Quin brings up some good points in defending Seahawk coach Pete Carroll’s final offensive play-call in last night’s Super Bowl. There’s even a bipartisan consensus:
https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/status/562315744252551168
But the Washington Post’s Adam Kilgore makes another important point quite clear: The Patriots’ Bill Belichick put Carroll’s playcalling under pressure by deciding not to call a timeout at a crucial point.
Following wide receiver Jermaine Kearse’s are-you-kidding-me catch on the 5-yard line, Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch ran the ball to the 1 with 1:06 left.
Kilgore goes into greater detail, but the gist of the scenario is that the Patriots’ opting to let the clock run (rather than call a timeout to preserve time for a drive of their own) threw off Carroll’s decision-making process. While Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell were flipping through their playbooks and situational cheat sheets, the Seahawks, with just one timeout and three downs left, let the clock run down to 26 seconds and ultimately faced this situation:
If Seattle ran on second down and the Patriots stuffed them, the Seahawks would have needed to use their final timeout immediately, with about 20 seconds remaining.
The situation would have dictated their ensuing third down. The Seahawks would have no choice but to pass, or else they would have risked the clock running out on their season. The Patriots would have known this, too, which would have made the play far easier to defend. On a potential fourth down, the Seahawks would have had their entire playbook at their disposal.
It’s possible, if not likely, that Carroll passed on second down because he didn’t want to be in a position where the Patriots knew they would pass on third down. And that reality arose because Belichick kept his timeouts holstered.
With that all said, Carroll may have very well made the correct call against Belichick’s high-risk-high-reward gamesmanship. But New England’s decision to leave an extra man in the secondary (Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler) in on that play strongly suggests Belichick understood the situation he’d created.
Just as Carroll finds himself the butt of the second-guessing crowd today, Belichick would have surely been the goat of the Super Bowl for not using his timeouts had the Seahawks scored.
It’s a timeworn cliché that no game is decided on a single play, but last night’s showdown may have been about as close as we can get.