Sizzling Synergy Defeats the North Carolina Panthers

Peyton Manning, Quarterback
Denver Broncos

The Super Bowl game just finished, with Denver Broncos winning over the North Carolina Panthers by a score of 24 - 10.   I didn't have a lot of loyalty to either team, but I figured the Panthers would win.   They had the best record in the NFL regular season.  However, I did kind of lean towards Denver, so that Peyton Manning could retire with a second Super Bowl ring.  He is the oldest quarterback in the NFL, and can't keep this up much longer.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have minded a North Carolina win.  They are a new team, a young team, and they are good!  I felt that they deserved to win.  Alas, what I felt didn't matter to the Denver defense, who are the major factor in who won Super Bowl 50.  This defense was possibly the best to ever play the game.  They were incredible.

How does one team's defense get to be preternaturally good?  Or one rock band, like the Beatles were, or a company like Apple, or any other human effort requiring cooperative effort towards common goals?

I have heard that the invisible factor is synergy.  It is a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.  I think that's what the Denver defense is -- a synergistic entity, where each member brings out the best in the others.  They inspire each other to greater achievement with a kind of mental chemistry, a belief in themselves and each other.  It is this chemistry that makes them better than other football teams  all other factors being equal (experience, health, size and speed, etc).  Of course, great coaching and intensive training are part of it, but these are factors that create the chemistry, not the chemistry itself.

Although the Panthers have a very strong offense, they had never before met a defense like that of the Denver Broncos.  It must be humbling, stunning and disillusioning to think you are God's gift one day, and learn the next day that you aren't as great as you thought you were.  However, such a disillusionment can be a spur to greater achievement.  Two years ago, the Seattle Seahawks utterly humiliated the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 48, by a score of 43 - 8.  The Broncos couldn't have looked more foolish and feckless if they had taken the field individually dressed like Bozo the Clown.  But here we are two years later, and it's a different story.

Congratulations to the Denver Broncos!