Sometimes defenses come out on top, sometimes offenses do. I don't buy this idea in football. The Giants over the Bills. Advantage defense. Last year, Patriots over Seahawks. Advantage offense. It goes back and forth. There have been offensive shootouts between teams that went into the game with great defenses and average offenses. Think of Ravens v. 49ers a few years ago. Or Carolina v. Patriots in 2003.
In other words, I don't buy the premise here. I think it's wrong.
I think it depends on how good the defense is. Denver's defense was the best in the game. And while Carolina had the best offense, their best receiver was probably Greg Olson. Cam Newton was the majority of their offense. And then their top RB gets hurt right out of the shoot. That doesn't help. He came back in the game later, but wasn't much of a factor.
But still, Denver's defense basically put 14 points on the board.
Thing is, Carolina's defense was no slouch, either. They just couldn't have quite the same impact that Denver got from theirs.
There is no question that a great defense makes it awfully hard for a good offense to operate. But then, I'm not sure the Carolina offensive gameplan adequately accounted for how good the Denver defense played. They needed a greater dose of the Patriots "we aren't going to be able to run, let's just throw the ball every down, and throw a lot of short routes to pick up 5 yards at a time instead of running". They never did that and they needed to.