SANTA CLARA, Calif. – On the sixth snap of Cam Newton's Super Bowl, Von Miller charged at him from the edge, hit him face first and promptly ripped the football out of his hands. Just tore it out.

This was grown man stuff. This was violent, blunt-force defense. This was the best player on the Denver Broncos confronting the best player on the Carolina Panthers, and just taking what he wanted – the ball, the Super Bowl, his football soul for the next few hours.

"That play did it," Denver linebacker Brandon Marshall said. "That play rattled [Newton]. We got in his head like that. We got in his mind. He hasn't been harassed like that all season."

View photos Cam Newton is sacked by Von Miller during the first half of Super Bowl 50. (AP) More

You may never see a defensive player dominate a football game like Miller dominated Super Bowl 50 in leading the Broncos to a 24-10 victory. It wasn't just the six tackles, the 2½ sacks and the two forced fumbles that produced Denver's only two touchdowns.

This was some unholy stuff, balletic brutality that made him the most important player defensively and offensively – the Super Bowl 50 MVP was far more responsible for Denver's points scored than Peyton Manning.

Maybe more than anything, though, Miller proved to his teammates exactly what they suspected – that for all his size and speed and daps and dances, Newton was capable of being shredded like a paper MVP. Oh, they respected his ability. They didn't trust anything else.

Not the 17-1 record. Not the stats, such as the 31.25-points-a-game average (plus 80 more in two playoff games). Not all the highligh- reel stuff.

"He just hasn't faced nobody," cornerback Chris Harris Jr. said. "We looked at their schedule. They played the AFC South. They played the, what conference are they in? I don't know what division they're in."

The NFC South.

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"They haven't played nobody man," Harris continued. "So you look at the schedule and we're the first dogs they've played."

And all Denver needed was its biggest dog, its best dog to go prove the point. The Broncos felt like if someone could stand up to Newton, eye to eye, will to will, then everything would crumble. Newton plays the game with great passion and emotion, it can power him to greatness; it can also leave him in doubt and depressed.

He isn't your protype quarterback, your Tom Brady. At 6-foot-5, 245 pounds – with two inches on Miller – he thrives on winning physical confrontations. What would happen if he didn't, though? A guy like Brady has learned to take it, shrug it off and move on. Cam might be different.

Miller has a pack of wild men around and behind him, ones looking for a clue that their suspicions had been correct.

That first sack and strip caused the ball to bounce into the end zone where Denver's Malik Jackson pounced on it, giving the Broncos a 10-0 lead and leaving Cam to shuffle off, head down.

That, the Broncos said, is when they knew they had Newton, knew that he knew he was playing a whole other level now and what worked during the regular season wouldn't now.

Soon there were soaring passes and poor decisions and a quarterback who couldn't find a rhythm. There were sacks and sacks and sacks, seven total (one taken by Ted Ginn Jr.). There were punts and punts and punts, seven of those also. The first half ended with a crushing blast courtesy of DeMarcus Ware. There were a few times Newton was slow to rise.

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