Super Bowl XLIX (If you don’t care about football don’t read)
I took a good portion of last night to reflect on that final series the Seahawks had on offence and how the whole world is blasting the OC and Pete Carroll. I went to school today and had to listen to more and more blasting on the Seahawks. I had to bite my lip, I understand where they are coming from but you have to look into the series in great depth to truly understand what happened. Which takes a little bit of explaining and time, time I was not going to waste on people that I know whose minds are closed and just want to ridicule what they perceive on the surface.
So let’s jump right into the situation. Forgive me if a few specific details are a little off because I am writing this just off the top of my head. So Marshawn busts off a run that places the ball at the Patriots half yard line. The clock is somewhere around the 40 second mark continuing to tick. The Seahawks understandably would think that the Pats are going to start burning their timeouts to stop the clock to get the ball back with some sort of time to at least run a couple plays. Bellicheck doesn’t call timeout which was making me squirm in my seat because I was pulling for the Pats. Clock continues to tick down around the 26 second mark and Russel Wilson throws the pick which ultimately was the end of Seattle (and of course the offside on the goaline afterwards) People saying the Seahawks coaching staff wasn’t prepared for the situation? Yes, maybe they were taken aback when the Pats didn’t use that timeout to stop the clock. But the play call to throw that ball right after that Marshawn Lynch run is completely understandable. Seattle is sitting in that 2nd and goal situation with 1 timeout in their back pocket and they have ultimately 3 plays to use to convert for that game winning TD. The Pats had the box loaded on that 2nd down. If they had run the ball and somehow it gets stuffed. Clock continues to run obviously forcing the final timeout by Seattle. Then that leaves them in a third down situation in the same position with no timeouts. What do they do? Run the ball with Marshawn risk another stuff and a very hurried 4th down play? No Seattle had it planned right, they had 3 downs to work with, 1 timeout to use, they chose to run a quick slant hit with the slot receiver. The route just happened to be jumped and the pass got away from Wilson. What happens in that play 99% of the time? Best case scenario, you get your go ahead td with that low risk play. Normal situation it get’s batted down move on to third down with your time out still in your back pocket and then give it to marshawn for back to back carries. It just happened to get jumped and the worst case scenario played out. What I’m getting at is that it’s about maximizing your opportunities which Seattle carried out. It just happened that the execution was not there on that quick slant in the slot. Telling these coaches that they were not prepared for the situation? Are you kidding me? These are the big boys. These are the best coaches in the world. They were prepared, Marshawn was going to get his back to back carries if that 2nd down conversion plays out the way it should 99% of the time. It was a throw that got away from Wilson where he lead his WR a little too much and the route was jumped, and it wasn’t even at Revis of Brandon. Not to mention that the clock would be close zero if it happened to get to 4th down. This is all hypothetical what happens beyond that 2nd down that ended up in an interception. I love the play call and if I was the OC I would call the same thing the same way. You just have to believe that Russel Wilson isn’t going to turn the ball over there. And he is a player I could trust and would trust to make the right decision. He just needed to put the ball somewhere that only his WR could make a play on it. Every play the world wanted to see was going to be run right after that throw. They just wanted to get that extra play into the game without putting them in a rushed situation for 3rd and 4th down with that timeout in use. Those are my thoughts tell me what you think.
brianbrander 