Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Seahawks coach Pete Carroll admits he’s learning the hard way after calling for a pass that was intercepted with victory in Super Bowl XLIX just one yard away. PHOENIX — The Seahawks players were either livid, incredulous or a little bit of both in the moments after what will be remembered as the worst play call in Super Bowl history. The heart and soul of their team, in many ways, has always been Marshawn Lynch. How, they wondered, with one yard and 26 seconds between them and a second straight championship, could he not get the ball?
That he didn’t was shocking to everyone who saw it, even if it did seem to make some kind of bizarre sense to Seattle coach Pete Carroll and his offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell. Of course it did, because that’s the way it is in modern football, which too often becomes a game of matchups and percentages and desperately trying to out-think an opponent.
Sometimes a situation calls for some good, old-fashioned coaching from the gut.
That’s the way it used to be in the NFL. It’s one of the reasons Bill Parcells used to always say, “We are what we are.”
Even his best Giants teams in the late ’80s sometimes ran a variation of the same play, over and over, regardless of how the defense was set up in front of them. Their feeling was: This is what we do best. Try and stop it.
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It was simple, and if you had a good enough team, effective. Just don’t try to tell that to statisticians or even to many of today’s coaches and scouts — especially offensive coordinators.
Too often they’ll say, “We take what the defense gives us,” which sounds smart, except that it also means they’re letting the defense dictate the play. Sometimes the right thing to do is for the offense to dictate play — to do the thing that everyone knows is coming, even if the defense knows it, too.
And that’s what should’ve happened for the Seahawks on what turned out to be their final play of a 28-24 loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. The specific play call by Bevell wasn’t the issue — it really wasn’t terrible when you break it down on film. The problem is that Carroll out-thought himself for no reason.
He needed to step in, forget about the matchups that called for a pass play, and remember who the Seahawks are. He needed to do what everybody in the stadium, probably almost everybody watching on television, assumed he was about to do.
Receiver Doug Baldwin was one of the many in the Seattle locker room that tried to rationalize the call in a strict football sense, but even he gave up when he realized he wasn’t making any sense.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to make up an explanation. I really don’t know.”
To Carroll and Bevell it was so simple.
Carroll knew the Patriots would be in their goal-line defense, so he ordered a pass and Bevell dialed up a play he liked out of a three-receiver set. They still could have run, but that’s when matchups won the battle with logic and common sense because, as Carroll said, “It’s not the right matchup for us to run the football.” So he told Bevell to call his pass “really to kind of waste that play.”
A waste play. With 26 seconds left in the Super Bowl. From the 1.
Carroll never mentioned what everyone knows: that Lynch — who to that point in the game had 24 carries for 102 yards and a touchdown — might be the most powerful back in the NFL. He had just bulled his way for a 4-yard gain one play earlier. He only needed one more.
The more Carroll was asked about his inexplicable decision, the testier he grew. He pointed out several times how that play could’ve worked or the pass could have fallen incomplete, which would obviously have changed the story completely.
“We could have run it and got stuffed. We could’ve run it and scored. We could have scored against their goal-line. I know what could’ve happened,” Carroll said. “It just wasn’t a great football thought at the time.
“Great football is, ‘Let’s make sure we match up properly so we have our best chance to run it in and score.’”
No, their best chance was for the Seahawks to do what they do best, even if it was obvious to the entire civilized world.
Carroll needed to forget the matchups, to dare the Patriots to stop his best option. He should’ve ignored the charts and stats and matchups and all the trappings of modern football and just listened to what his gut and his instincts said.
“A very, very hard lesson,” Carroll said. “I hate to learn the hard way.”
When it comes to modern coaching, though, there rarely seems to be any other way.
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