Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
The ending of Super Bowl XLIX was a disappointing disaster for the Seahawks. They snatched defeat from the jaws of certain victory. The play call on their final play will be anguished over for years, if not decades.
Right now, it’s easy to say the play call was a mistake. It was, and we all know it. It also wasn’t a single mistake. That fateful interception happened because of of a series of mistakes by the team’s coaches and its quarterback.
It was 2nd down at the 1-yard line. The Seahawks went with 3 wide receivers and TE Luke Wilson, with Lynch in the backfield with Wilson. The idea was to keep New England in the nickel, and let Lynch walk into the end zone against a spread-out defense.
Before we talk about the play, here are a couple of items that clearly factored into the decision:
- On 5 Lynch runs from the 1-yard line this season, he’d scored just once. He was stopped for no gain twice, and lost yardage twice. Seattle simply isn’t good at goal line blocking.
- Seattle’s blocking against “goal line” defensive packages was abysmal all year. It was why Seattle struggled on “- and inches” scenarios this season.
- There were exactly zero interceptions thrown from the 1-yard line all season in the NFL. None, even in a league where Jay Cutler exists. This clearly wasn’t an outcome that Seattle considered.
The Patriots didn’t comply. The countered with their goal line defense that included 9 men in the box to try and stop Lynch. That means that Seattle has 6 blockers for 8 run defenders. It also meant that the Patriots were in zero-coverage against Seattle’s receivers.
According to Pete Carroll, he told Bevell to call a pass play with the goal of “wasting a play” if they couldn’t get the TD. The team would then come back and run on third and fourth down, presumably with different personnel on the field.
Bevell then called a the slant-corner combination play the Seahawks ran. Kearse ran his pick, but Lockette was beaten to his spot and the ball was picked off. It sucks, but it happened.
The logical progression that led to the pass was sound, no matter how much we don’t want it to be. Play calling is an extremely complex process that begins days earlier in game-planning meetings. Anyone claiming that it is simple is only demonstrating their lack of football knowledge.
Everyone wanted to see Lynch get the ball in that situation, everyone. But why a run play that had zero chance of success? Lynch would have almost certainly lost yardage because the Patriots would have had multiple unblocked defenders in his face as soon as he got the ball.
Pete was right to waste the play and come back and run on third down. If the team had had more than one timeout, then they would have simply used one. As it was, they needed it in case the proposed 3rd down run wasn’t successful. Burning it here would mean Seattle would have had just 1 shot at the end zone.
The breakdown in all of this isn’t that Seattle threw the ball, it is in the pass play that was called. The play needed to be something to the boundary. A fade would have been ideal, or perhaps a play action boot to the right where Wilson has the option to run it in.
The slant simply isn’t something Wilson throws well. He never has. It is likely the only real downside to him being under six-feet tall. Seattle has to call it occasionally to force teams to defend it, but the goal line at the end of the Super Bowl isn’t the time for that.
As it is, Wilson never should have thrown the ball. Before he even sets to throw, the DB is crashing on the slant route. He needed to pull the ball down and look to Lynch, or try and get outside an run.
Wrong personnel led to pass over run. Wrong pass call led to players not being put in a position where their skills are best used. A poor read by the QB made the other mistakes come together in the worst possible outcome.
This was a team mistake through and through.