whatever he has left tends to go south in a hurry in cold weather. What he has left is the fact that he sees the game better than anybody else, is a tremendous field general, creates mismatches for his offense, and is able to anticipate throws better than anybody else.
Against the Seahawks, he's going to have a number of problems. First, unlike most teams, we are able to matchup with the Denver WRs as well as have a reasonable option to cover the TE. There was a great article last week that explained why our defense is so good (http://grantland.com/features/whos-laughing-now/) in that it combines the best elements of zone and man defense. Since Manning can't push the ball down the field effectively, we'll probably be able to play more of a Cover 1 w/ both man and zone principals against Denver instead of a Cover 3 in order to take away Manning's preferred short throws and force him into testing his arm against the best secondary in football. Third, because we don't have to cheat to stopping the passing game, we will still be able to employ the numbers needed to slow down the Denver running game. Finally, the biggest challenge in Denver's passing game IMO is contending with their screen game ... which is often neutralized by defenses that have significant speed.
Defensively, Denver's taken massive injury hits on the DL this season and good teams for the most part have been able to successfully run against them. Their secondary has been a massive failure most of the year and given our ability to run the ball straight downhill, I expect that we'll get more than a few opportunities to hit them deep in the game with play action passes. Moreover, without Von Miller, the Denver pass rush is really lacking in the edge passer department compared to most of the teams that we've played over the last month that have done a good job in containing Russell Wilson inside the pocket and limiting his ability to compromise defenses with his ability to scramble. I don't anticipate that Denver will be able to adequately contain Wilson.
Seattle's defense is in my opinion often underrated given that they play things close to the vest to ensure that they don't make turnovers that compromise their defense. Special teams is a tremendous weapon for this team. Forcing any team to go the length of the field consistently against this defense will not be a winning formula. However, one consistency that this offense shows is the ability to make a handful of big plays during the game that often lead to scores. Where this offense gets dangerous is if the opposition isn't able to contain the Hawks in scoring off of 10+ play drives. We'll score a handful of points off of big plays. But if we can get 2-3 drives in the Super Bowl that are 10+ play drives, we'll get close to 30 points - which I'll take my chances with that and this defense.