To all of the Seahawks fans and just football fans (like me) out there
… blaming Pete Carroll for not running the ball on the one yard line with 20 seconds left, sit down, I’m gonna explain Pete’s play call to you.
First off, let me explain I am in no way a Seahawks fan (in fact I’m happy they lost, and personally I can’t stand Pete Carroll), but in defense of Pete Carroll’s play call, it should first be notes that 5 times during the regular season the Seahawks had been on the one yard line or closer and handed it off to Lynch, and he only made it into the endzone once. The other four times he was stopped or even driven back for a loss. The Patriots were showing redzone run defense, meaning they were expecting a run, so naturally he decided to call a pass play (a pick play to be specific, which if the pick had be executed correctly, none of you would be crying about this, a touchdown would have been scored, and all of you would be celebrating a Seattle Super Bowl victory) which actually made sense since he still could have ran it with Lynch on 3rd and 4th down.
Remember that the Seahawks only had one timeout left, and if he ran it on 2nd down and Lynch got stopped, they would have been forced to burn their last timeout since the clock wouldn’t stop and there was only 20 seconds left on the clock. Not to mention after an unsuccessful run play on 2nd down like that, with no more timeouts left, you’re really limiting yourself since you can’t afford to run it again. If Lynch gets stopped again on 3rd down with no timeouts left, there won’t be any way to stop the clock and more than likely you don’t even get a shot at 4th down, the clock would’ve run out, and it would be game over at that point. Can you imagine if that happened 12s? If your head coach did run the ball with no timeouts left and somehow Lynch doesn’t make it in and time just runs out, and that’s how you lose the Super Bowl? Carroll just did what was most logical in the situation from a coaching perspective, which is exactly what his job is. Not that it matters to all of you millions upon millions of armchair coaches who are all ranting and raving on how they would’ve just handed it off to Lynch if they were the coach lol.
Also, I might note that the entire way the country is approaching this is incredibly disrespectful to Belichick and the Patriots (whom I also both hate, but I respect them like I do the Seahawks). Remember, the Seahawks may have been on the one yard line, but they were facing a Belichick defense, and Bill Belichick is already known as one of the greatest defensive minded coaches to ever coach the game. It’s also very disrespectful to Malcom Butler who made a damn near impossible play on what was a pretty well thrown ball by Russell Wilson. Seriously, it wasn’t a perfect pass, could’ve been a bit better, but it wasn’t like Wilson choked and threw a duck. Butler got there at the exact perfect moment to make a play on the ball and intercept it. He deserves credit, because if he had gotten there a split second later than he actually had, he wouldn’t have been able to fight his way to the ball in front of Ricardo Lockette to pick it off, and at best, would’ve just been able to stick his arm in to maybe cause an incompletion, and at worst, Ricardo Lockette catches the ball and it’s a touchdown and all of you people crying right now about how they should’ve handed the ball off to Lynch would be celebrating a Seahawks Super Bowl win right now.
On a final note, since all of you are talking about the hypothetical situation of handing the ball off to Marshawn Lynch and him scoring the game winning touchdown, I’ll remind you of another very real hypothetical situation of Lynch not scoring the touchdown to win the game, but fumbling lol. I know Beastmode doesn’t fumble often, but it could’ve happened, none of you know for sure. If it had happened I know none of you would be saying anything like this.
