Seahawks make questionable call to try for late field goal, and miss, losing 24-20 to Dolphins
By Scott M. Johnson
Herald Writer
SEATTLE — Mike Holmgren had a plan.
In the mind of the Seattle Seahawks coach, it was plain as day. Holmgren had coached in hundreds of other NFL games, and although he had never faced a decision quite like this one, he had faith in how things would play out.
Go the safe route by kicking a field goal, stop the other team while using all three of your timeouts, and get into position to kick another field goal.
He had a plan, and he never wavered.
In hindsight, things weren’t so crystal clear. It turned out the Miami Dolphins had a plan of their own, and in the end that was the one that resulted in a 24-20 victory over the Seahawks.
On a clear day in which the Seahawks were involved in their biggest nail-biter of the year, everything came down to a fourth-down call with just under two minutes to go. Seattle was staring at a fourth-and-4 from the Miami 10 yard-line, trailing by four points. Instead of running one more offensive play in an effort to take the lead, Holmgren took his chances with a field goal.
"I thought about going for it," he said afterward, "but I chose what I thought was the best way at the time.
"If I had only two timeouts left, there’s no decision at all to make," Holmgren added. "I had three timeouts left, so you go for it. Most often in those situations, you don’t have all three. But we had all three, so that created a decision. I made the decision, and unfortunately it blew up."
When all was said and done, almost nothing played out as Holmgren had hoped. First, kicker Rian Lindell shanked a 28-yard field goal that would have brought the Seahawks within one point with 2:00 remaining, and then the defense got burned on a trick play on a key third down. Despite putting the team in position to win the game with two minutes remaining, the offense never got its chance to capitalize.
"Everybody has their own opinion, but there’s only one coach," tight end Christian Fauria said. "If it were up to me, I would have said, ‘Throw me the ball.’ But he’s not going to listen to me. He is a very good coach, he made a tough decision, and I’ll stand by him."
Said running back Shaun Alexander: "If we kicked the field goal, the defense shut them down, and then we kicked another one, people would have been like, ‘That’s the greatest decision ever.’ But this time the ball didn’t bounce for us. We’ll get back on the horse and ride again."
While quarterback Matt Hasselbeck played what may have been his finest game as an NFL starter, Holmgren appeared to lack the confidence in his young starter when the game was on the line. But the Seahawks coach said Hasselbeck’s inexperience was not a factor.
"That had nothing to do with it," Holmgren said. "The pressure we were getting at that particular time had been disruptive on the three previous plays. It had nothing to do with who was playing quarterback."
Hasselbeck, returning to the lineup after a two-game layoff due to a groin injury, got off to another slow start. Late in the first half, with the Seahawks trailing 10-0, he started to hear a few raspberries from the Husky Stadium crowd.
But Hasselbeck’s afternoon took a drastic turn when he hit tight end Itula Mili on a 15-yard touchdown pass with 3:18 to go before halftime. It marked Hasselbeck’s first touchdown pass as a Seahawk, and the first time he had led the Seattle offense on a scoring drive from beginning to end.
After that, Hasselbeck played with a newfound swagger.
"That touchdown pass to Mili got everybody going," wide receiver Darrell Jackson said. "We were fired up. You have a quarterback going through a little bit of controversy and an offense starting slow, but we picked it up."
Hasselbeck completed all four of his passes on the next drive, including a 17-yard touchdown pass to Jackson with 42 seconds remaining in the first half as the Seahawks took a 14-10 lead.
Hasselbeck then led the offense to field goals on their first two drives of the second half, each consisting of at least 12 plays, as Seattle re-took a lead at 20-17 with 8:37 remaining in the game.
But a 39-yard touchdown pass from Miami quarterback Jay Fiedler to former Seahawk James McKnight gave the Dolphins the lead for good.
When Seattle’s Bobby Engram dropped a key third-down pass near the first down marker with five minutes to go, it appeared that the Seahawks might be out of chances. But the Seattle defense came up with a key turnover when cornerback Ike Charlton forced a McKnight fumble that safety Reggie Tongue returned to the Miami 23 with 3:34 remaining.
A Dolphins holding penalty and a 9-yard run by Alexander put the Seahawks at the Miami 10, and, after two near-sacks and a short break for the two-minute warning, Holmgren sent out the field goal unit.
Lindell missed the kick wide left, and Miami got the ball back at its own 20 with a four-point lead. Seattle’s defense stopped Lamar Smith on consecutive plays, used both its timeouts, and forced the Dolphins into a third-and-13 with 1:44 to go.
But Fiedler perfectly executed a naked bootleg on the next play, running 16 yards before sliding beneath a pair of Seattle defenders with what turned out to be the game-saving first down.
Seahawks linebacker Chad Brown said he expected something unconventional from Miami offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, who was with the Pittsburgh Steelers during Brown’s tenure there. Unfortunately for Brown and the Seattle defense, a bootleg was never considered.
"Chan’s smart," Brown said. "It’s a good play. I have no idea what happened, but obviously it was a great call."
Holmgren might get some heat for his call a few seconds earlier, but for now it’s all water under the bridge.
"If you look at life by what-ifs, then you’ll never move forward," Engram said. "This was a tough loss to swallow for everybody. Give Miami credit, they played well. But at the same time we felt like we just let one get away from us."
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