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Broncos' Wes Welker: We didn't prepare well for noise

The botched snap on the first play from scrimmage of Super Bowl XLVIII started the avalanche, which engulfed the Denver Broncos.

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Peyton Manning called the error "nobody's fault" while center Manny Ramirez took "full responsibility" for the blunder.

According to wide receiver Wes Welker, the Broncos weren't prepared for the noise at the start of the game.

"That's the way the start of any Super Bowl is: It's going to be loud," Welker said, per TheMMQB.com. "The fans are going to be yelling. They don't really know why they're yelling -- it's just the start of the Super Bowl. We didn't prepare very well for that, and it showed."

Welker fell to 0-3 in Super Bowls, so his comment is clearly coming from a place of experience and probably frustration.

It's interesting to note that in Wednesday's pool report from the Broncos' practice, USA Today's Jarrett Bell told us that John Fox -- who previously had been to Super Bowls with the Carolina Panthers as a coach and the New York Giants as a defensive coordinator -- turned down the simulated crowd noise during practice.

"Normally, it's about five times louder than that," Fox said at the time. "It's not an away game. The ones I've been to haven't been too loud. So we just kind of practice with what we think we're going to get."

(Ummm ... oops?)

We'll probably never know if Welker was directly criticizing the dismissal of the potential crowd noise by Fox when he said his team wasn't "prepared." However, it was clear the Broncos weren't ready for the Seahawks fans to be that noisy at the start of the game.

*The "Around The League Podcast" recapped Super Bowl XLVIII live from MetLife Stadium right after the game. *

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