They’ve got their shot at revenge. It’s Super Bowl XLII, the Seattle Seahawks are engaged in a knockdown-drag-out affair, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are lining up for the potential game-winning field goal at University of Phoenix Stadium.
Forty yards away. Three seconds to play. Seahawks leading by two points.
Pittsburgh kicker Jeff Reed is walking off his steps, and the linemen are crouching into position. Mike Holmgren feels helpless. All he can do is hope.
At least that’s all he’s going to do, if you believe Holmgren.
No matter the stakes, Seattle’s head coach refuses to fall under the spell of the recent trend of icing a kicker at the very last moment.
So, even if the unlikely scenario happens at Super Bowl XLII, and even if the hated Steelers are the opponent, Holmgren vows not to be that guy who shimmies up to the nearest referee with arms folded and hand to mouth, whispering “not now … not now … not now … NOW!”
That’s just not Holmgren’s style.
“I’ll tell you right now: I’m not going to do that,” the old-school coach said earlier this week when asked about the NFL’s latest coaching fad. “I don’t like it.”
By now everyone has undoubtedly seen at least one example of the new way to ice a kicker. Denver’s Mike Shanahan was the first NFL coach to do it this season, waiting until just before the ball was snapped to call a timeout against the Oakland Raiders in Week 2. The apparent game-winner from Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski’s was wiped out because the whistle had blown for Shanahan’s timeout, and Janikowski missed his next attempt.
Raiders coach Lane Kiffin went on to try a similar tactic the very next week, helping beat the Cleveland Browns 26-24. Buffalo’s Dick Jauron tried the most-watched icing-the-kicker trick on Monday Night Football, but Dallas’s Nick Folk calmly hit the game-winner — twice, in fact — to beat the Bills.
Like Shanahan and Kiffin before him, Jauron saddled up to an official and waited until the ball was just about to be snapped before calling his timeout.
It’s become a growing trend at both the professional and college levels, and has some throwback coaches like Holmgren questioning the strategical ethics. It’s the football equivalent of stepping out of the batter’s box as a pitcher starts his windup.
“I don’t like the way that looks or how it is,” Holmgren said this week. “… In years past, if you wanted to freeze the kicker — which has gone on forever; that’s nothing new — (the players) would come out and start milling around, and then you’d call (the timeout). Not right when the ball is snapped.”
NFL rules have very few stipulations in terms of when a timeout can be called. It can’t be done during the course of a single play, and until three years ago it had to be done by a player on the field.
Coaches were given the option of calling timeouts from the sideline in 2004, but only recently did they start taking advantage of the rule by attempting to freeze kickers at the last possible second. In the old days, when a team wanted to ice an opposing kicker, a defensive player would often call a timeout before the players even got lined up.
Lately, they’ve tried to rattle the kicker by waiting until the last possible second.
“The coach is doing what he’s allowed to do by rule,” Seahawks kicker Josh Brown said on Thursday, “so it’s nothing you can be angry about. It’s our responsibility to be in the right frame of mind at all times.”
Brown shrugged off the significance of icing a kicker, whether it happens as the field-goal unit is taking the field or just before the ball is snapped. He said it affects some kickers, but not others.
“I think it works from time to time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s generally a very successful thing. It’s like a coach’s own trick play.”
Maybe one day the last-second icing will be as common as fouling down the stretch in a basketball game. But for now, something about it just doesn’t feel right about it.
Maybe that’s why Holmgren refuses to do it, no matter how high the stakes.
“I don’t freeze kickers as a rule,” he said. “(With) NFL kickers, I don’t think it works, all that nonsense. Go out there, kick it. Either make it or don’t make it, but let’s go.”
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