SEATTLE – Never a doubt.
Right?
Steven Hauschka just laughed … after the game.
Minutes after missing a 29-yard field goal and having an extra point blocked, Hauschka trotted out onto the field for a 44-yard field goal attempt to give the Seattle Seahawks the lead late in a back-and-forth game with the Atlanta Falcons.
While the sellout crowd at CenturyLink Field held its collective breath, Hauschka said his mindset and his confidence were no different from any other trip out onto the field.
“I’m controlling what I can control, and that’s to attack the ball regardless of the situation,” Hauschka said. “I’m just so happy with the way we responded as a team, as a line, as a field-goal unit there at the end of the game.
“That was awesome,” he said.
Hauschka made the kick to put Seattle ahead 26-24 with 1:57 remaining in the game, and the defense made it stand up for an NFL victory Sunday.
Seattle’s kicking game seemed an unlikely source of drama in a game that pitted the NFL’s best offense against its best defense. Hauschka entered the game a perfect 8-for-8 on field-goal attempts and 7-for-8 on extra points.
But with two minutes left in Sunday’s game, a 44-yard field goal attempt seemed like anything but a sure thing.
On Seattle’s first drive of the fourth quarter, with Atlanta leading 24-17, Hauschka missed a 29-yard field goal wide left.
Hauschka generously said that he would have to look at the videotape to see what caused the miss, but it was clear that a poor snap from Nolan Frese to holder Jon Ryan disrupted the timing.
The snap was low and into Ryan’s hip, and Ryan had to pin the ball against the ground to gain control, which meant he set it up later than Hauschka was expecting.
Frese is a rookie who is replacing long-time long snapper Clint Gresham, and this was the first time a poor snap from him cost the Seahawks (4-1).
Ryan and Hauschka both talked to Frese on the sideline and told him to look ahead to the next one.
“Yeah, I talked to him. I’m an older guy, a bit of a leader,” said Ryan, an 11-year veteran who is also Seattle’s punter. “I wanted to tell him to shake it off.
“I said we’re going to have a game-winner coming up, so get ready for that one.”
Frese said he felt – and appreciated – the love.
“Nothing but support,” Frese said of the reaction he got on the sideline. “We’re a team. We’re a family. We’re disciplined. I felt nothing but support from everybody there, and I knew the rest of the guys had my back.”
After the missed field-goal attempt, Seattle’s defense forced a three-and-out, and the Seahawks offense went the length of the field for a touchdown.
The ensuing extra point would have tied the score at 24 with 4:43 left in the game.
Frese’s snap was perfect, but Atlanta’s Ra’Shede Hageman blasted through the line to block the kick and keep Atlanta (4-2) ahead 24-23.
The way Atlanta’s offense had been moving the ball in the second half, it seemed entirely possible that would be the decisive play.
But Seattle’s Earl Thomas intercepted a pass to set up the Seahawks offense at the 50-yard line with 3:48 left, and all of a sudden the prospect of a game-winning field-goal attempt seemed almost certain.
If it made the fans nervous, it made the key members of the field-goal unit excited.
“Here we go,” Ryan said. “I said to Hausch, ‘Here’s your game-winner coming up.’”
“Absolutely,” Frese said. “There was no doubt in my mind that we were going to win that game, and I was hoping we would win it with a game-winning field goal. That’s what I was hoping for.”
Hauschka said that coming back from misadventures is less about flushing them from your mind than it is about learning from them and moving on.
“It’s just forward thinking with being aggressive,” Hauschka said. “There’s a lot of things I can’t control. I focus on what I can control and that’s attacking the ball. That’s what I had my mind set on.”
It was the fourth time in six years with Seattle that Hauschka has made a game-winning field goal in overtime or the last two minutes of regulation, and his teammates said they had no doubt about this one.
“I went to (North Carolina) State with Steve Hauschka,” Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson said, “So I’ve known him for a while now.
“The thing I told Steve (after the miss) was ‘You’re one of the best kickers in the league. Just be in the moment. You’re going to make the game winner.’ Sure enough, he was able to.”
“Sometimes you’re going to face some storms, face some situations in the game, in life, whatever, but the great ones overcome the situations,” Wilson said. “That’s what Seve was able to do today.”
Sure. Nothing to it.
Yeah, right.
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